Artist: Honorio Morales
Title: Manu Deus
Year: 2025
Material: Alginate, acrylic on wood, kaolin, paper, plaster
Size: 24 x 36 in.
In early June, I was at a conference outside of Chicago at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, on the campus of Northwestern. During one of our afternoon breaks, a few of us wandered up to see the top of the tower. On our way up, I encountered this haunting piece of work by the artist Honorio Morales, Latiné Engagement and Partnership Associate, who has provided the artist statement above. The artwork caught my eye initially by its striking three dimensions: a torn and tattered Bible bursts out of the landscape, with the dark red streak of blood running down the surface. I was especially taken by the sacramental theology expressed in the placement of the hand and the blood. The hand juts out above the horizon—from the heavens. And the blood drips down onto the earth, a confronting visual of the paradox at the heart of all atonement theology: the blood of Christ gives us life.
Standing there, taking in the textures and rawness of the artwork, I was reminded of a Christian Wiman quote about art and theology:
“The purpose of theology—the purpose of any thinking about God—is to make the silences clearer and starker to us, to make the unmeaning—by which I mean those aspects of the divine that will not be reduced to human meanings—more irreducible and more terrible, and thus ultimately more wonderful. This is why art is so often better at theology than theology is.”
As I moved to see the silhouette of the outcropped elements, I saw the title of the piece on the side of the canvas: MANU DEUS.
Living in Aotearoa New Zealand, the word Manu has a different first meaning from the Latin, hand. Here, it means bird. The ambiguity of the image connects deeply to the story of Christianity in Aotearoa. Christianity was inextricably wrapped up in the efforts to colonise the islands. And yet, it has also been an instrument for liberation and decolonisation. Over the past month or so, this image has haunted my theological musings, pushing through manifold interpretations within the ambiguities of translation. Within the act of translation is interpretation, building bridges into new hermeneutical landscapes of sense-making and meaning. Below are three short reflections that have emerged in my life in connection to this piece.
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MANU DEUS: The god bird.
Within Polynesian mythology, perhaps the greatest hero is the demigod Maui, the great trickster. Maui often takes the form of a bird in the stories—journeying to the underworld or seeking out family members. The trickster is not a figure that looms large in contemporary New Zealand Christianity. Values of honesty and integrity are placed in juxtaposition to the playful trickery of Maui. The trickery of Jacob or Rahab or Jael or the Unjust Steward is sanitised and theologised away. Perhaps there is a world where these values are not in contradiction but in alignment.
Miguel De La Torre speaks of a need for ‘trickster’ ethics. When the system is set against you, he argues, you must disrupt the system. This can be seen in acts of chaos, of trickery, of anarchy. De La Torre calls for an ethic “para joder” that f***s with the systems of oppression.
Here in Aotearoa, there is often much scrutiny cast upon the tactics of activists and protestors not only by neoliberal shills, but also by those who purport to support the activists’ causes. We have seen this especially for climate and environmental activists. The critiques flood in (no pun intended) on consequentialist and on deontological grounds. And yet these critiques entirely miss the point that the entire political system is not set up for liberation. The avenues for radical change—for apocalyptic intrusion of the divine into the human—requires the ethical planes of decency and order to give way to a divine call to screw with the systems of law and order that only serve to protect the interests of the wealthy.
Perhaps we need to reclaim a trickster ethic in Aotearoa—one that reclaims the conniving, mischievous, and playful spirit of Maui. If we are to let the Bible speak to us, perhaps we must let it burst through our ethical frames like the artwork by Morales. Perhaps we must let the “strange new world” of the Bible speak to us anew.
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MANU DEUS. Bird. God.
Jay Ruka’s Huia Come Home uses the story of the extinction of the Huia bird as an overarching metaphor for the colonisation of Aotearoa. Within this story, there is much debate about where God is—and is not.
The answer is not simple. It is, I think, much like asking where God is in this piece of art by Morales. Is God in the Bible? Is God in the blood? In the heavens? The earth?
The image of the Bible is much like a bird with wings outstretched, flapping its wings as it takes flight. In this view of the Bible as winged bird, bursting out of the painting, what is the role of the hand that follows? Is it a hand holds the bird back—or is it the instrument which has pushed the bird out of the frame, seeking to set it free to take off on its own path?
This ambiguity is inherent in Christians’ struggle to make sense of their identity and place in the history of Aotearoa New Zealand. The missionaries were human. They made mistakes and were instruments—whether intentional or not— of the colonial empire. Though we as humans love our binaries, as the 39 Articles say, the evil is ever mixed with the good. Separating wheat from chaff and hero from villain remains an unproductive endeavour.
Instead, I wonder where we might end up if we stayed with questions rather than answers—if we looked with curiosity and reflection upon the past as we do a piece of art. As we seek to understand, to look from different vantage points and angles, what might emerge? What might take flight?
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MANU DEUS.
Last Friday, I was walking with my 2-year-old niece. She had insisted on walking herself, resistant to riding in the stroller. She held onto two of my fingers as she trod along in her boots, which are still just a bit too big. As we walked through a pedestrian alleyway, she stopped, pointed up, and shouted, “MANU!”
Sure enough, on the powerlines and the rooftops above us were thirty or so pigeons. Her shout startled them, and they took flight, cooing as the sound of their wings flapping filled the air. My niece stopped in her tracks, watching with rapt delight as they circled overhead in an abbreviated murmuration.
They flew off to a new location, where I’m sure they would settle until the next disruption. Atop the roof of the house next to us, though, stood one pigeon who remained behind. It turned its head as a pair of sparrows landed on a shingle nearby. We lingered, watching it twist and turn its head to observe the world around it.
I felt her hand squeeze mine as she again shouted, “MANU!”