Wikio - Top Blogs - Religion and belief

Saturday 30 June 2018

HeartEdge's June Mailer

HeartEdge is a growing international ecumenical network, passionate about nurturing Kingdom communities via four C’s - congregations, culture, commercial activity and compassion.

Each month in our Mailer we bring you inspiration, ideas and resource. If you haven't already,
you can subscribe - sign up here!

This month: 
  • Hairdressing, community work, commissioning art and Banksy
  • Food coops, Big Local and the Big Welcome - resources for welcome and collective hospitality.
  • 'Power to Change' and an Aladdin's cave of resources!
  • Plus John Bell on the legacy of Lizzie Lowe and going beyond inclusion, Vicky Beeching and being an inclusive church, Maggi Dawn on pilgrimage, and Walter Brueggemann on poetic imagination.
The Mailer also has information about the first HeartEdge Annual Conference 2018 - 12 & 13 September 2018: St Martin-in-the-Fields and Lambeth Palace, London.

Commerce, Compassion, Culture, Congregation are essential – in our view, it’s all church! The September two-day HeartEdge intensive includes theology, ideas, resources, plus time to linger, build connections, make plans, develop practice, find encouragement, get involved and do HeartEdge!
Programme: Including keynote speakers, workshops and panels on 'Church, Welfare and the Future', 'Start-Ups (and Keeps-Goings)', 'Digging Deeper into Mission', 'Art and the Impossible' with more to follow.
  • Confirmed so far: Bishop of Liverpool Paul Bayes; urban theologian Ann Morisy; Chair in Christianity and the Arts at King's College London Ben Quash; Theologian and writer Professor Anthony Reddie; activist Russell Rook; Baroness Maeve Sherlock; Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby; Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Sam Wells; Rector of St James, Piccadilly Lucy Winkett - with more next time.
  • Venue: Day 1 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, day 2 at Lambeth Palace
  • Cost: Early Bird rate £69 (until 20th July 2018); then HeartEdge members rate - £79, non-members rate - £99. Tickets include conference programme, refreshments & lunch, plus complimentary Jazz on evening of 12th September.
  • Registration: Book tickets here.
For latest information email Revd Jonathan Evens here or call 020 7766 1127

Additionally, our friends at New Roots have teamed up with new HeartEdge members commission4mission to create an online artists in residence programme. The New Roots Artist in Residence will be invited to profile a number of different works on the New Roots website for a month. The first Artist in Residence is commission4mission member Valerie Dean (see/).

New Roots are keen to work with artists using different visual mediums – interested in becoming a ‘New Roots Artist in Residence’? More information here. Get in touch here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sister Rosetta Tharpe - This Train.

Windows on the world (403)


Oxford, 2017

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apocalypse in ART: The Creative Unveiling - Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall










On Thursday I was at Apocalypse in ART : The Creative Unveiling, a CenSAMM conference at which I spoke along with Christopher Rowland, Kip Gresham, Elena Unger, Michelle Fletcher, Michael Takeo Magruder, Alfredo Cramerotti, Eleanor Heartney, Rebekah Dyer, Lilla Moore, Natasha O’Hear, Massimo Introvigne, and Matthew Askey.

The word ‘apocalypse’ originally indicated an ‘unveiling’, and the speaker in the Book of Revelation is a ‘seer’. This is perhaps one of the reasons that this ancient text (and others like it) have generated such a ferment of creative responses in the visual arts – as well as those other non-visual strands of the arts which have their own way of engaging our mind’s eye.

The rich variety of types of artistic unveiling (visual, musical, dramatic, literary) makes an engagement with the creative arts a deeply valuable way of understanding and appreciating the idea of apocalypse, alongside more traditionally academic modes of enquiry.

The conference sought to explore our relationship to art, its practice, its study and what the arts unveil to us. As artists or as audiences of art we can be profoundly transformed by our encounters with artistic creativity; indeed, we can find ourselves using the language of revelation to describe such encounters, regardless of our individual faith, religion or beliefs. Mark Rothko is quoted as saying, “the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”

I spoke about apocalyptic influences and imagery in the work of Bob Dylan:

‘I was born in 1941,’ Bob Dylan reminded his audience at a concert in 2009, ‘that was the year they bombed Pearl Harbour. I’ve been living in a world of darkness ever since.’

What did he mean? After all, he grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, Which was a ‘perfectly fine, respectable, middle-class, civic-pride sort of place’, ‘conventional, mainstream, solid,’ most of all, quiet (David Kinney, 2014 ).

