Between

Anselm Kiefer: Il Mistero delle Cattedrali (2)

2012-01-27T23:38:00.000Z

For a man who creates massive, magnificently moody meditations on mortality, Anselm Kiefer is remarkably chipper and chirpy when interviewed. Tim Marlow, his interviewer in oe of a selection of Kiefer films able to be viewed at White Cube Bermondsey throughout Il Mistero delle Cattedrali, clearly enjoyed the encounter while professing himself slightly mystified by some of Kiefer's more mystical responses.

Kiefer was very clear about his creative processes, beginning with a clear concept which inspires him to create but which then undergoes significant change in the process of creation with the resulting work often not relating to the original concept at all. Concepts are clearly of significance for Kiefer with this exhibition deriving from his interest in alchemical ideas and processes but his works are so layered with significance that they are much more than and are about much more than the animating concept.

Ronald Goetz has claimed Kiefer as 'a deliberately, if idiosyncratically, religious painter.' He argues that allusions to Kiefer's 'own strangely skewed versions of Christianity, Judaism, gnosticism and alchemy abound, and he has acknowledged that he thinks a great deal about religion ‘‘because science provides no answers."' 'Somber, guilt-ridden, accusing, mocking, enigmatic -- Kiefer’s vision of life, religion, ideology, national identity and history has been charred by the flames of the Holocaust ... The ‘‘God is dead’’ theologians and our current theological deconstructionists can claim a profound ally in Kiefer.'

This is to overlook however the extent to which Kiefer's is a transformative art; one that deals out distressed, decaying or dying imagery and objects in ways that create awe-ful, powerful works which overwhelm with their size, physicality, emotions and ideas. He scores and scars his images into thick paint which dries and cracks to form expansive wastelands in front of which symbolic found objects are hung. His oxidisation technique, another alchemical aspect, seems to mean that these works are never resolved but are always changing, always in flux.

'You have to find a golden path between controlling and not controlling, between order and chaos' Kiefer has observed. 'If there is too much order, it is dead; if there is too much chaos, it doesn't cohere. I'm continually negotiating a path between these two extremes.' This is the creative process which, as he notes, accelerates 'the transformation that is already present in things' and which brings his dead objects and images back to significant, signifying life.

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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - People Ain't No Good.

Anselm Kiefer: Il Mistero delle Cattedrali

2012-01-26T08:15:00.004Z

I'm looking forward to seeing tomorrow Anselm Kiefer's exhibition Il Mistero delle Cattedrali at White Cube Bermondsey. The first work by Kiefer that I saw was his Palmsonntag or Palm Sunday Artist Room at Tate Modern. I was so moved by this piece that I wrote a meditation based on notes and impressions that I jotted down while in the room itself.
Staged across 11,000 sq ft of gallery space, 'Il Mistero delle Cattedrali' is the largest presentation of Kiefer's work ever made in London:

"All of the large-scale canvases on show use landscape as its starting point. Thereafter, Kiefer works on each of them rigorously and with intense physicality and some of the canvases are exposed to the elements. In addition, for this exhibition, many of the large-scale works have undergone an accelerated process of oxidisation. Consequently, images that may be seen to evoke the sublime are themselves subjected to the subtle but immense power of natural forces. 'You have to find a golden path between controlling and not controlling, between order and chaos' Kiefer has observed. 'If there is too much order, it is dead; if there is too much chaos, it doesn't cohere. I'm continually negotiating a path between these two extremes.'"

Ronald Goetz has described Kiefer as a deliberately, if idiosyncratically, religious painter: 'Allusions to his own strangely skewed versions of Christianity, Judaism, gnosticism and alchemy abound, and he has acknowledged that he thinks a great deal about religion ‘‘because science provides no answers." Somber, guilt-ridden, accusing, mocking, enigmatic -- Kiefer’s vision of life, religion, ideology, national identity and history has been charred by the flames of the Holocaust.'

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Low - Don't Understand.

St John's Seven Kings: New developments

2012-01-25T21:53:00.001Z

There have been several encouraging new developments for the mission and ministry of St John's Seven Kings at the beginning of 2012.
The photos above are of our refurbished Fellowship Room. Work began before Christmas to raise and relay the floor and to redecorate this room. That work is now complete and the room back in use again. The work, which provides level access throughout our building, has been made possible by donations/grants from the family of Philippa Page, London Over the Border and the AllChurches Trust. We are exploring options for locating a new project within this space and will give thanks for the refurbishment of the room when the Bishop of Barking visits us on Sunday 15th July.

Bishop David will be visiting us on that Sunday to commission the new Ministry Leadership Team which we have formed at St John's Seven Kings to develop strategies for Children and Youth, Mission, Pastoral Care, Peace and Justice, and Worship.

Other new developments include a monthly Communion Service at a local Supported Housing complex and the opportunity to input to RE lessons at Seven Kings High School. We have also been able to announce that a new Title Post Curate will join us in July.

We are also hosting a community campaigns meeting tomorrow. Seven Kings has had a number of well organised and effective community campaigns in recent years. Some have been single issue campaigns while others have been organised by community campaigning groups like TASK and the Seven Kings & Newbury Park Resident's Association (SKNPRA). Many of these campaigns have also benefited from the support or involvement of local councillors and/or MPs.

However, some of the energy for these campaigns has dissipated more recently as, for a variety of different reasons, the founding members of TASK are no longer able to take that grouping forward. As a result, I have suggested holding tomorrow's open meeting at which anyone interested in community campaigning in future to improve facilities in the area can discuss a new way forward.

There are several options, such as: keeping TASK going; using existing groups like Resident's Associations, only doing single issue campaigns, joining a broader campaigning coalition like The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO - http://www.citizensuk.org/chapters/telco/). The idea of the meeting is to discuss the options open to us and to see whether there is a concensus able to provide a way forward.

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Evanescence - Bring Me To Life.

Proud to protect refugees

2012-01-25T18:13:00.001Z

Today I spoke up for a great British tradition – refugee protection.

2011 was the 60th anniversary of the UN Refugee Convention, the international treaty which guarantees refugees’ rights. British lawyers played a crucial role in drafting the Convention and the UK was one of the first countries to sign. The Refugee Convention has saved millions of lives and no country has ever withdrawn from it.

Throughout the lifetime of the Convention, the Refugee Council has worked to protect refugees. To mark and celebrate 60 years of refugee protection, the Refugee Council is asking 10,000 people to join with them in calling for refugees to be treated with dignity and respect. I’ve just signed up - please add your voice today at www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/refugeeprotection.

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Duke Special - Salvation Tambourine.

RE Lesson: Justice

2012-01-25T07:30:00.000Z

Yesterday I taught the following to a Year 7 RE class at Seven Kings High School. Tomorrow, I'll be repeating the lesson with another Year 7 class.

Jesus told stories to challenge those listening to him. He wanted them to think outside the box particularly when thinking about issues of justice. This is one of the stories he told – Luke 10. 30 - 35. What do you think his story is about?

To fully understand the story we need to see where it comes in the Bible. This is what comes before and after the story – Luke 10. 25 – 29, 36 & 37. How do you think the story answers the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’

It will also help us understand the story even better if we know something of what the society of Jesus’ day was like. The relationship between the Jews and Samaritans was very similar to the relationship between Jews and Arabs today, or to any relationship marked by strong racial or cultural prejudice. The Jews at the time considered Samaritans as social outcasts, untouchables, racially inferior, practicing a false religion. They avoided any association with Samaritans, travelling long distances out of their way to avoid passing through a Samaritan area. Any close physical contact, drinking water from a common bucket, eating a meal with a Samaritan, would make a Jew ceremonially unclean - unable to participate in temple worship for a period of time – this may be why the priest and Levite don’t stop to help. The Samaritans responded quite naturally to all this with strong dislike or hatred for Jews.

So, knowing that Jesus is telling this story to Jews, in his time, who hate Samaritans, what is he trying to teach them? Who is the neighbour of the Jewish man in the story? Who helps who in the story? Why is the story about receiving help as well as giving it?

Now that we have worked out what the story is about and what Jesus was wanting people to think about and learn through the story, what do you think the story means Christians should do today about racial injustice? Crime? Neighbourliness?

In a recent assembly on racism at St Edward’s Church of England School I said, ‘Jesus taught that all people should love one another as He loves us and that all people, regardless of race or skin colour, are created in the likeness of God. In Genesis 1. 26 – 27 we read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth... God said, 'Let us make Man in our own image and likeness ...’ So God made Man in his own image and likeness, male and female He created them.” This means that there is no reason for racial prejudice, or prejudice of any kind. Because we are all created by God in his image, Christians believe that we are all children of God and life is much better when we share what each race has to give - music, clothes, food, beliefs, skills etc.’

The churches in East London have tried to live this out in practical ways. For example, at the time of the last General and Local Elections, the British National Party (the BNP) had 11 councillors in Barking & Dagenham and was expecting to gain more so that it would become the biggest party on the Council and was also expecting its leader, Nick Griffin, to be elected as the MP for Barking.

The BNP is a far-right political party but one that is rooted in racist and fascist thinking. As Christians we viewed its message as being one of hate because, for example, the BNP believes that white people are genetically superior to black people and that black and Asian people can never be British, even if they were born here. Therefore we decided we had to act to encourage people in the faith communities, including the churches, to vote and to vote for any party except the BNP.

We worked with a national campaign called Hope Not Hate helping to fund a faiths worker who went to all faith groups in the borough explaining why this was such an important issue and encouraging them to vote to stop the BNP from winning. We also leafleted in the borough, organised publicity for the campaign, and held a gospel concert to promote the campaign.

