RESONANT IMAGES 1 Resonant Images: A Theology of Justice for Artists and Creatives

In 2008 I travelled to Uganda with a group from my church. We spent two weeks there working on a house at an orphanage near the town of Lira in Northern Uganda. Most of the kids there had been orphaned either by AIDs, or by fighting between the army of Uganda and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. Over the course of those two weeks I took about 3000 photos. More than showing stereotypically poor, starving African children, the photos and stories I brought back were filled with children who, despite their situation, were filled with joy. To this day when I look at the photos I cannot help but recall those stories. Their faith and joy in the light of so much pain and suffering changed my life. It changed my art too. The Hardingfele is a Norwegian musical instrument that resembles a violin but has eight strings instead of four. The strings are arranged with one set of four strings directly on top of the other. Even though the instrument has eight strings, only the top four are played. The lower strings vibrate when certain notes are played on the strings above. This happens because of a principle called sympathetic resonance. The lower strings respond to the upper strings. The same thing happens to us when we experience a particularly moving piece o