What he meant was that, in those Cold War days, ‘in addition to the normal fire and tornado drills [you] had from time to time to crawl under your desk in order to shield yourself from the imagined explosion of an atomic bomb.’ (Robert Cantwell in Greil Marcus, 2010)

In Chronicles Dylan writes that, ‘In 1951 I was going to Grade School. One of the things we were trained to do was to hide and take cover under our desks when the air raid sirens blew because the Russians could attack us with bombs. We were also told that the Russians could be parachuting from planes over our town at any time.’ Andrew McCarron notes that, ‘In Dylan's case, the terrifying experience of hearing the air raid sirens as a ten year old and having to take cover under his desk left a lasting mark.’

McCarron goes on to say that, ‘Of his childhood and its anxieties, Dylan writes in Chronicles: “Back then when something was wrong the radio could lay hands on you and you’d be all right.” His most steadfast sense of identity was guided by the imaginative worlds that came to life through the blues, gospel, Appalachian, and country music that he heard and ended up playing himself.’ Howard Sounes notes that, ‘His musical influences included gospel, and much of the American folk and blues music that proved to be so formative was infused with biblical imagery as well.’

Much later Dylan was to state that, ‘Those old songs are my lexicon and prayer book … All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from "Let Me Rest on that Peaceful Mountain” to “Keep on the Sunny Side.” You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs. I believe in Hank Williams singing “I Saw the Light.” I’ve seen the light, too.’

It was religion that also gave the young Robert Zimmerman a language in which to express his sense of living in a world gone wrong. Bert Cartwright argues that he first explores ‘the Bible's apocalyptic imagery from an artistic perspective of potent symbol’ and then, as a result of his Christian conversion, ‘adopted a quite literal understanding of the way God would get even with and, with his chosen few, prevail.’

His knowledge of the Bible came, of course, from his Jewish upbringing, as well as from the music to which he listened. Sounes notes that, ‘While Bob was not brought up in an Orthodox home, he did receive a grounding in the Bible - an important source of imagery for his song lyrics long before his Christian conversion of the 1970s.’ Cartwright expands, writing that his ‘understanding of history wells up from the depths of a Jewish heritage that rehearsed each year within the family the liberating exodus of God's people from bondage.’ It was this ‘understanding of history embedded deep in Dylan's Jewish heritage that haunts him with questions of justice in the face of a growing despair for the human transformation of the world.’

There is one more key influence to explore; again musical, as you would expect. ‘In September 1960, Bob Dylan borrowed a copy of Woody Guthrie's autobiography Bound for Glory from a college classmate and became obsessed.’ ‘Dylan started mimicking his hero's speech patterns and even told the crowd at the Cafe Wha? when he arrived in New York for the first time the following January: "I been travellin' around the country, followin' in Woody Guthrie's footsteps."'

Dylan hunted Guthrie out at ‘Greystone Park Psychiatric hospital in New Jersey, suffering from Huntingdon's disease, which finally led to his death in 1967. Dylan wrote, and played to his idol, a new piece of his own called ‘Song to Woody’ which states that ‘Hibbing, Minnesota’s Bobby Zimmerman had escaped his past to reinvent himself as a lonesome hobo drifter’, like Guthrie, ‘like the best folk singers hopping off and on railroad cars destination anywhere’:

‘I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings

Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born’

Ross Altman notes that, ‘Listening to that first published Dylan song today, written when he was just twenty years old, one is struck by how world-weary the young troubadour already sounds … as he evokes a world that seems sick and it's hungry, tired and torn / it looks like it's a-dyin' and it's hardly been born.'

When you put all those influences together it becomes clear that what we have in the best of Dylan’s work is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture. It’s there, at the beginning in ‘Song to Woody’ and it’s still there in ‘Ain’t Talkin’’, the last track on what is to date the penultimate set of original Bob Dylan songs:

‘Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
No one on earth would ever know

Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Up the road around the bend
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
In the last outback, at the world's end’

In between these two markers, Dylan’s songs document where his pilgrim journey in the eye of the apocalypse has taken him; often with imagery of storms lighting his way. He has travelled the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: saw seven breezes blowing around the cabin door where victims despair ('Ballad of Hollis Brown'); lightning flashing for those who are confused, accused and misused ('Chimes of Freedom'); surveyed 'Desolation Road'; talked truth with a thief as the wind began to howl ('All Along the Watchtower'); sheltered with an un-named woman from the apocalyptic storm ('Shelter from the Storm'); felt the idiot wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognised himself as an idiot and felt sorry ('Idiot Wind'); found a pathway to the stars and couldn't believe he'd survived ('Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat'); rode the slow train up around the bend ('Slow Train'); was driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief ('I Believe in You'); heard the ancient footsteps join him on his path ('Every Grain of Sand'); felt the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire ('Caribbean Wind'); betrayed his commitment, felt the breath of the storm and went searching for his first love ('Tight Connection to My Heart'); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but he’s walking through the middle of nowhere trying to get to heaven before the door is closed ('Tryin' To Get To Heaven'):

‘The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.’