And the great thing is that we won. This is how Hope Not Hate reported the outcome:

"It's official: the BNP suffered a humiliating defeat in yesterday's election. Not only did the BNP fail to elect Nick Griffin or Simon Darby to Parliament, they also failed to take any council seats in Barking & Dagenham and Stoke-on-Trent. The BNP is divided and defeated - and it's all thanks to you ... this ... victory ... belongs to all of us who stood for hope, not hate."

So we’ve looked at some of the things that it is important for Christians to remember as we read stories in the Bible and think about their meaning for us today. We’ve also looked at some ways in which we try to apply to teachings we find in the Bible to issues of justice today.

What I’d like you to do next is to try this for yourselves. I’ve got a different story from the Bible for you and I’d like you to read it and think about the three ways of thinking about stories that we used earlier:

What is the story about?
Where does it come in the Bible? and
What do I need to know about society at the time in order to understand the story?

I’d like us to read it and talk about it in small groups. When you think you need some extra information, please ask me. Here is the story – John 8. 1 – 11:

“Jesus went across to Mount Olives, but he was soon back in the Temple again. Swarms of people came to him. He sat down and taught them. The religion scholars and Pharisees led in a woman who had been caught in an act of adultery. They stood her in plain sight of everyone and said, "Teacher, this woman was caught red-handed in the act of adultery. Moses, in the Law, gives orders to stone such persons. What do you say?" They were trying to trap him into saying something incriminating so they could bring charges against him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, "The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone." Bending down again, he wrote some more in the dirt.

Hearing that, they walked away, one after another, beginning with the oldest. The woman was left alone. Jesus stood up and spoke to her. "Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?"

"No one, Master."

"Neither do I," said Jesus. "Go on your way. From now on, don't sin."

[The Law of Moses is the whole collection of written laws given through Moses to the people of Israel, which consist of many ceremonies, rituals, and symbols, to remind the people frequently of their duties and responsibilities. The Pharisees were a particular group in Jewish society with their own specific interpretation of the Law of Moses for which they claimed Mosaic authority. They are presented in the New Testament as being in regular debate and dispute with Jesus. Jesus seemed to think that the Law of Moses was being used to condemn and exclude people from the worship of God in the Temple when it was intended to draw people to God. He also seemed to think that obeying the detail of religious observances could prevent people from giving much needed help to those in difficulty – this is why the priest and Levite are criticised in the story of the Good Samaritan.]

What do you think this story has to say about the way Christians should think about justice and injustice? Why do you think that, based on this story?

In these two stories – one told by Jesus and one about him – we see him saying that we are all the same, whatever our race, colour, religion, class etc. - in two important aspects: first, we are all neighbours and as a result should give and receive love from one another; second, we are all sinners – those who fail to be perfect like God is perfect – and therefore we should bear with, understand and forgive each others faults and failings while encouraging each other to live differently in future.

On the basis of the kind of actions, stories and teachings of Jesus that we have thought about today, Christians have got involved in approaches to justice like that involved in restorative justice.

Restorative justice is a theory of justice that emphasizes repairing the harm caused or revealed by criminal behaviour. Restorative justice aims to create opportunities for victims, offenders and community members who want to do so to meet to discuss the crime and its aftermath. It expects offenders to take steps to repair the harm they have caused. It seeks to restore victims and offenders to being whole contributing members of society and it provides opportunities for parties with a stake in a specific crime to participate in its resolution.

Restorative justice has three principles which seem to fit with what we have seen of Jesus’ example and teaching today:

Justice requires that we work to restore those who have been injured.
Those most directly involved and affected by crime should have the opportunity to participate fully in the response if they wish.
Government's role is to preserve a just public order, and the community's is to build and maintain a just peace.

In restorative justice programmes the victim and offender encounter one another. This might be done directly in a meeting between the two (and perhaps others as well) with a facilitator assisting them but can also be done indirectly through exchange of letters, videos and by messages delivered by a third party. Stories of confession, forgiveness and reconciliation forcefully remind us of the relational wounds caused by crime and the need to address those.

Restorative justice seeks to repair the harm done by crime. Whenever possible this repair should be done by the persons responsible for the harm. That is why restorative justice values efforts by offenders to make amends. There are four elements of making amends: apology, changed behaviour, restitution, and generosity. Each element has potential for helping the victim to heal and the offender to become a productive part of the community, although usually more than one will be involved in a restorative outcome. It is the victim and offender who decide which ones are important and feasible in particular cases. That is why restorative encounters are important.

Crime causes injuries. It also can result in both the victim and offender feeling stigmatized. Therefore, restorative justice places a high value on the reintegration of the victim and of the offender. The goal is to have them become whole, contributing members of their communities. Reintegration occurs when the victim or offender can become active and productive parts of their communities. To accomplish this, victims and offenders must find communities with the following characteristics: (1) mutual respect for those in the community, (2) mutual commitment to others in the community, and (3) intolerance for - but understanding of - deviant behaviour by members of the community.

Restorative justice processes are also more inclusive than traditional criminal justice processes in that they actively invite all affected parties - victims, offenders, and community members - to participate in resolving the crime.

An example of these approaches in practice is Sycamore Tree, which:

is a six session programme, run in prisons, focusing on raising victim awareness, and based on the principles of restorative justice;
challenges attitudes and behaviour by teaching and encouraging offenders to take responsibility for their actions towards victims and the community – to recognise the wrong they have done, the impact it has had on others, and the need to put things right;
enables offenders to hear from ‘surrogate victims’ about their experiences of crime; and to reflect on the impact and harm caused, and the need for apology and reparation;
uses the story of Zacchaeus from the Bible as a framework;
is run at the invitation of Prison Service Chaplaincy, by trained Prison Fellowship staff and with volunteers from all Christian denominations, who through prayer, practical action and values based programmes, seek to restore those affected by crime; and
has been run more than 330 times since 1999, involving four thousand prisoners in more than 25% of all prisons.

“Sycamore Tree made me realise the pain I caused to my victim, the families and myself. I wanted to take responsibility for what I had done.” A young offender

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Julie and Buddy Miller - Broken Things.

Beyond the power of words

2012-01-23T08:28:00.000Z

I have a new article published today on the Transpositions blog entitled 'Walter Navratil: Beyond the Power of Words'.
Walter Navratil was an Austrian artist whose work shows the influence of Art Brut and which explores the incidence and impact of mental distress. This exploration is, however, always shot through with Christian concepts, themes and images focused on suffering, its endurance and redemption.

Transpositions is a collaborative effort of students associated with the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews, voted runner-up as Best Newcomer Blog in the Christian New Media Awards 2010.

Its organisers write:

"On one level, transpositions connotes our goal to create conversations between Christian theology and the arts. Just like a musician might transpose from the key of B flat Major to C Major in order to create beautiful music with other instruments, we desire to transpose from the mode of theology to the arts and from the arts to theology in order to create meaningful resonances. Transpositions also brings to mind placing images and ideas of varying opacity over one another so that from particular points of view they appear to blend without distinction, creating a new form of beauty. On yet another level, transpositions suggests the nature of both art and theology as a transposition of divine reality into earthly form. As C. S. Lewis concluded in his brilliant essay entitled ‘Transposition,’ our glimpse of God through embodied transpositions and our taste of true reality in the present gives us hope that one day we will experience the fullness of beauty."

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Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris - Love Hurts.

Windows on the world (180)

2012-01-23T07:07:00.002Z

London, 2011

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NIck Lowe & Elvis Costello - Indoor Fireworks.

Transforming Presence

2012-01-22T23:51:00.000Z

Yesterday I was at Transforming Presence: Time to Talk, a well organised diocesan consultation on the strategic priorities for the Diocese of Chelmsford over the next fifteen years. These are intended to begin a continuing and widespread discussion of how we better become the church God wants us to be, and are better able to serve God’s world.

We discussed our best experiences of church, three words for the essentials of Church (I came up with creative, Christ-shaped community), what inspired and challenged us in the Transforming Presence document, and created headlines and news stories for the Church as we imagine it may be in 2025. While the document recognises some of the challenges which the Diocese faces, the event was predominantly upbeat meaning that my suggestion of 'Survival is success' as a headline wasn't picked up by the group of which I was part. To give the group their due though, we did grapple with real issues in the headline we eventually chose - 'Church accepts equality - 40 years too late!'

The strategic priorities identified by Transforming Presence - inhabiting the world distinctively, evangelizing effectively, and serving with accountability - are valuable but do seem to need some further unpacking or development.

One point that was particularly well made on our table was that it is hard to identify anything that is distinctively Christian about the way that we live both in the sense that our lives are often little different to those of others around us and also in the sense that most aspects of the way we aspire to live as Christians can also be found in other wisdom/faith traditions. The question to be addressed then is in what sense can it be said that these things are distinctively Christian if they are also found outside of Christianity? It may be that we would be better to speak of inhabiting the world ‘Christianly’ (if such a word exists), as opposed to distinctively.

Additionally, the document, in my view, needs to place a stronger emphasis on the practical outworking of faith in all forms of social action. At present, social action only seems to feature as an aspect of serving with accountability and should be given greater prominence, particularly in the light of many current mission initiatives which combine evangelism and social action.

My major concern with the document and its linked paper, Transforming Leadership, is that the analysis of the structural issues faced by the Diocese and Church of England is inadequate. The talk is of eradicating the sense of a ‘them’ and ‘us’ divide between parishes and diocese, where the diocese is seen as part of the Church of England’s top down, hierarchical, bureaucratic and, increasingly, managerial structures. My view is that this is a smoke-screen that we (priests and parishes) use to defend our individualism which in turn is fostered by structures which give exceptionally high levels of autonomy to us.

