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Foreword

t is a special pleasure to write this foreword to Roger Hutchison’s

newest book, Under the Fig Tree. To speak personally for a moment,

I confess that I have always had trouble with Lenten disciplines and

programs of Scripture reading; it was therefore a happy surprise, a few

months ago, to glimpse some of Roger’s preliminary drawings and texts.

This, I thought, is a biblical journey that I would be glad to take. What

you are holding in your hands may look like a children’s book, but it has

an adult sensibility behind it and asks something of its reader. In this

new work, Roger has moved beyond the categories that have previously

defined him, producing a volume which invites attention far beyond its

deceptively modest appearance.

Anyone who has watched Roger work with children has been struck

by his almost magical ability to hold their attention and encourage their

participation. He won the lasting affection and gratitude of hundreds of

little people and their parents at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Columbia,

South Carolina, during his remarkable tenure there as Canon for Chil-

dren’s and Family Ministries from 1998 to 2015. Many of those children

will remember him all their lives.

When I saw Roger’s first book, The Painting Table, I was captivated

by the richness of color, form, and imagination that characterizes his art

and his shaping of it into a narrative. There is a wide-ranging fecundity

underlying these images and their context. By providential design, The

Painting Table was ready to move into a situation its creator never imag-

ined, when the tragic massacre of children in the Sandy Hook Elementary

School in Newtown, Connecticut, occurred in 2012.

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