As Frank Davey writes, ‘Dylan's vision is essentially apocalyptic; again and again he tells of an evil world which is soon to be both punished and replaced tomorrow, perhaps, when the ship comes in.’ Songs like 'When The Ship Comes In' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin' both deal with rapidly approaching change described in apocalyptic terms. When the apocalyptic moment arrives, it is clear that some will be on the positive side of the change and others not. Dylan may well be speaking, as has been suggested by many critics, about young versus old and freedom versus rules but, on the basis of the lyrics themselves, it is not possible to be definitive because the language Dylan uses is deliberately unspecific. In neither song does he identify the specific nature of the change that is to come and it is this generality which gives these songs universality and continuing relevance because they can be applied to different circumstances at different times.

What can definitively be said about both songs however is that they are warnings about a coming apocalyptic change and the warning concerns on which side of that change we will find or place ourselves. Cartwright suggests that, ‘In his early songs of protest [Dylan] optimistically expressed a prophetic view of history in which an old order will fade, giving way to a more just and righteous existence. With the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the disillusionment of good causes becoming easily corrupted, Dylan became markedly more pessimistic.’

From ‘Slow Train Coming’ onwards Dylan equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ (also known as the Second Coming). The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is coming around the bend and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. According to Clinton Heylin this reflected the influence of Hal Lindsey, through the Vineyard Fellowship whose Bible classes he attended post-conversion. Heylin writes, ‘Aside from the scriptures, the classes sought to provide a grounding in the works of Hal Lindsey, the man to whom God in his infinite wisdom had revealed the true code of Revelation. . . . His book, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), became Dylan's second Bible and added an apocalyptic edge to his worldview, allowing Christ Come Again precedence over Jesus the Teacher.’

So, with 'The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar', Dylan sees the apocalypse coming as a curtain which is rising on a new age but not yet here, while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: 'Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes' ('Dead Man, Dead Man').

In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it seems consistent to also read 'Jokerman' from Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. There is much in the song that is negative about humanity: we are born with a snake in both our fists; we rush in where angels fear to tread; our future is full of dread; we are doing no more than keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within; we are going to Sodom and Gomorrah only knowing the law of the jungle (the law of revenge from the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy - 'an eye for an eye'). But these negatives are not the whole story as we also experience freedom, dance to the nightingale tune, fly high, walk on the clouds, and are a friend to the martyr. We have an inherent dignity and beauty to which only the greatest of artists such as Michelangelo can do justice. In 'Jokerman', Dylan captures well the Biblical portrait of humanity as made in the image of God but marred by our rejection of God with our potential for beauty and compassion perverted into a selfish search for self-aggrandisement.

The final verse comes straight from the Book of Revelation and describes the birth of the AntiChrist who will deceive humanity into following him rather than Christ. The accusation and challenge that Dylan puts to us in the final lines of this final verse is that we know exactly what is happening (after all, it has all been prophesied in the Book of Revelation) but we make no response; we are apathetic in the face of the apocalypse. Our lack of response is what is fatal to us because it is only through repentance and turning to Christ that we will be saved from the coming judgement. These final lines are both an accusation and a challenge because, in line with the prophecy of Revelation, Dylan clearly believes that humanity as a whole will be apathetic and unresponsive but they must also be a challenge because, if there is no possibility that any of us will respond, why write the song at all!

Yet for much of his career, while consistently writing in the face of a coming apocalypse, Dylan did not specifically equate that apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. Apocalyptic change in Dylan's work can be understood as generational conflict, Cold War conflicts, nuclear holocaust, Civil Rights struggles, and more. The generic message throughout is that apocalyptic change is coming and we need to think where we stand in relation to it. That message is as relevant today in terms of economic meltdown, climate change or peak oil, as to the Second Coming, whether imminent or not.

Dylan's manifesto for his work is 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'; a song about walking through a world which is surreal and unjust and singing what he sees:

‘I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.’

John Gibbens states that, ‘By biblical analogy we take the flood to be a judgement upon all the things that have been listed in the verse, ‘and therefore a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.’’’

This is a song which has been interpreted as dealing with events that were contemporary to the time such as the Cuban missile crisis and, more generally, the threat of a nuclear holocaust. That may well be so, but I think a more straightforward interpretation and one that is closer to what the lyrics actually say is to see it as a statement by Dylan of what he is trying to do in and through his work. In the song he walks through a surreal and unjust world, ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm (as Gibbens notes, the Biblical storm of judgement that is the flood) and he resolves to walk in the shadow of the storm and sing out what he sees:

‘I’m a-goin’ back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...’