Those who have worked in generally hierarchical organisations will acknowledge immediately that the Church of England, while having its own hierarchy, is not a traditional hierarchical organisation where the decisions of those at the top of the organisation are simply implemented by those below. The hierarchy in the Church of England have little direct control over priests and parishes because incumbents have held the freehold of their parishes and each parish is essentially its own autonomous charity. This situation is only minimally changed for priests by common tenure and means that priests and parishes can effectively ignore the hierarchy of the Church should they wish to do so with, in comparison to most other organisations, minimal comeback. This independence and autonomy is, in my opinion, highly valued by many of us (priests and parishes) and we then fervently resist changes which would encroach on or limit this independence and autonomy.

It can then be, as part of seeking to preserve this independence and autonomy, that some come to oppose so-called bureaucratic or managerial methods which have the effect both of increasing accountability and decreasing scope for individualism. Managerial methods are decried as adopting the methods of the ‘world’ which don’t apply to the Church but, it seems to me, that our valuing of independence and autonomy without accountability is as much an adoption of ‘worldly’ values because it is an expression of the individualism which characterises modernism and consumerism instead of the communitarianism which should characterise the Christian faith.

While accountability features among the strategic priorities and within Transforming Leadership, I am not confident that this tendency towards individualism and autonomy fostered by the existing structures of the Church is adequately identified or addressed. While this is clearly a provocative contribution to the continuing and widespread discussion that Transforming Presence initiates, and a contribution with which many of my colleagues may disagree, I hope that we can have an honest and open discussion of strategic priorities, approaches and structures and that these views can be heard and understood within that process.

For other views, see Banksy here and the twitter stream for the event.

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David Bowie - Heroes.

Restoration engraving in Bankside exhibition

2012-01-22T21:20:00.002Z

An engraving by Peter S. Smith which was commissioned for St John's Leytonstone to celebrate the completion of major restoration works to the church can be seen in the forthcoming Society of Wood Engravers exhibition at the Bankside Gallery from 27th January to 9th February.

The Society of Wood Engravers exists to promote wood engraving. It is the principal organisation and rallying point for those interested in the subject; it also maintains a lively interest in other forms of relief printmaking. Essentially, it is an artists' exhibiting society. There are around seventy members, practising artists who have been elected or invited to membership on merit.

Simon Brett has written that Peter S. Smith was:

"among a group of like-minded young artists who sat at the feet of the Dutch Calvinist art historian Hans Rookmaaker. Rookmaaker (1922-77), himself part of Francis Schaeffer's evangelical L'Abri movement, brought a deep understanding of contemporary art to bear on what a Christian might do in what then seemed like cultural end-times."

Brett writes that Smith "has always been one of the few artists to use wood engraving for a truly personal and genuinely contemporary vision, untrammelled by even the best conventions of the medium."

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Iona - Let Your Glory Fall.

Jesus: Priest and King

2012-01-22T07:23:00.000Z

On the basis of one appearance in the story told within the Old Testament (Genesis 14. 17 - 20), Melchizedek has generated a huge amount of press over the years. Some people have thought he was Shem, one of Noah’s sons, others have thought he was a divine being or an angel, still others have argued that he was an archetype of Jesus or the pre-incarnate Jesus or, even, Jesus himself.

There are two other references to Melchizedek in the Bible. The first is in Psalm 110, a Psalm about a King who is also a priest in the priestly order of Melchizedek. The second is a lengthy passage in the letter to the Hebrews (Hebrews 7) arguing that Jesus is the Priest-King in the order of Melchizedek spoken of in Psalm 110.

The writer to the Hebrews suggests that Melchizedek and Abraham represent two different types of priesthood. Abraham represents the priesthood for the people of Israel which is formed while they wandered in the wilderness after being freed from slavery in Egypt. The tribe of Levi became the priests for the people of

Israel

who supported them by giving the Levites a tithe or tenth of what they grew or earnt.

Melchizedek, though, represents a different order of priests. He is both a King and a Priest and his priestly order is seen as being superior to that of the Levites. This is because he blesses Abraham. In scripture, as in the culture of the time, the one who blesses is always superior to the one who receives the blessing. So, the priest Melchizedek blessed Abraham, who was to be the father of all Israelites including their priests, the Levites. Therefore, the priesthood of Melchizedek is superior to that of the Levites. In addition, Abraham gives Melchizedek a tithe which is a way of acknowledging Melchizedek’s priestly office.

It is important for the writer to the Hebrews to be able to suggest this because he wants to show his fellow Jews why Jesus can be regarded as a priest even though he didn’t come from the tribe of Levi. More than that he wants to show his fellow Jews that the time for the Levitical priesthood has come to an end. The Levitical priests were for the people of Israel but Jesus is a priest for all peoples everywhere. The Levites were human beings who died and their priesthood ended but Jesus is eternal and is a priest forever. The Levitical priests had to continually offer sacrifices but Jesus made a once for all time sacrifice of himself on the cross.

So the writer to the Hebrews is saying that Jesus is the ultimate priest-king. He is the one that the example of Melchizedek pre-figures. He is the one about whom the Psalmist is writing in Psalm 110. Now that Jesus has made the ultimate sacrifice, there is no need for any other sacrifices or any other priests.

This is how the writer to the Hebrews actually puts it:

“The matter becomes even plainer; a different priest has appeared, who is like Melchizedek. He was made a priest, not by human rules and regulations, but through the power of a life which has no end. For the scripture says, You will be a priest forever, in the priestly order of Melchizedek. The old rule, then, is set aside, because it was weak and useless. For the Law of Moses could not make anything perfect. And now a better hope has been provided through which we come near to God ...

Jesus, then, is the High Priest that meets our needs. He is holy; he has no fault or sin in him; he has been set apart from sinners and raised above the heavens. He is not like other high priests; he does not need to offer sacrifices every day for his own sins first and then for the sins of the people. He offered one sacrifice, once and for all, when he offered himself. The Law of Moses appoints men who are imperfect to be high priests; but God's promise made with the vow, which came later than the Law, appoints the Son, who has been made perfect forever.” (Hebrews 7. 15 -19, 26 – 28)

So all this, strange and confusing as it is, is a way of emphasising to us the unique significance of Jesus and his sacrifice:

“The priesthood of the old covenant was temporary, but Christ ‘holds his priesthood pemanently’ (7:24). Those priests of Old Testament times were themselves ‘beset with weakness’ and constantly exposed to the same sinful tendencies as those who came to them for help, but Christ was sinless (5:2; 7:26). The priests of former days offered the blood of goats and bulls, but Christ offered himself (9:13, 7:27). Their sacrifices could effect only a partial cleansing, nothing more than ‘the purification of the flesh’, whereas the sacrifice of Christ purifies man’s disturbed and guilty conscience (9:9, 13-14; 10:22). The Old Testament sacrifices were a necessary reminder of the seriousness of sin (10:3), but by Christ’s offering our sins can be taken away (9:26; 10:11-12). Constant repetition was an essential feature of the Old Testament sacrificial system, but Christ’s sacrifice was offered ‘once for all’ (10:11-12).” (Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews, Inter-Varsity Press 1982)

In this way the writer to the Hebrews also gives one helpful way of thinking about and reading the Old Testament:

“It is not simply a graphic account of God’s dealings with his covenant people over the centuries. Old Testament Scripture is essentially Christ-centred … it eagerly anticipates his coming, it describes his earthly ministry, vividly relates the precise circumstances and eternal benefits of his death for mankind, and looks beyond itself to the eventual fulfilment of its finest hopes. Its historical development, spiritual value and moral lessons are all fully appreciated by our author, but he comes to its arresting narratives as a man equipped by the Spirit of God to discern a further message. It is a book about Christ. The Son of God dominates the word of God in both Testaments. The marks of Christ are clearly impressed on all its pages for those who have the eyes to see them.” (R. Brown)

So, as we focus more specifically on the Old Testament readings in our services during 2012, let us be seeking to discern Christ’s shadow on the words we read and, like the writer to the Hebrews, see the significance of Christ and his sacrifice comparison and contrast with the stories of the Old Testament. Let us thank God for the once for all, absolute and eternal nature of Jesus’ sacrifice of himself and praise him for that he has become the Priest and King for whom Melchizedek was a model.

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Delirious - Jesus Blood.

ArtHobbs

2012-01-19T16:44:00.000Z

Artist Paul Hobbs has a new website showcasing his work. Paul makes both celebratory abstract paintings, and painting and sculpture that consider contemporary social issues in the light of biblical values. He frequently gives workshops and talks about his artwork, its themes and his methods of working.

The new website includes:

pictures of 80 original Artworks;

photos and comments on three recent Shows;

Workshop and Exhibition Booking information;

an Articles page with an interesting article from the Baptist Times;

a large Shop with originals, prints, cards and posters etc.; and

dates for a show in London for October 2012.

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Tom Waits - Back In The Crowd.

Jack Clemo: The Invading Gospel

2012-01-19T16:28:00.001Z

The latest ImageUpdate has this about the The Invading Gospel by Jack Clemo:

"What do you know about the deaf and blind mid-twentieth century poet from Cornwall in England named Jack Clemo? Our guess is: not much. There are a few people out there trying to change this situation and we can thank one in particular: Louis Hemmings from Ireland, who has brought Clemo’s book The Invading Gospel back into print. Clemo was born in 1916 amid the china clay mines of Cornwall, which many have described as having a desolate, “lunar” look. Something of the stark intensity of this landscape colored Clemo’s style and vision. Deaf by age 20, Clemo’s blindness came on slowly and became total. After a period of youthful rebellion he returned to the Christian faith of his youth. The Invading Gospel—part autobiography, part apologetic—tells this story and goes beyond to reflect on many subjects, including the relationship between faith and art. Clemo’s stern Calvinism will be offensive to some readers but it is certainly bracing and intriguing. The controlling metaphor of the book comes from his belief that the Christian Gospel is like an invasion into the proud ego of the rebellious individual. This is, of course, a stark and even violent image and yet it bears a strong resemblance to that of someone like Flannery O’Connor, who grew up amidst the red clay of Georgia. And Clemo stresses that when the soul surrenders to this invasion the result is joyful, not dour and ascetical. He is also a more generous reader than this bare summary may indicate—for example, he writes of his appreciation of writers outside his own theological tradition, such as G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and Thomas Merton. At the very least, the re-issuing of this book ought to help stimulate a revived interest in what is arguably Clemo’s greatest achievement: his poetry (which has been published by the distinguished British press Bloodaxe, among others). The Invading Gospel has been privately re-published with some new background material and an afterword by Louis Hemmings and is available directly from him: louis@samovarbooks.com. The book is even more readily available in Kindle and Lulu editions."

