In my neighborhood, Chinatown, sticker
art is a common marking found on walls, lamp poles, and store fronts. Unlike
graffiti, stickers are premade and can be publically displayed at a lower risk
of being fined for vandalism. According to Vocativ, a news blog, “Sticker
bombers, as they’re called, don’t hang from the sides of buildings with spray
cans, like graffiti artists did in the ’80s. They create their art at home…and
then tag everything from street signs and poles to bar bathroom mirrors, train
station ads and dumpsters –wallpapering as much of their world as they can”(Nestel).
These stickers range from graffiti tags and advertisements to political and religious
statements. Throughout my neighborhood, I have been seeing “Jesus. The Way, The
Truth, The Life. John 14:6” stickers plastered all over the streets. These
stickers are symbols of sacramentality, reminding the passersby that God is
present in everyday life.
Sacramentality
is the recognition in life that the presence of God radiates in all things,
whether animate or inanimate. Dorothy Day calls for sacramentality to be viewed
not only as Christian rituals, but as channels of God’s grace in the world. She
reveals that her relationship with Forster, who loved the outdoors, opened her
eyes to the beauty of nature. Day argued with Forster, stating that “how can
there be no God, when there are all these beautiful things” (Day, 134). This
realization of sacramentality in daily life is what brought Day to convert to Catholicism.
With this perspective, all things can be viewed as instruments of God. Sites of
God’s presence are not limited to the physical space of the Church, but are
open to public spaces such as the streets of Chinatown.
Amid the dirty walls and concrete streets, the Jesus stickers declare that God is among us as we walk through the landscape of an urban city. Although the beauty of nature is absent, sacramentality can be translated to a sticker that proclaims Christianity. The message it conveys is that Christianity is a way of life that transcends the boundaries of the Church into our daily routines. Because sticker art is the medium of communication, it is clear that the designer put thought and purpose into the aesthetic of the image. The format of the bible verse is bold and concise, making it easy for people to read it as they walk by. Perhaps the designer had chose the medium of sticker art because it is made to be easily mass replicated and tagged everywhere. The public repetition of the stickers, pasted all over the neighborhood, serves as a constant reminder that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
Day describes her friend Ade as
someone with “such a sense of the sacramentality of life, the goodness of
things, a sense that is translated in all her works whether it was illustrating
a missal, making stained-glass windows or sewing, cooking or gardening” (Day, 191).
In the same sense, the sacramentality of life is translated into these Jesus
stickers. The use of sticker art to promote living in accordance with Jesus opens
my eyes to a new medium of religious expression. It serves as a constant
reminder that God is with me even as I am walking to the train station, to the
grocery store, or to my house. Thus, the Jesus stickers are material evidence
of sacramentality: God is all around us, even in the disguise of a banal
sticker on the wall. Works Cited:
Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981. Print.
Nestel, Matthew L. "Meet the "Sticker
Bombers"" Vocativ. Vocativ, 21 July 2014. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.