43 years later, with ‘Ain’t Talkin’’, he was still writing songs where his central character is walking through an apocalyptic landscape. ‘Ain’t Talkin’’ reminds us of films such as ‘The Road’ and ‘The Book of Eli’ where flawed figures seek to protect and enable the survival of goodness – whether a son or a Bible – while travelling in violent licentious post-apocalyptic worlds:

‘Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
No one on earth would ever know

They say prayer has the power to help
So pray from the mother
In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell
I'm trying to love my neighbor and do good unto others
But oh, mother, things ain't going well

Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through the world mysterious and vague
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
Walking through the cities of the plague

All my loyal and much-loved companions
They approve of me and share my code
I practice a faith that's been long abandoned
Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road’

The suffering in this situation is unending. The fire's gone out but the light is never dying. He challenges us to say that he can't still get heavenly aid. In the last outback, at the world's end, he walks in the mystic garden talking with the woman at the tomb who mistook Christ for the gardener. His heart is still burnin’, still yearnin’ for the coming judgement and the resurrection of the dead.

In the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:

'He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey.'

For more on these themes, see 'The Secret Chord', my co-authored book which is an accessible exploration of artistic dilemmas from a range of different perspectives seeking to draw the reader into a place of appreciation for what makes a moment in a 'performance' timeless and special.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bob Dylan - Ain't Talkin'.

Friday 29 June 2018

The Spirit in popular music

On Wednesday I led Bread for the World at St Martin-in-the-Fields reflecting on the Spirit in popular music.

I began the service by reflecting that rock music has been called ‘The Devil’s Music’ as it emerged from the secular culture of the 1950s. 'Conservative Christians in the United States were by turns hostile to the transgressive race-mixing early-1950s rock ’n’ roll and Elvis Presley’s hip-grinding sexuality, relieved by the early-1960s white-boy surf and hot-rod bands, and subsequently horrified by the Beatles.' But, in the end, 'rock music became the musical lingua franca of emerging non-denominational Evangelicalism: the music that the conservative Evangelicals rejected became the cornerstone of Evangelical liturgy.' A recent book called ‘The Devil’s Music’ tells that story but, for those who believe in the ‘missio dei’, the understanding that the mission of God is bigger than the mission of the church, that God is at work outside of the church and that part of what we do as Christians is to find out where God is at work and join Him there, there is a more interesting story to tell about the Holy Spirit and rock music. So, the service as a whole aimed to enable reflection on that story:

In the early days of rock ‘n’ roll a unique event occurred; four of the biggest stars at the time happened to all be in the same recording studio at the very same time. They were Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee-Lewis, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. Although they were not there to record but they did start a jam session. Someone left the tapes rolling, recorded their jamming and later released it under the title of the Million Dollar Quartet.

So what did these four rock ‘n’ rollers sing when they got together for this impromptu jam session? The answer is that they sang hymns and country gospel songs. Because they all grew up in Southern Pentecostal Churches they drew on a shared background of Spirituals, Gospel and the charismata of Southern Pentecostalism. In creating rock ‘n’ roll each substituted what they deemed as secular words and movements for sacred songs and mannerisms. For example, Elvis’ first musical inspirations came at his Pentecostal church services at the Assembly of God in Tupelo. He later reflected that the more reserved singers didn't seem to inspire much fervor, but others did. They would be "jumpin' on the piano, movin' every which way. The audience liked 'em. I guess I learned from them singers."

As Bill Flanagan wrote in his book ‘Written In My Soul’, 'Rock & roll was born in the American South … The whole history of rock & roll could be told in Southern accents, from the delta bluesmen and country troubadours to the Baptist gospel singers and Okie folkies.' Blues singers included ministers and evangelists, such as Revd Gary Davies and Blind Willie Johnson. Paul Ackerman, a scholar of poetry and songs, wrote the following about Country singer Hank Williams: ‘A country songwriter without a highly developed sense of religious values is rare, so it is natural that Hank wrote many songs with spiritual themes.’ The tradition of Christian socialism in the US is epitomized particularly in the life and music of the folk singer Woody Guthrie.

Something similar occurred as Soul music developed out of Black Gospel. Ray Charles began a trend which was later successfully followed by the like of Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin, among many others, when he introduced gospel-singing techniques and the exhortatory style of Pentecostal preachers into his vocal style and adapted church-based songs into R&B hits. Tony Cummings wrote that: 'From James Brown to Diana Ross, black singers consistently show their origins to be a storefront church in Harlem or Macon or Detroit ... it’s a cliché. Every soul artist interviewed seems to have an identikit story – “I was always interested in music. I sang in a church choir.'