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Jack Clemo - The Broadening Spring.

The humour of the really real and the more than real

2012-01-19T15:57:00.001Z

Transpositions is a collaborative effort of students associated with the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews which was voted runner-up as Best Newcomer Blog in the Christian New Media Awards 2010. The blog aims to transpose from the mode of theology to the arts and from the arts to theology in order to create meaningful resonances.

In a recent post Jim Watkins advocates for William Lynch's contention in Christ and Apollo that "comedy is the imaginative form par excellence because it exposes, like no other form can, our concrete and finite reality." Watkins writes that:

"Lynch contrasts comedy and tragedy as the two ends of a telescope. Tragedy looks at life through the narrow end where the human condition is writ large, and so we weep for its frailty and death. Comedy, however, looks at life through the wide end where the human appears small and insignificant, and so we laugh at its foibles and awkwardness."

I agree that this is true for much comedy but not for my favourite form of comedy; which is the surreal. Surreal humour is either more than real - taking us on a flight fancy from a real starting point to a world that is other than our own - or really real - creating absurdity by taking literally what is commonly understood figuratively.

Here are several examples primarily as an excuse to post some great sketches:

The Goon Show - 'The Great String Robberies'

Seagoon: Oh, jolly good, jolly good, ha-ha! [Nose throw sound] Now, where's the scene of the crime?

Navy Red Kilt: This is the hoose.

Scot No.1: Aye, welcome to the scene of the crime.

Seagoon: Ah, wheres the front door?

Scot No.1: It's in this brown paper parcel. [Opens it] We only use it for going in and out. Agh, there.

FX: [Door opens]

Scot No.1: The black-bearded criminal must have got in through the door or the windows. Everything else was locked.

Seagoon: I see. Right. Now, who was killed?

Scot No.1: No one's been killed.

Seagoon: Then this is a job for the police.

Scot No.1: You are a policeman.

Seagoon: Oh, yes, yes, I wasted no time getting here, did I, eh? - Hands up! You're all under arrest!

FX: [Door through which they enter]

Greenslade: The String Robberies, Part Two.

Seagoon: Part Two? That's us!

Scot No.1: You see that piece of string on the table?

Seagoon: Yes. What's that space in the middle?

Scot No.1: That's the piece that's missing.

Seagoon: So! So that's what a piece of missing string looks like, eh? Where's it gone? Ah! [laughs] But wait... can't you see, you, you poor Scottish fool!

Scot No.1: [Gnashing teeth sounds]

Seagoon: It's all, it's all a practical joke!

Scot No.1: [Gnashing teeth sounds]

Seagoon: Someone's cut that string in the center, pulled the two pieces in opposite directions, giving the impression that a piece had been removed from the middle.

Scot No.1: Hairy gringlers, he's right! Och, it's true! If you put these two pieces together, the gap disappears!

Scot No.2: Aye, but did you notice when you did that, the two outside ends got shorter?

Seagoon: Gad... Gad, Chisolm's right! Now I see what happened. What cunning! [laughs] The criminal's cut a piece off each end, then cut across the middle pulled them apart, making the string look the original length.

Scot No.1: Oh dear, this makes it a baffling case.

Scot No.2: Aye.

Seagoon: Ah yes. Instead of one piece we're looking for two separate ends... It's a good job I can count! [laughs] We must start investigations at once!

FX: [Link music]

Greenslade: [As radio announcer] ...Finally, here is a police message: Will all people in possession of two pieces of string please report to their local police station.

Spike Milligan - The Late News

Marty Feldman - Travel Agency Sketch

At Last The 1948 Show - Four Yorkshiremen

Monty Python - Ministry of Silly Walks

Paul Merton - The Series Episode 4

Milton Jones - Food

Milton Jones - House of Rooms

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The Style Council - The Stand Up Comic's Instructions.

Windows on the world (179)

2012-01-16T08:33:00.001Z

Gants Hill, 2011

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Tom Waits - Talking At The Same Time.

Prayer: tuning in to God

2012-01-15T15:20:00.000Z

Praying is like being a “ham” radio operator. Amateur or “ham” radio operators use radio frequencies which allow them to talk to people all over the world from right where they are in their homes.

Hearing and talking to people around the world via "ham" radio is not as simple as picking up the phone, dialling their number and talking away, instead you have to tune into the correct frequency, hope that you can hear the other person, hope that they can hear you and hope that the signal doesn't fade away.

A radio frequency is the number of times a radio wave gets repeated at a specific modulation. We are able to receive a radio station as long as we stay within the designated frequency.

Something similar happens with prayer and in this story (1 Samuel 3. 1 - 21) we see Samuel learning to tune himself in to the “God” channel in such a way that he can regularly hear from God. The story starts in a place and time where the people of God rarely hear from God - “In those days, when the boy Samuel was serving the Lord under the direction of Eli, there were very few messages from the Lord, and visions from him were quite rare.”

The problem though, I suggest, did not lie with God, because God is always communicating – always sending messages to human beings. No, the problem wasn’t that God had stopped speaking; the problem was that the people had stopped listening. They weren’t tuned in to the “God” channel and instead were listening to other channels and on other frequencies.

In fact this is true for us too. One way of thinking about what happens when people become Christians is that they have retuned their minds and spirits so that instead of listening on the selfish, self-centred frequencies to which we are naturally tuned in, we have retuned so that we are now listening to God.

Eli tells Samuel to say to God, “Speak; your servant is listening.” For Samuel to say, “Speak” means that he has an attitude of expectancy that God will speak and to say, “your servant is listening” means that he has an attitude of attentiveness and willing to act on what he hears from God. These are the attitudes that we need if we are to hear frequently from God – expectation that he will speak, attentiveness to what he says, and the readiness to take to heart and act on what he says.

The Bible suggests that God speaks in a myriad of different ways: through nature, through other people, through scripture, through everyday tasks and actions, through thoughts and ideas, through dreams and visions, through prayer, through worship, through inspired languages, through circumstances, through signs. The list could go on and on. Some of the ways in which he speaks seem to us to be supernatural and others very ordinary. It doesn’t matter how we hear him, it just matters that we do.

One way in which we can do this is to consciously try to reflect on what we see, hear and do in the course of our daily lives. The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things.

Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. This is a style of prayer that may go back at least to the Celtic Christians. They had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam, who has written many contemporary prayers in a Celtic style, says that:

“Much of Celtic prayer spoke naturally to God in the working place of life. There was no false division into sacred and secular. God pervaded all and was to be met in their daily work and travels. If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)

We know that ordinary people in Scotland were doing this daily in the late 19^th century, and probably much earlier too, because Alexander Carmichael collected their Gaelic prayers and poems in a book called the Carmina Gadelica, which “abounds with prayers invoking God’s blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and preparing for bed.” More recently a number of book have been written which provide contemporary prayers and blessings for all aspects of everyday life; everything from computers, exams, parties, pets, cars, meetings, lunchtimes, days off to all sorts of life situations including leaving school, divorce, redundancy and mid-life crises.

Bishop Martin Wallace has said that:

“Just as God walked with Adam in the garden of Eden, so he now walks with us in the streets of the city chatting about the events of the day and the images we see” (City Prayers, The Canterbury Press, 1994).

As a result, he wants to encourage us to “chat with God in the city, bouncing ideas together with him, between the truths of the Bible and the truths of urban life” and, “as you walk down your street, wait for the lift, or fumble for change at the cash-till … to construct your own prayers of urban imagery.”

When we do this we are tuned in to God as Samuel learnt to be and what was said of Samuel may also be said of us: “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him … [and] continued to reveal himself … to Samuel.”

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Aretha Franklin - Are You Sure?

Run the race: run with fire

2012-01-15T15:01:00.000Z

This morning we used the More Than Gold and Run With The Fire DVDs in the All-Age Service at St John's Seven Kings to begin preparing our congregation for the 2012 Olympics and to explore what we can learn from the concept of the Christian life as a race to be run. We said:

"Run with the Fire is an arts project for the London 2012 Olympics which celebrates creativity, cultural exchange and hope for the future. The picture on our Text for 2012 comes from the project and in a moment as an act of prayer and reflection we will look at some words and images from the project.

The ideas that seeded Run with the Fire come from the celebration of Pentecost, with its tongues of fire, new languages, and promise of dreams and visions, plus the Olympic Games, with its running messenger carrying forward the burning torch and its dreams of cross cultural harmony.

Living as a Christian is like running a race: we need to train hard through bible study, fellowship, prayer and lifestyle change, we need to run hard with real commitment throughout our lives (no distractions, no veering off track), and we run to win the prize which is the coming in full of God’s kingdom of love, mercy, justice and peace.

To run the race well, we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus who is our example and our goal; the pattern and example of what the kingdom of God will look like when it fully comes. He has shown us how to run the race – we are following in his footsteps – and he is our goal because his life shows what the kingdom of God will look like when it comes in full:

“Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed — that exhilarating finish in and with God — he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honour, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he ploughed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!”

Our Text for 2012 gives us another athletics image to savour and that is of a full stadium cheering us on as we run our race:

"We are surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses – all those who have borne witness to the truth of Christ before us. All the saints, all the heroes of the Bible, all those who encouraged us in our faith but who are no longer with us; each one is there in the stadium stands yelling and cheering to encourage us to preserve, continue and complete the race that we are running.

