Jo-el

 Joel is a return customer.  I love that.  He could have got inked at home in Colorado, but he chose to come back to Ayiti Ink.  Joel's first visit was in March of 2010, not long after the earthquake in January had written its' dark chapter into Haiti's already tumultuous story.  Retrospectively I have to commend Joel's genius.  He and the group of guys he was here with were helping Heartline Ministries develop markets for their seamstress program.  I think they did some relief work too, but back then hardly anybody was thinking about development... they were too busy flooding Haiti with aid... giveaways that can sometimes have the net effect of debilitating the Haitian economy.  But Joel's group was already working on development and transitioning from handouts to job-creation for the long term impact it would have on Haiti.  The timing was really right on... urgent needs (other than housing) began to fade right around that time as long term economic sustainability became the most vital concern.  The primary needs were no longer food and medicine but homes and jobs.  People with jobs have homes, so if you meet that need... anyway, Joel was doing the right thing at the right time.  Go Joel!  Go Heartline! 

Back in March Joel asked for a cross with the Superman emblem in the center of it and Hebrew text from Isaiah that speaks of the coming of the Messiah.  As he explained it, basically the comic concept and general plot of Superman was written by some Jewish guys with more than a little influence from the messianic promises of the Hebrew scriptures.  The cross tattoo allowed Joel to celebrate a long standing appreciation for the comic hero and to proclaim his faith that the desire and hope that Superman symbolizes, and Isaiah predicts have been realized by a true historical messianic hero. 

Joel's friend (I think his name was Jonathan?) got another cross with a more direct "God is my strength" text written in the center.  We had a good chat late into the night as I inked the two of them, and Joel says I started to fall asleep in the middle of doing one of the tats.  I don't remember that, but I do remember being tired and having a lot of fun talking with these guys.  Jonathan was a big soft-spoken, kind-hearted Maori-looking guy, that looked like he probably wanted to hug more people than he's allowed to because he'd probably crush them to death.  I am starting to think that all of Joel's friends have names that start with "J", are super nice, and physically intimidating.  This time he brought another guy named Jason... or was it Justin... or Jarod?  Anyway, he looked like Mr. Incredible, and he was a very cool guy.  He got a calligraphic wrist piece that said, "AYITI" on one side and "ESPWA" on the other... Haiti and Hope.  Easily the two most frequent words people ask me to tattoo on them here. 

This time around Joel asked for a tattoo of C.S. Lewis's Lion-as-Christ character, Aslan, from the Chronic (what?) cles of Narnia. based on this vector image from istock photo.  He wanted me to remove the crown from the vector image, so I did.  He also asked for a little cross under the lion's chin.  I thought it was an interesting thing to balance out the other shoulder with another of the most compelling metaphorical Christ characters in popular culture.  Garrison Keillor once said, "If you can’t go to church and for at least a moment experience transcendence; if you can’t go to church and pass briefly from this life into the next— then I can’t see why anyone should go. Just a brief moment of transcendence causes you to come out of church a changed person." Ken Gire, comments in his book, Windows of the Soul, “I have experienced what Keillor described more in movie theatres than I have in churches. Why? I can’t say for sure—movies don’t always tell truth or enlighten, but they do let you lose yourself in someone else’s story.

The Bible is primarily narrative... not propositional like a textbook on God, but an accounting in various voices of the human story as it interacts with God's story.  Telling that story again through a metaphor, be it superman, a lion, or in the cloak of an old fairytale (anybody see Tangled?), makes it somehow transcendent again, and reminds me that some things ring more true, feel more tangible, and sound more familiar when they are told "slant" through analogies, images, and kids' stories.  Just like the abstraction of this lion makes my heart and mind reach more for Aslan than a photorealistic lion picture might.  Because this is not "on the nose" like a straight illustration, it gets my imagination going and I can't look at it without taking a little dive into the story.  That's part of what I love about doing tattoos: when I hear the stories that people find so compelling that they want them to be a part of their skin it reminds me how much more there is to know about them, how much deeper their stories must be than there is room on their skin to tell.

Thanks Joel.  Let's do it again some time.  I can't wait to hear more of YOUR story!

-C