All of which means that rock and soul music has a spirit that derives from the exuberance and ecstasy of Gospel music (songs like Every time I feel the Spirit and Up Above My Head). This inspirational spirit informs the music regardless of its often secularized content. Gayle Wald wrote that: ‘Like rock music, Pentecostalism tapped into something -- a Holy Spirit -- or human spirit? Whatever it was, it was deep and it seems to embody the sacred-secular tensions that run throughout the amazing story of rock.’ The entire purpose of Pentecostalism was to play music that most let its adherents feel the Holy Spirit in their bodies. It is that spirit that is transposed into the feel and flow of rock and soul and it is this that gives rock and soul its affective nature. As Jim Cosby writes this is where ‘the heart, joy and sheer exhilaration of rock 'n' roll comes from.’

A second way in which the Spirit impacts within rock music is in relation to the inspiration of the songs which are written and sung. Some years ago I read a book called ‘Written In My Soul’, a series of interviews with some of the most well-known singer-songwriters from the 1950s onward, and was struck by the extent to which these great artists – Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison and others - felt that their songs were given to them in moments of revelation, that their songs were already written and ‘came through them as though radio receivers – without much conscious effort or direction.’

As example, Neil Young said, ‘My best work just comes through me. A lot of times what comes through me is coming from somewhere else.’ Similarly, Dylan has spoken of songs coming through the writer and cited Van Morrison’s ‘Tupelo Honey’ as a song that had always existed and Morrison the vehicle through which it came. In his interview Morrison confirmed that that was the only way he wrote songs; the only way he could write.

To my mind, these are experiences of the Holy Spirit coming, although it is often not recognised as such. The Spirit comes and makes connections, bringing clarity, making sense. That is not just something for artists or even for preachers, it is something that can happen for us all and not just in major life-changing moments of revelation but also in minor everyday epiphanies.

In ‘Creation Dream’, a song by the singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, he sees the creative Christ singing creation into being by means of lines of power which burst outward along the channels of the song Christ sings. Inspired by this vision, Cockburn asks the creative Christ if he can be just a little of his creative breath as it moves over the waters of chaos - the face of the deep – to bring all things into being. When we are moved by the Pentecostal spirit of rock music or receive a moment of clarity and inspiration that comes from somewhere else, we are connecting with the creative spirit of Christ.

Bruce Cockburn is not the only musician to write in these terms. Low are US indie rock band formed by a couple who are both practising Mormons. In a song called ‘Holy Ghost’ from 2013 they sing: Some holy ghost keeps me hanging on … I feel the hands, but I don't see anyone / It's there and gone / Feeds my passion for transcendence / Turns my water into wine / Makes me wish I was empty / Now I don't know much / But I can tell when something's wrong … But some holy ghost keeps me hanging on. Similarly, singer-songwriter Victoria Williams has a song from 1990 called ‘Holy Spirit’ in which she describes camp-fire singing on the banks of old Lake Bistineau and singing with a stranger on the metro in New York as moments when the Holy Spirit was flowing. She concludes: I have seen it on a mountaintop / I have felt it beneath stars /I have felt it in a churchyard and even in some bars / It will make you laugh, make you cry, make your heart go ping / Yeah the spirit, holy spirit will make you shout and want to sing … the spirit, holy spirit is flowing...

Victoria Williams’ song is a perfect expression of the mission dei, the understanding that God is already at work in our world in a way that is bigger than the church - I have seen it on a mountaintop / I have felt it beneath stars /I have felt it in a churchyard and even in some bars. In these ways, and others, the Holy Spirit is also experienced in rock and pop music itself.

For more on these themes, see 'The Secret Chord', my co-authored book which is an accessible exploration of artistic dilemmas from a range of different perspectives seeking to draw the reader into a place of appreciation for what makes a moment in a 'performance' timeless and special.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Victoria Williams - Holy Spirit.

Why does the Church so rarely value and nurture the artists and prophets found in its midst?

Why does the Church so rarely value and nurture the artists and prophets found in its midst? 

That is a question which underlies the exhibition, at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, of Corita Kent’s vibrant, passionate, wry, colourful, compassionate, and contextually relevant art. 

Her art generated a string of correspondence from the Archbishop of Los Angeles that placed ever more stringent constraints on her art and teaching. Copies of that correspondence are displayed at the end of this most marvellous of exhibitions, leading me to raise this question in my exhibition review for Church Times:

'A wonderful piece of contextualised mission was brought to a premature end by the Archbishop’s inability to understand, combined with his inability to resist the local voices of complaint. Sister Corita was a true pioneer in, and heroine of, the 20th-century Church. This exhibition cannot be commended too highly.'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday 26 June 2018

Pilgrimage exhibition: commission4mission at St Saviour's St Albans

My thanks to David Millidge for these photographs of commission4mission's Pilgrimage exhibition at St Saviour's Church, St Albans, which can be viewed until 30th June 2018:
















--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Enya - Pilgrim.