Do you see what this means — all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running — and never quit!”

In 2012 17,000 athletes representing 205 countries will compete in 26 different sports. The example provided by these athletes in their preparation for the 2012 Olympics can teach us about living the Christian life; running the race of life for Jesus. This is what our Text for 2012 encourages us to believe and do. To run our race well we need to get rid of all that would distract us or weigh us down, train hard, focus on the example of Jesus and on the goal of the coming kingdom of God, and be encouraged by those who have run before us to run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us."

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Philip Bailey - I Am Gold.

Farewell to our curate

2012-01-14T22:12:00.000Z

This afternoon we said goodbye to Geoff Eze, who has been our curate at St John's Seven Kings since 2008. This is what I said in thanking him for all he has contributed here during that time:

Because of your wise-cracking and extrovert personality, we have enjoyed and been challenged by some of your sermons that have stayed firmly lodged in our memories like your Christmas Day sermon where you gave us a humourous quiz about yourself (surprise, surprise!) that had us all thinking this is Geoff bigging himself up again. Only to then remove your robes in order to symbolise all that Christ gave up through the incarnation. I remember the whole mood and dynamic of the sermon and the service changing at that point with the meaning behind the action being crystal clear and lodging in memory just as much as the action itself.

We’ve had sermons using jazz, liturgies which rhyme, video interviews, as well as many sermons that have weaved a contemporary story (often personal and self-deprecating) together with the passage on which you have been preaching in such a way as to sustain interest in both the story and the passage. These are approaches to preaching that are not just for effect; they have helped us get at the heart of bible passages in a way that helps them stay in our memory and therefore continue to influence us.

You’ve done some great work with our children and young people over the time that you have been here; organising and fronting Holiday Clubs and building up the youth group with a varied programme which has interested our young people and drawn in young people from outside the church too. You’ve also developed youth leaders and helped in handing over the running of the Youth Group so that we can be confident it will continue. But you haven’t simply focused on young people, important as they are, those elderly and housebound folk that you have regularly visited have been very grateful for your conversation and for bringing them communion at home.

You have played an active role in the development of Street Pastors within the Deanery and took up the opportunity to provide a Christian witness in the community by becoming a Police Chaplain to the Newbury Safer Neighbourhoods Team. You’ve supported the deanery by being the clerk to the Clergy Chapter and by being the arranger for the early cluster meetings. You’ve been a key part of building the closer relationship we now have with St Paul’s Goodmayes and have organised and led the Palm Sunday procession and Praise in the Park. You’ve also done some excellent work with local schools, initially with the Christian Education Project, and then more recently through the Easter Activity Stations and by forging new links with the new Aldborough E-Act Free School and Seven Kings High School.

So, there has been lots that you have done and much that we will remember with real gratitude. But, of course, we will also remember with real affection the person that you are; your optimism and positivity; your liveliness and energy; your humour and piano playing; and perhaps, most of all, the challenge of your ministry here – the challenge to us to expand our vision of what God can achieve through us combined with the encouragement to become all that God intends us to be.

Although we will miss you, we also know that you do need to move on for the next phase of your ministry, so we want to pray for your as you move to Stoke and as you begin your new ministry in the parish of Stoke Minister. Let us pray:

Lord God, we thank you for Geoff and for all that he has brought to St Johns during his time here. We thank you for bringing him to us and for all that we could share together during his curacy. We thank you for his new role in Stoke Minister and pray that you will help him adjust to his home, parish and city with all of the changes that will be involved. We pray that Stoke Minister will be a parish where he can use all of the gifts you have given to him and where he can utilise all that he has learnt through his training and curacy. We pray that he will continue to learn from you through the new experiences he has and the people he will meet and among whom he will minister in Stoke Minister. May your Spirit fill him for these new challenges and opportunities and may your hand of blessing rest upon to sustain and strengthen him for this new ministry in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Black Gospel Jazz - There Is None Like You.

Assembly on racism

2012-01-14T21:44:00.000Z

This is the assembly I gave on Friday at St Edwards Church of England School and Sixth Form College which is adapted from resources at the Collective Worship resource from the Culham Institute:

Liverpool striker Luis Suares has been found guilty by the FA of racially abusing his opponent, Manchester United defender Patrice Evra, and has been given an 8 match ban as a result. He argued in his defence that the word he used isn’t a term of abuse in his culture but his defence of what he did and Liverpool’s support of him seem to have led to a Liverpool fan racially abusing Oldham defender Tom Adeyemi in another recent match. That fan has been arrested by the Police and faces the possibility of a lifetime’s ban from Anfield, Liverpool’s home ground.

Sometimes people argue that it doesn’t matter what people say to each other; that, for example, everyone should be able to think and say what they like and people shouldn’t be punished for shouting abuse at a person because he had a different skin colour. But what we say to each other does matter and does have an effect. Signs around the ground at Anfield make it clear that Liverpool FC should be opposed to racial abuse in their ground but because they seem to have tolerated it on the pitch it then seems to have spread to the stands as well. Therefore, Liverpool FC need to find a way to make it clear that foul language, violence and racism are not acceptable at Anfield; on the pitch and in the ground.

Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan to oppose racial intolerance in his own time. Here is the story he told: Luke 10: 25-37. Jews and Samaritans hated one another in Jesus' time as they were different races with different religions but in Jesus' story it is the Samaritan who is the hero and who helps the one who is his enemy. Jesus taught that we are neighbours not enemies and that we should both give to and receive from those who are in some way different from us.

Nearly 19 years ago Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager, was killed by a gang of white boys while he was waiting at a bus stop. Stephen was killed for no other reason than that he was black. It was a purely racist killing. It is a sad fact, but for thousands of years people have been persecuted, abused and killed because of the colour of their skin, or for their race, and it still goes on today.

Yet we are really all the same under our skin. In Genesis 1. 26 -28 we read “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth... God said, 'Let us make Man in our own image and likeness... So God made Man in his own image and likeness, male and female He created them.” This means that there is no reason for racial prejudice, or prejudice of any kind. Because we are all created by God in his image, Christians believe that we are all children of God and life is much better when we share what each race has to give - music, clothes, food, beliefs, skills.

For the whole of the 19 years since Stephen's death his parents have campaigned for justice for their son's killing. When she came out of the Old Bailey, Doreen Lawrence, Stephen's mother said that she would not let her life be ruled by her hatred of the people responsible for Stephen's death. Doreen set up the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust a few years ago to provide financial help for young people from ethnic minorities to achieve their educational ambitions. She has called these young people her 'beacons of shining light,’ showing the world what can be achieved when prejudice is put to one side. She says that if Stephen were alive 'he would be proud of them too'. She says, 'I think he'd be surprised at all the positive changes that have taken place in his name.'

When Stephen's mother returned home from the Old Bailey, she lit a candle in his memory. As we light a candle, let us remember Stephen and all those who have been victims of racial hatred. Let us ask God to give us grace to live our lives fairly and without prejudice.

Father, thank you for the amazing variety of people in your world. Help us to learn to value each other and not to fear. Give comfort to those who are hurt by racism. Make us strong to fight racism wherever we meet it in whatever ways we can and help us to understand that you are on our side. In Jesus' name we ask this. Amen.

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Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again.

Embankment

2012-01-11T19:30:00.000Z

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Low - Starfire.

'Run with the Fire' on YouTube

2012-01-10T12:45:00.000Z

A promotional presentation for 'Run with the Fire', a partnership project for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics by CANA, commission4mission and Veritasse, is now available to be viewed on YouTube. The presentation outlines the project, shows examples of work included and gives information for ordering copies of the 'Run with the Fire' pack.

Every 'Run with the Fire' pack includes:

· a digital exhibition on DVD with a 2 year licence for use in the purchasing church

· an electronic book and planning aid produced by three experienced Christian event organisers, with samples and templates to save you time and effort

· telephone, skype or e-mail support to help you use the pack effectively

· access to a large pool of Christian artists who you may wish to involve in your project

Each 'Run with the Fire' pack costs £50.00 (any profits, go to Oxfam) and can be bought from http://www.veritasse.co.uk/ or by contacting Sue Newham on 01686 626228

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U2 - The Unforgettable Fire.

Windows on the world (178)

2012-01-09T07:00:00.000Z

London, 2011

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Nick Drake - Pink Moon.

The Magi: searching and worshipping

2012-01-08T06:30:00.000Z

The Magi searched for a sign, then searched for the one to whom the sign pointed, and then gave gifts when they found the one for whom they were looking for. We think of them as being wise for doing all this. When we think about their story in these terms, it can give us a framework or a pattern for thinking about our own lives; perhaps then we will also find or know wisdom!

The Magi searched the stars looking for signs of divine communication; messages from the gods that could guide individuals and nations in the present. In other words they were seeking answers, by the best means they knew how, to the big questions in life:

· Who are we or, in other words, what is the nature, task and significance of human beings?

· Where are we or, in other words, what is the origin and nature of the reality in which human beings find themselves?

· What's wrong or, in other words, how can we account for that seems wrong or brokenness in the world?

· What's the remedy or, in other words, how can we alleviate this brokenness, if at all?

These are questions that each of us, consciously or unconsciously, find answers to by the way that we live our lives but it is only when we consciously ask them and actively search for answers that we begin to leave behind our natural inclination to live life for our pleasure and convenience.

The sign which the Magi found through their searching was the star in the east which they thought was a sign that the king of the Jews had been born as a baby. This sign uprooted them from where they were. If they were to see and to worship the baby King then they had to leave where they were and travel not knowing for sure where their journey would take them. Their journey was probably inconvenient and uncomfortable for them but was the only way for them to find what they were seeking. It is similar for us as we consciously ask ourselves the big questions in life and seek answers; asking questions and seeking answers is uncomfortable and often means making changes to the way that we are currently living which are inconvenient and disruptive, yet necessary, if we are to find any sort of answers at all.

