The Unnamed Mural

In a church basement in Portland, a collective of artists spent three months painting a mural depicting their neighborhood — the halal grocery, the queer youth shelter, the creek where salmon still fought upstream. When a local magazine wanted to feature the work, the artists faced a decision. Who would take credit?

They chose no one. The mural went unsigned.

Paul writes to the Philippians, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others." This is not a call to self-erasure — the kind of toxic humility that has been weaponized against marginalized people for centuries. Rachel Held Evans reminded us that true humility never demands someone make themselves smaller so others can stay comfortable.

Rather, this is the humility of solidarity. The artists understood that signing the mural would center individual achievement over communal story. The creek, the shelter, the grocery — these belonged to everyone. To claim authorship would be to colonize a shared narrative.

Progressive faith asks us to interrogate where our desire to be seen might overshadow the work of justice itself. Are we advocating for the unhoused because we genuinely regard their dignity, or because advocacy burnishes our identity?

Humility, in the way of Jesus, means the work matters more than who gets the byline. Let the mural speak for itself.