Monday 25 June 2018

Foyer Display: Ruth Hutchinson









‘Communication’
(‘Graffiti’ – work in process – and ‘No Graffiti’ - the final work)
by Ruth Hutchinson


St Martin-in-the-Fields is home to several commissions and permanent installations by contemporary artists. We also have an exciting programme of temporary exhibitions, as well as a group of artists and craftspeople from the St Martin’s community who show artwork and organise art projects on a temporary basis. One of the initiatives from this group is a changing display of work by the group members or artists linked to the group. Each month a different artist shows examples of their work, so, if you are able, do return to see the changing display.

Ruth Hutchinson came to England from Jamaica in 1959 to train as a nurse. Now in her active retirement she enjoys lots of artistic pursuits including her art and her poetry. She does lots of poetry with local groups. She is also a longstanding active member of the congregation at St Martin-in-the-Fields, one of the welcoming stewards’ team and a co-leader of The Archers. Her passion for the arts was ignited when she re-trained as a nursery nurse but really grew when she studied art after retiring in 2001.

‘Communication’ was an art college project. The sketchbook in the cabinet shows part of the considerable preparatory work required. Ruth explains: “I was and still am very interested in the environment and recycling. I feel that graffiti can be a good and a negative thing. A lot of graffiti is only about the person leaving their own mark. However, there are some wonderful pieces and I feel it is a very strong means of communication.”

Ruth studied the works of Tracey Emin, Jean Michael Basquiat, Keith Haring, Nicholas Ganz and Banksy to inform her work. She also researched ‘Communication’ in the widest possible sense, looking at hand gestures, facial expressions, colour, sign language, confusion or communication, how babies communicate from birth, public signs and tactile communication.

“I found it immensely interesting doing the research and being at college with younger people. I think the art work brings out the best in me. ‘Graffiti’ involved mixing fabrics, mixing colours and using the shredder to shred tiny pieces, using whatever I could find around me to create the final outcome. This was really exciting.

For ‘No Graffiti’, because I also worked with the under 5’s, I was inspired to use colour and to make things out of nothing. Having an interest in the environment around me and recycling I was able to use whatever materials I could get my hands on to create the final piece. I have a particular interest in sign language and that’s why the hands in the final piece show its title.’

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Staple Singers - Let's Do It Again.

Exploring aspects of faith and popular music

This week I'll be exploring aspects of faith and popular music firstly in Bread for the World at St Martin-in-the-Fields (6.30pm, Wednesday) when  I will talk about the Spirit and popular music. Then, at CenSAMM's conference Apocalypse in Art: The Creative Unveiling, where I will talk about the apocalypse as a theme in the music of Bob Dylan.

The word ‘apocalypse’ originally indicated an ‘unveiling’, and the speaker in the Book of Revelation is a ‘seer’. This is perhaps one of the reasons that this ancient text (and others like it) have generated such a ferment of creative responses in the visual arts – as well as those other non-visual strands of the arts which have their own way of engaging our mind’s eye.

The rich variety of types of artistic unveiling (visual, musical, dramatic, literary) makes an engagement with the creative arts a deeply valuable way of understanding and appreciating the idea of apocalypse, alongside more traditionally academic modes of enquiry.

This conference seeks to explore our relationship to art, its practice, its study and what the arts unveil to us. As artists or as audiences of art we can be profoundly transformed by our encounters with artistic creativity; indeed, we can find ourselves using the language of revelation to describe such encounters, regardless of our individual faith, religion or beliefs. Mark Rothko is quoted as saying, “the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”

Bob Dylan grew up with the apocalyptic imagery of the Hebrew Scriptures and the cold war experience of hiding under school desks in the era of nuclear threat. When he began composing and performing, he combined this apocalyptic angst with the hobo lifestyle of his hero Woody Guthrie. His songs embody the idea and experience of journeying in the face of the coming apocalypse. In the best of Dylan’s songs we encounter a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture. Dylan's manifesto is 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'. In this song he walks through a surreal and unjust world, seeing ahead a gathering apocalyptic storm, and resolves to walk in the shadow of the storm and sing out what he sees. From ‘Slow Train Coming’ onwards Dylan equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ (also known as the Second Coming). The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is coming around the bend and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Yet, for much of his career, while consistently writing in the face of a coming apocalypse, Dylan did not specifically equate that apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. Apocalyptic change in Dylan's work can be understood as generational conflict, Cold War conflicts, nuclear holocaust, Civil Rights struggles, and more. The generic message is that apocalyptic change is coming and we need to think where we stand in relation to it. That message is as relevant today in terms of economic meltdown, climate change or peak oil, as to the Second Coming, whether imminent or not.

For both these talks I will be drawing on my co-authored book 'The Secret Chord'.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bob Dylan - Blood In My Eyes.