T. S. Eliot writes, in his poem called ‘Little Gidding,’ “We shall not cease from exploration,” and that is right because if we stop searching, if we stop questioning, then we get stuck and stagnate. We only have to look at nature to see the way in which all growth involves change; the caterpillar and butterfly being one of the most dramatic examples. Our own bodies are constantly changing throughout our lives with many of our cells being replaced as we progress through life. Growth involves constant change and if we apply this same principle to our thought life, our emotional life and our spiritual life then, as Eliot wrote, we must not cease from exploration.

The Magi’s journey found its immediate conclusion when they knelt before the Christ-child and worshipped him. They had no independent verification that this child was the King that they were seeking; they simply had to trust that this was so because they had arrived at the place to which the star had led them. Once again, T. S. Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ describes this well:

“If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel …”

The answer to our questions is a person, not a fact, and the person who is the answer to our questions turns out to be God himself. Because God is infinite, he cannot be fully known or understood by human beings. With God, there is always more for us to know and understand. Knowing God is like diving into the ocean and always being able to dive down deeper therefore are ultimately only three responses we can make to the wonder and majesty of God. The first is, as we have been saying, to keep exploring and the second is this, to express our sense of awe and wonder by kneeling in worship.

The third is to give gifts. The Magi gave gold, frankincense and myrrh; each being costly gifts expressing aspects of Christ’s nature and purpose. Christina Rossetti expressed the significance of the Magi’s gift-giving beautifully in her beautiful carol, ‘In the bleak midwinter’:

“What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.”

She understood that the costliest gift we can give is our life and that our life is given to Jesus when we express through our lives and actions something of who Jesus is.

Kneeling in worship was the end of the journey that the Magi took when following the star but it was also the beginning of the new journey that they were now to make; the journey home. Eliot used the phase, ‘In my end is my beginning,’ at the end of his poem called ‘East Coker’ and, in ‘Little Gidding,’ he writes:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

The Magi journey home but their home is no longer what it once was because they have been changed by their journey. Eliot’s poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’ ends with these lines:

“were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.”

The Magi are no longer at ease with their old way of life because they have been changed through their searching and journeying. Now they see life differently because of what they have seen and heard; the answers they give to life’s big questions are no longer the same as before – their worldview has changed.

Are we asking the big questions? Are we constantly questioning and exploring yet also kneeling in awe and wonder to worship? And are both our answers to life’s big questions and to the way we live our lives changing as a result? If we wish to be wise like the Magi then our answer to all those questions will be, “Yes.”

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Florence & the Machine - What The Water Gave Me.

Vandalised billboard to stay

2012-01-06T17:09:00.001Z

The following comes from Anglican Taonga:

"St Matthew-in-the-City will not replace its vandalised billboard which portrays Jesus’ mother, Mary, looking at a home pregnancy test kit revealing that she is pregnant.

The billboard was ripped in half by a Whangarei man leading a Catholic Action Group protest group. Over 100 Catholics marched through Auckland protesting at the billboard, but the church says it has had positive feedback from around the world.

In a press release today, priest associate Clay Nelson said: "Our billboard ... pointed to the social circumstances of a young, poor, unmarried mother in first-century Palestine. It would have taken tremendous faith and courage to withstand the prejudice of her critics.

"We hoped that people would think of those in similar circumstances, and respond with kindness. Our billboard was ripped on Saturday evening by a group intolerant of any views on Mary except their own. Further, they made statements that this is the ‘devil’s work’.

"There is a sad and sick history in Christianity of demonising those you disagree with. It is of concern that such prejudice is present in New Zealand. We have decided not to replace the original billboard but let the current ripped one remain as a reminder of both the intolerance in Mary’s society and in our own."

Earlier, Mr Nelson said the original purpose behind the billboard was to spark conversation about Mary's possible response to the fact that she was pregnant.

"That discovery would have been shocking," Mr Nelson said. "Mary was unmarried, young, and poor. This pregnancy would shape her future. She was certainly not the first woman in this situation or the last." Vicar Glynn Cardy added: “Christmas is real. It’s about a real pregnancy, a real mother and a real child. It’s about real anxiety, courage and hope.

“Although the make-believe of Christmas is enjoyable – with tinsel, Santa, reindeer, and carols – there are also some realities. Many in our society are suffering: some through the lack of money, some through poor health, some through violence, and some through other hardships. The joy of Christmas is muted by anxiety. In this season we encourage one another to be generous to those who suffer, to give to strangers, and to care for all – especially those who have the least. Like the first Santa, St Nicholas did. We invite all who celebrate the season to hold these different strands of a real Christmas together: anxiety and joy, suffering and compassion, Santa and Jesus.”"

What I particularly liked about this story, in addition to the creativity shown by those at St Matthew-in-the-City, was the important contrast made between the "sad and sick history in Christianity of demonising those you disagree with" and the encouragement to be generous to those who suffer, to give to strangers, and to care for all – especially those who have the least - like the first Santa, St Nicholas did. The billboard now tells two stories; the initial message of Mary's shock and also a second message about intolerance towards those who dare to differ.

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Bob Dylan - Shot Of Love.

The modern and contemporary Catholic novel (5)

2012-01-05T18:00:00.000Z

Gene Kellogg notes, in The Vital Tradition, that the development of the Catholic Novel involved "the appearance of an entirely new kind of fiction in French, English and American literature":
"... metaphysics, ontology, and particularly the power of the historic Roman Catholic apocalyptic "matrix" of heaven, hell, and purgatory as deeper realities framing, enclosing, and terminating ostensible "reality" were never the touchstone of novels until the time of Bernanos and Greene. And all the long complex development from the time of Barbey d'Aurevilly was required before the work of Greene and Bernanos became possible. The work in aesthetics of Maritain, Claudel, and Mauriac was necessary to establish the critical premises of such a radically new form. Maritain made his distinction between an "individual," a human being as a social or political unit, and a "person," a man or woman with a soul to save or lose. Claudel asserted the possibility of dramas concerned with ontological problems and developmas for the stage. Meanwhile Mauriac claimed that the "romanticism" of stories about "individuals" was exhausted and declared that writers should examine the "eternal Tartuffe" or the "eternal Harpagon" to create a gallery of spiritual "types," as in his own fiction he proceeded to do."
Marian E. Crowe notes, in Aiming At Heaven, Getting The Earth, that the critical literature on the Modern Catholic Novel suggests:

"... the highest achievements in the genre of the Catholic novel were possible only because a window of opportunity appeared as Catholicism was venturing out from its defensive posture and entering into conversation with the secular world yet still maintained a clear and robust sense of its own identity. If this thesis is correct, we are unlikely to see again Catholic novels of the quality of the best of Mauriac, Bernanos, Greene, and Waugh or other European Catholic novelists in the years preceding Vatican II.

The Catholic writers who produced the flowering of the Catholic novel faced the perennial challenges of all Christian novelists: how to show the workings of grace and allow for the miraculous and supernatural without violating psychological credibility or the canons of realism, how to make salvation or damnation seem important to a secular reader, and how to convey a worldview based on a deeply held personal faith without appearing to engage in underhanded apologetics and evangelization ... not all critics agree that they met all these challenges successfully, yet some novelists found ways to navigate these difficulties and produce fiction of exceptionally high quality and wide appeal for secular as well as Christian readers. To what extent these extraordinary achievements in Catholic fiction were the result of the uncommon situation of the Church - an unprecedented openness to secularity while still retaining a clear and strong sense of its own identity - and to what extent they were the result of the appearance of several extraordinarily gifted Catholic writers must remain a matter for speculation."

Many of those discussed as Catholic novelists in this series of posts have, in the words of Theodore P. Fraser from The Modern Catholic Novel In Europe, "adamantly shunned for themselves the nomenclature of "Catholic novelist" and have insisted that as artists they possess their own angle of vision and unique literary universe":

"Ultimately they view themselves not as writers consciously writing novels with specific "Catholic" content but as Catholics who happen to be novelists. François Mauriac has perhaps best explained the intention and intellectual disposition of Catholic novelists who are creative creative artists in their own right: "Being a Christian," he says, "my Christian beliefs dominate my novels, not because I want to make propaganda for Christianity, but because it is the deepest part of my nature ... I am a christian first and last, which means a man responsible to God and to his conscience for the epoch he lives in ... he has been put here to play a certain role among his fellow men. He is engaged; it isn't a question of deliberately engaging himself.""

David Lodge, in The Novelist at the Crossroads, insists that:

"in their appraisal of Catholic novelists critics would do well to follow the wise dictum of Henry James: that artists must be granted the right to use their ideas, their artistic vision, their donnée as their inspiration directs them, and that the proper role of critics is to comment on the use that authors have made of their donnée through an evaluation of the craft of their work (Lodge 1971, 88) ...

Using James's sensible critical principal as his point of departure, Lodge grants that Greene indeed makes frequent use of Catholic symbolism to create his "metapoesis." Yet in doing so his intention, Lodge insists, is not to proselytize or to present "a body of belief requiring exposition and demanding categorical assent or dissent" but to see his fiction as "a system of concepts, source of situation, and reservoir of symbols ... to dramatize intuition about the nature of human experience" (Lodge 1971, 89). Hence, Lodge contends, Catholicism as a system of dogma and laws is not in or by itself an adequate key to understanding and interpreting the meaning of Greene's works, and these are, Lodge argues, as accessible to most readers as any other works of art that possess a unique vision and aesthetic patterns. These Catholic novels can therefore be appreciated as authentic pieces of literature above and beyond the doctrinal or confessional elements of faith contained therein."

Fraser believes that what Lodge says of Greene can be applied to other novelists considered as "Catholic".

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Bruce Cockburn - Understanding Nothing.

The modern and contemporary Catholic novel (4)

2012-01-05T17:30:00.000Z

Theodore P. Fraser writes, in The Modern Catholic Novel In Europe, that:
"Heinrich Böll was born of a Catholic family of craftsmen whose ancestors had left England to settle in the Rhineland during the reign of Henry VIII. The Catholic identity of the family was strong, and Böll was brought up in close-knit, supportive Catholic environment of working class people living in tenements ... Böll's early works, which use the war as living metaphor of universal evil, also have deep religious themes of guilt and the need for repentance - for both individual and collective sins of aggression and cruelty ... Böll's later novels are much broader in scope and more morally explicit and engaged in regard to social, political, and religious problems ... Böll became increasingly outspoken in his criticism of the Catholic Church in Germany in the 1960s ... Despite his sharp attack against the German Church, Böll never denied being spiritually Catholic and insisted that he should receive a Church burial at his death. Like Péguy, whom he much admired, Böll was always careful to distinguish between the mystical body of the Church extending above and beyond the human institution and the essentially worldly and political corporation for the wealthy social classes that he judged the Church in West Germany to be."
Gene Kellogg, writing in 1970 in The Vital Tradition, commends the development of Japanese and Indian Catholic literary movements:
"Natsume Soseki's Kokoro (1914) compares favorably with the work of most Japanese writers working today. Similarly, in India the best work of M. R. Anand can be read quite comfortably even in such company as R. K. Narayan's masterpiece, The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1962), particularly if one turns to Anand's zestful and humane short stories such as "The Barbers' Trade Union" (1936)."

Doug Cummings, in his essay accompanying the film Silence, writes that, during the period that the Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo studied at the University of Lyon, "Catholic thought in postwar France was in the midst of intellectual revival and reform" - "Philosophers like Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier grappled with theology and modernity" while Endo "focused on writers he called the "grande écrivaines of French literature" ... François Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, and Julien Green ... Catholic novelists who specialized in vivid descriptions of personal struggles, religious doubts, and dark nights of the soul. (Their novels were later direct influences on Graham Greene and Flannery O'Connor.)"

Endo was born in Tokyo in 1923. After his parents divorced, he and his mother converted to Roman Catholicism. Following study at Keio University and in Lyons, his novels established him the leading writer of his day in Japan. He has been called the Japanese Graham Greene because he is a Catholic novelist whose writings depict both the anguish of faith and the mercy of God. A central theme of his writings has been the clash between Japanese culture and a very Western mode of religion. Novels like Silence and The Samurai suggest that Christianity must adapt itself radically if it is to take root in the “swamp” of Japan. Cummings notes a "deep bifurcation within Endo that would remain a part of him and his writing throughout his life: the Western-Christian side and the Eastern-Japanese side, both psychological hemispheres yearning for solidarity but refusing cohesion." As a result, the reigning motifs in his work become "philosophical rifts, religious fervour and weakness, suffering innocents, martyrs and apostates, and the clash of cultures."

Steve Scott notes, in Crying for a Vision and Other Essays, that:

"Endo's characters, both eastern and western, are haunted by a specific Christ - a paternal, Judicial figure in the West and a maternal, forgiving figure in the East. In this haunting they bear some resemblance to the "fundamentalists" of Flannery O'Connor's fiction. Endo has repeatedly registered his conviction that a gospel centered on the forgiving, nurturing Christ is far more appropriate for his homeland than the stern, judgemental model imported from the West."
Endo writes in his Preface to the American Edition of A Life of Christ that the "religious mentality of the Japanese ... has little tolerance for any kind of transcendent being who judges humans harshly, then punishes them ... the Japanese tend to seek in their gods and buddhas a warm-hearted mother rather than a stern father." In Endo's classic novel Silence, for example, as Adrian Pinnington notes in his interesting paper on Endo, "Rodrigues, the priest who finally betrays the Church and apostasizes, actually first learns true humility through this action." It is only, Pinnington notes, "after he has abandoned the false absolutes of European culture that he can recognize the action of Christ in his own life, and begin to hear the voice of Christ."
Other novelists considered within the critical literature on the Modern Catholic novel include: Mary Gordon, Carmen Laforet, Elisabeth Langgässer, Gertrude von Lefort, Giovani Papini, and Sigrid Undset. The popular novels of Morris West can also be considered in this context.

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Tōru Takemitsu ~ Itinerant.

The modern and contemporary Catholic novel (3)

2012-01-05T16:53:00.000Z

Gene Kellogg notes, in The Vital Tradition, that:
"... in the United States, the tendency of American Catholics to adopt the secular community's values of social meliorism without spiritual reservations gave rise rise to Flannery O'Connor's brilliant satires, in which social meliorists were depicted as blind victims of illusion, who did not understand that without spiritual dedication social meliorism was powerless to reach even those it sought to help. J. F. Powers had already exposed the spiritual bankruptcy of the "golfing priests" and the "regular fellows," who had abandoned spiritual values to go over to secularism on secularism's most superficial terms."

Kellogg also suggests that:

"Flannery O'Connor and J. F. Powers ... represented the two tendencies we had seen in the work of the European Catholic novelists, criticism of the secular environment and criticism of "religious" people, but in criticism of the environment the approach was milder than the European. When Powers or Flannery O'Connor criticized non-Catholics, or nonreligious people, the criticism had nothing to non-Catholicism or anti-Catholicism. Powers tended to attack some general characteristic inhumanity as in "The Old Bird" or racial prejudice as in "The Trouble." Flannery O'Connor tended to attack broadly prevalent patterns of human behaviour, such as meliorism (Rayber in The Violent Bear It Away) or the need to dominate (Mr Head in "The Artificial Nigger")."

O'Connor and Walker Percy introduced ideas on ways of communicating Christianity in popular culture. O’Connor wrote that:

“When you can assume your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of taking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock – to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”

The problem as O’Connor saw it is that non-Christians do not recognise as sin those things that Christians view as sin. The whole concept of sin itself may be anathema to those who are not Christians and they may accept as completely normal things that Christians view as sinful. So she wrote that “the novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural.” In order to make things which seem normal to many appear as sinful to your audience you need to use the shock tactics of distortion and exaggeration, crisis and catastrophe.

Percy wrote about there being two stages in non-Christian audiences becoming aware of grace. First, there is an experience of awakening in which a character in a novel (and through that character, the audience) sees the inadequacy of the life that he or she has been leading. This is a moment of epiphany or revelation about themselves; a moment in which they either realise their depravity or their potential for grace. This is what O’Connor was talking about when she said that the job of the Christian novelist is to help the audience see activity that they regard as normal as a distortion. Such an experience may then lead on to the second stage of hearing and responding to the grace of God in Christ. What O’Connor and Percy both seemed to suggest is that their characters and their audience cannot see the grace of God without the first stage of becoming aware of the inadequacy of the current lives.

Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Children of God deliver a central Catholic priest who is wonderfully himself despite the extremities of situation and suffering into which he is placed. They are a brilliant demonstration of the difficulties of communicating the Gospel in another culture and, as such, are on a par with Endo's Silence and The Samurai. Emilio Sanchez, its Jesuit central character, is an engaging central character who is honest about the deficiencies and the inspirations of his faith. The split narrative works well before meshing at the conclusion to bring together the events of the central crisis and the response to it. This central crisis is genuinely shocking although its resolution is probably a little too easy and dealt with too briefly but the novel, as a whole, provides an engaging and challenging exploration of God's presence and guidance in human exploration and suffering.

Ann Rice was brought up a cradle Catholic but exchanged her belief in God for the belief that there is no God while at University in response to her imperative need to read authors that were banned by the Roman Catholic Church. She married a convinced atheist and became famous as the author of popular Vampire novels. Her novels, however, reflected her search for meaning within a personal life touched by tragedy. The combination of her personal search and the research for her novels returned her to the history of Rome and beyond this to the mystery of the survival of the Jews. In 1998 she returned to the Catholic Church. Eventually this led to her own search for the historical Jesus as she read extensively on the subject with the result being the first two novels in her Christ the Lord trilogy.

The first of these, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, is written in simple, sparse prose with the story told in the first person. The storyline incorporates some of the miracles found in the apocryphal infancy gospels but these are mainly restricted to the period in Egypt. The remainder is an imaginative fleshing out of the minimal Gospel stories of Jesus' childhood. Very little happens in terms of action but Rice's dramatisation of Jesus' growing understanding of who he is and what he has to do is effective and moving. In Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, Rice creates a pre-history for Christ which seems consistent both with the Gospel narratives and with the character and personality of Christ which emerges from those narratives. The fictional pre-history of The Road to Cana is also dramatic and engaging; which is itself a considerable achievement. Rice is clearly a novelist who is well read in Biblical Criticism with a real understanding of the Gospel narratives.

"The American Catholic Ron Hansen ... has effectively transposed the story of the Prodigal Son to our own day in Atticus," writes Crowe. His novel, Mariette in Ecstasy, is the senstively told story of a young postulant given the stigmata and the varied reactions to her from her convent. Elmore Leonard's Bandits and Pagan Babies both have a focus on issues of Catholicism and organized religion with more invested in their questions of doctrine and faith. Touch provides a wry take on fame and the miraculous when Juvenal, a former brother of a Catholic order in Brazil who now helps alcoholics in a Detroit rehabilitation centre, performs a miracle cure on a woman who has been beaten by her husband. The story contrasts the love Juvenal finds with the business and church zealots who seek to exploit his gift.
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M Ward - Epistemology.