Sunday 24 June 2018

Windows on the world (402)


London, 2018

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joy Williams - Do They See Jesus In Me?

Saturday 23 June 2018

Pilgrimage exhibition at St Saviour’s, St Albans











commission4mission is exhibiting at St Saviour’s Church (25 Sandpit Lane, St Albans AL1 4DF) for the Alban Pilgrimage. The Alban Pilgrimage took place today, being held in honour of the city’s namesake, St Alban, who died on 22nd June over 1700 years ago.

Entitled ‘Pilgrimage’, our exhibition, from 23rd – 30th June (9.00am – 5.00), features work by: Hayley Bowen; Harvey Bradley; Irina Bradley; Lucy Crabtree; Valerie Dean; MaryJean Donaghey; Jonathan Evens; Michael Garaway; Clorinda Goodman; Deborah Harrison; David Millidge; and Adeliza Mole. The exhibition includes ceramics, paintings, sculptures and an installation.

Our exhibition gives personal insights into what pilgrimage means to the artists involved. David Millidge has been directly inspired by the martyrdom of St Alban and Irina Bradley has painted an icon of St Alban. Others, however, have treated the theme in terms of pilgrimage more generally or have been inspired by the journeys of other figures from Church history.

Concerts are being held at St Saviour’s during the period of the exhibition on Saturday 23rd and 30th June. Today’s concert begins at 7.30 pm and is ‘An Evening of Sibelius’ by St Albans Symphony Orchestra. More information can be found at http://saso.org.uk/events/an-evening-of-sibelius/. On Saturday 30th June at 7.30 pm St Albans Chamber Choir will perform ‘Light and Love, Music for Midsummer’. More information can be found at http://stalbanschamberchoir.org.uk/.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kamasi Washington - Truth.

Tuesday 19 June 2018

Degree Show Two Design & Present Imperfect


Degree Show Two Design at Central Saint Martins includes:
  • Walking in the City: Open and Closed in London by Soeun An which explores the paradoxes of London life; comfort and crime, multiculturalism and racism; and 
  • From Jesus to Yeezus by Kenn Lam explores the parallels between conventional worship and fanatical behaviours surrounding celebrity worship.
Dead Reckoning by Richard Paton featured in the recent present imperfect exhibition in Mayfair where themes and the aesthetics of uncertainty, speculation, absence, ambiguity, silence, nostalgia, the temporary, and the liminal flowed across and between the works. Dead Reckoning refers to an historical navigation method. Starting from a place of certainty by calculating a previously determined position and then advancing that position with the use of instruments and analysis. The process of dead reckoning allows the navigator to know where they are in a featureless ocean.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lizz Wright - Old Man.

Sunday 17 June 2018

Pilgrimage art exhibition for The Alban Pilgrimage





commission4mission’s next exhibition will be at St Saviour’s Church (25 Sandpit Lane, St Albans AL1 4DF) for the Alban Pilgrimage. The Alban Pilgrimage takes place annually and is held in honour of the city’s namesake, St Alban, who died on 22nd June over 1700 years ago.

Entitled ‘Pilgrimage’, our exhibition, from 23rd – 30th June (9.00am – 5.00), will feature work by: Hayley Bowen; Harvey Bradley; Irina Bradley; Lucy Crabtree; Valerie Dean; MaryJean Donaghey; Jonathan Evens; Michael Garaway; Clorinda Goodman; Deborah Harrison; Anthony Hodgson; David Millidge; Adeliza Mole; Dorothy Morris; and Victoria Norton. The exhibition includes ceramics, paintings, sculptures and an installation.
commission4mission’s secretary, Revd Jonathan Evens, says: ‘Our exhibition gives personal insights into what pilgrimage means to the artists involved. David Millidge has been directly inspired by the martyrdom of St Alban, while others have treated the theme in terms of pilgrimage more generally or have been inspired by the journeys of other figures from Church history.’

Hayley Bowen writes that her painting ‘6 years and 26 miles’ depicts the pilgrimage of 15 year old Mary Jones, a girl from a poor Welsh family, who in the year 1800 walked 26 miles barefoot to the town of Bala (and back again) across rough countryside to buy a copy of the Welsh language Bible from The Rev.Thomas Charles after saving up for one for six years. The story inspired the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Michael Garaway says of ‘Steperegrin’, the new work he has prepared for this exhibition: ‘Eighty eight hours over six weeks, a step pattern combined with a diagrammatic motif, suggestive of mazes, wandering pathways, maps, circuits, and with hints of landscape, this is “Steperegrin”. It combines three grids at varying angles to form the motif. The title refers to the use of a celtic step pattern, and also to an older term “peregrinate” or “peregrination”, which came to mean journeying abroad, hence the link to ideas of pilgrimage.’

Sculptor Clorinda Goodman was inspired to produce her sculpture of St Cedd following a visit to Chelmsford Cathedral. She saw their window of Cedd in the chapel depicting the saint nearer the end of his life and wanted to create a piece to reflect his younger life. Many of the images carved into his hair are like a pictogram, telling the story of his life, apart from the end of his life at Lastingham. The images on the left depict Lindisfarne, the boat in which he sailed to Essex, the Chapel at Bradwell and the Synod of Whitby. On the right he has the keys of St Peter to symbolise the outcome of the Synod – i.e. following the Roman rather than Celtic/Irish church. His hair turns into waves on the left, and on the right it turns into fire for the Holy Spirit.

Concerts will be held at St Saviour’s during the period of the exhibition on Saturday 23rd and 30th June:


commission4mission was formed in 2009 to help revive and encourage the practice of commissioning and placing works of contemporary art in churches and other public places. To enable this, we have a growing pool of professional artist members working in a variety of media and styles. Through art, we support churches in their ongoing mission, and also charities, as each year part of the proceeds from commissions is donated. Since 2014 we have built an ongoing, mutual relationship with the Oasis Trust. Oasis aims to create safe places where everyone is included, where everyone has a chance to contribute and reach their God-given potential. See https://www.commission4mission.org/.

St Saviour’s is a welcoming and inclusive Christian community built on the understanding that God accepts us equally, irrespective of gender, sexuality, race, social standing or belief - and believing that God calls us equally to share that unconditional love with all people, without exception. It is the Church of England parish church for the Bernards Heath area of St Albans, and pastorally serves the Marshalswick South Ward. Established originally as a daughter church of St Leonard’s in Sandridge during the city’s expansion in the Victorian era, St Saviour’s has always been in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of Anglican spirituality and worship. See http://www.ssaviours.org/.

The Alban Pilgrimage starts at 11.00am at St Peter’s Church, St Albans. Stunning 12-ft tall carnival puppets and a procession of around 300 children, teenagers and adults from the local community dramatize the tale of Alban’s martyrdom, with the final scene taking place at the West End of St Albans Cathedral, the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in Britain. After the procession, a range of beautiful services will take place throughout the day. Everyone is welcome; whether to hear the stunning voices of the Cathedral Choirs, experience the peaceful chant of an Orthodox Service for the first time, or simply step into the building to find out more about one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in Britain. This year’s guest preachers, the Very Revd Andrew Nunn, Dean of Southwark Cathedral and Stuart Burns OSB of Mucknell Abbey, recipient of the Dunstan Award for Prayer and Religious Life, join the celebrations on this special day.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joy Williams - The Front Porch.

Saturday 16 June 2018

St Peter De Beauvoir Town - Memory Installation







St Peter De Beauvoir Town is a place of worship and prayer, with services and spaces to help parishioners and visitors on their life journey. They are deeply rooted in the neighbourhood of De Beauvoir, and host a wealth of community activity in their newly renovated crypt.

This Easter, artist Angela Wright created 'an installation for the church which was made in conjunction with four workshops using 'Memory' as their theme.' 'It presents objects lent by Angela and church attendees.' 'This offered the church a valuable opportunity for outreach to older people and dementia support networks. The installation provided a backdrop to a Lent programme of Holy Conversations – stories of St Peter’s and stories of God: stories of grace and well-being, scarcity and abundance, grief and change.'

'Her addition hardly changes the building environment - adding a vague complexity at the margins of sight - diverging from the chancel as if scattering fragments of its windows' colours into the body of the church. When however one approaches a wall, miscellaneous objects, trapped and flaunted in a turbulent stream of wire, become increasingly recognisable as a detritus of ordinary manufactured and naturally formed things. One's curiosity is aroused and one's attention focuses a single object, which stripped of its context of familiarity - of use and meaning that is extraneous to actuality - is awarded uniqueness and we see it as bizarre: a thing manifesting complex characteristics that are relatively undiluted by perceptions of its 'place and purpose in the world'.'

Angela has said: “Before I started to attach them I laid out all of the memorable objects on tables and they became my palette. I needed to become familiar with them. Their shapes, their colours, history and how they might live together. Finding that special resting place on the wall was not simple and it could take time, sometimes days and a small percentage of objects were rejected. The placing and space around each object was an important aspect of the installation. In the end around 430 objects were incorporated. In the final week, knitting needles were employed to help direct the sense of movement around the building. Balls of wool picking up the colours of the stained glass were used to draw the eye to the unity of the building.”

'The appreciation of the piece grows by the week as people slowly take it in. At first glance you might think it was a display of leftover Christmas decorations – many of the objects are suspended and catch the changing light in the building. As you draw closer you see that each object has its own space, its own voice and viewing becomes an act of contemplation.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Innocence Mission - Evensong.