The modern and contemporary Catholic novel (2)

2012-01-05T12:39:00.000Z

Joseph Pearce suggests in Literary Converts that:
"[G. K.] Chesterton's 'coming out' as a Christian had a profound effect, similar in its influence to Newman's equally candid confession of othodoxy more than fifty years earlier. In many ways it heralded a Christian literary revival which, throughout the twentieth century, represented an evocative artistic and intellectual response to the prevailing agnosticism of the age. Dr Barbara Reynolds, the Dante scholar and friend and biographer of Dorothy L. Sayers, described this literary revival as 'a network of minds energizing each other'. Besides Chesterton, its leading protagonists included T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, Siegfried Sassoon, J. R. R. Tolkien, Hilaire Belloc, Charles Williams, R. H. Benson, Ronald Knox, Edith Sitwell, Roy Campbell, Maurice Baring, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, Dorothy L. Sayers, Alfred Noyes, Compton Mackenzie, David Jones, Christopher Dawson, Malcolm Muggeridge, R. S. Thomas and George Mackay Brown. Its influence spread beyond the sphere of literature. Alec Guinness, Ernest Milton and Robert Speaight were among the thespians whose lives were interwoven with those of their Christian literary contemporaries."
Chesterton provided a model for the engaged and engaging journalist (to be followed by the likes of Malcolm Muggeridge and Tom Davies). Engaged because of the breadth of topics to which he jointly applied his pen and his faith. Engaging because of the good-humoured wit that characterised his satire and sugared the tough arguments that he doled out. It was this combination that first caught the attention of C. S. Lewis. In Surprised by Joy Lewis makes it clear how much Chesterton's writings and, in particular The Everlasting Man (a history of mankind's spiritual progress - "[I] saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense", said Lewis), helped him become a Christian. He then took Chesterton for a model in many of his own attitudes to his faith, particularly in his combative approach to apologetics.

Another Inkling, Charles Williams, was influenced by Chesterton in his early poetry while an early novel War in Heaven draws on both The Man Who Was Thursday in its treatment of the supernatural and on Chesterton's detective priest Father Brown in the character of the Archdeacon. W. H. Auden wrote that Chesterton's Greybeards at Play "contains some of the best pure nonsense verse in English, and the author's illustrations are equally good". A whole string of topical versifying satirists - Nigel Forde, Stewart Henderson, Adrian Plass, Steve Turner - have followed in Chesterton's train down through the century.

Marian E. Crowe notes, in Aiming At Heaven, Getting The Earth, that the influence of Chesterton and Belloc came primarily through their non-fiction - "especially their vigorous defense of Catholicism" - but that they did write some fiction which had bearing on the development of the English Catholic novel:

"Chesterton used allegory and fantasy to express religious themes, a technique that would be utilized by later novelists. Although weak in terms of character development, his novels like Napoleon of Nottinghill (1904), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), The Ball and the Cross (1909), and The Return of Don Quixote (1927) effectively convey Chesterton's sense of Christianity as a robust, life-affirming religion, and a vision of humanity as flawed and unable to improve without supernatural help ...

There is a possibility that Belloc, who spent a good part of his youth in France (his father was French), may have read Huysmans and some of the other French novelists, for in his novel Emmanuel Burden (1904), a satire on the moral debasement of a mercantile English family, he writes with the kind of interiority and emphasis on the salvation of one's soul typical of the French Catholic writers."

Crowe continues that "Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, both of whom started publishing fiction in the late 1920s, were the most important English Catholic novelists of what is referred to as the golden age of the Catholic novel":

"Perhaps because of his robust enthusiasm for his new faith and his pugnacious disposition, Waugh made no apology for the less salient aspects of Catholicism ... By making that choice, Waugh produced novels that arouse repugnance in secular readers (as well as in some Catholics), but also provide for many Catholic readers a fiction that explores with great depth and subtlety the religious world in which they live. Although Waugh's approach alienates some, it is possible that his boldness in unabashedly insisting on Catholicism as a supernatural entity gives his fiction a depth and intensity that resonates with many readers, even many secular ones ...

Whereas Waugh looked to the Church as a principle of order in the chaotic decadence of modern life, Greene was more focused on the personal drama of good and evil, sin and grace. Also, although Greene had no illusions about the depravity to be found in the secular world and depicted it in stark detail, he was also attentive to a critique of the Catholic community. Perhaps for this reason, he did not arouse as much ire among critics as did Waugh. Like Mauriac, whom he very much admired, Greene is particularly hard on self-righteously pious Catholics who keep the letter of the law but have little charity."

Joseph Pearce writes on CatholicAuthors.com that:

"Graham Greene is perhaps the most perplexing of all the literary converts whose works animated the Catholic literary revival in the 20th century. His visions of angst and guilt, informed and sometimes deformed by a deeply felt religious sensibility, make his novels, and the characters that adorn them, both fascinating and unforgettable.

His fiction is gripping because it grapples with faith and disillusionment on the shifting sands of uncertainty in a relativistic age. His tormented characters are the products of Greene's own tortured soul, and one suspects that he was more baffled than anyone else at the contradictions at the core of his own character and, in consequence, at the heart of the characters that his fertile and fetid imagination had created."

Crowe writes that:

"Muriel Spark ... is one of the most important English Catholic novelists after Waugh and Greene ... Spark believed that her conversion enabled her to write: "Nobody can deny that I speak with my own voice as a writer now, whereas before my conversion I couldn't do it because I was never sure what I was. ... I didn't get my style until I became a Catholic because you just haven't got to care, and you need security for that." One critic refers to Spark's Catholicism as her "rock," a position from which the believer can survey the human condition. She herself said that Catholicism helped her become a satirist. "The Catholic belief is a norm from which one can depart. It's not a fluctuating thing." Spark's narrative voice is sure and confident, able to survey the foolishness in a fallen world without ever quite falling into cynicism. The irony, though sharp, is open to the possibility that God may bring good out of sin and evil."

Crowe wrote in 2007 that "the past eighty years have seen high-quality Catholic novels by Maurice Baring, A. J. Cronin, Compton Mackenzie, Antonia White, J. R. R. Tolkien, John Braine, Rumer Godden, and Anne Redmon":

"... Alice Thomas Ellis, David Lodge, Sara Maitland, and Piers Paul Read ... do not hesitate to include the "craggy" and "paradoxical" parts of Catholicism. Yet ... they have produced highly accomplished fiction in which religious meaning emerges from and is inextricably entwined with human experience. Some of their novels make extensive use of explicitly Catholic material. Others are deeply informed by a Catholic vision without much use of explicitly Catholic material ... Clearly they have not been doing the same kinds of things that Mauriac, Bernanos, Waugh, and Greene did, yet their fiction exemplifies exciting possibilities for the Catholic novel ... they have more than most contemporary English novelists, allowed their faith to inform their writing and have exemplified very different and interesting ways of integrating Catholicism into their work in ways that are substantial, imaginative, and serious."

Crowe concludes regarding Ellis, Lodge, Maitland and Read:

"These novelists do not hesitate to delineate with trenchant irony, biting satire, or simply devastatingly realistic description the ways in which the Church fails. Their angles of vision diverge and their critiques are distinctly different, focused on sexual teachings (Lodge), patriarchy (Maitland), or post-Vatican II developments (Read and Ellis). Yet they still see their world through the categories, the symbols, the stories, and the rituals of Catholicism - not just because they are literarily useful, but also because they undergird the story with a meaning that transcends the secular."

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James Macmillan - On Love.

The modern and contemporary Catholic novel (1)

2012-01-05T11:00:00.000Z

Theodore P. Fraser writes, in The Modern Catholic Novel In Europe, that:

"The Catholic novel in Europe as we know it today originated in French literature of the nineteenth century. Originally part of the neo-romantic reaction against Enlightenment philosophy and the anti-religious doctrines of the Revolution, the Catholic novel attained fruition and became an accomplished literary form spearheading the renouveau catholique, or Catholic literary revival. This literary movement contained in its ranks a number of brilliant writers (Bloy, Péguy, Huysmans, Bernanos, Mauriac, Claudel, Jacques Maritain, and Jacques Rivière, to name the most important) who reached maturity at the century's end or during the decade of World War I, and it essentially took the form of a strong, even violent, reaction of these French Catholic writers against the doctrine of positivism that had gained preeminence in French political and cultural circles in the last third at least of the nineteenth century."

Marian E. Crowe has written in Aiming At Heaven, Getting The Earth that:

"An impressive number of intellectuals and cultural figures followed the same pattern as Barbey d'Aurevilly. Having abandoned their childhood faith and become atheists in their youth, they reconverted to Catholicism in their adulthood. Among them were Paul Claudel, who wrote poetry and plays stressing sacrifice, chivalry and nobility; Léon Bloy, whose novels expressing the doctrine of the communion of the saints called attention to the poor as an integral part of that communion and depicted poverty as both a social evil and source of santification; and Charles Péguy, an early socialist, who, like Bloy, stressed the importance of the poor and seemed to embody the best ideals of both the republican and religious traditions of France. Bloy's novels made a strong critique of the hypocrisy and materialism of many nominal Catholics, a theme that would be repeated in future Catholic novels. Jacques Maritain, who was raised as a liberal Protestant, converted to Catholicism under the influence of Bloy and interpreted the philosophy and theology of St Thomas Aquinas for the modern world. These converts were leading figures in the revitalized Catholicism of the early twentieth century ..."

Jean-Luc Barré writes in Jacques and Raïssa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven of how poets, painters and musicians began gravitating around the Maritains, “most of whom they met in the company of Léon Bloy.” There was firstly their discovery of Georges Rouault, “then of Pierre van der Meer de Valcheren, a Dutch novelist who was presented to them in 1911, two days after his own conversion … Then, during the war, they met the young seventeen-year-old composer, Georges Auric, soon a frequent visitor at Versailles …”

Barré goes on to describe how these friendships led to the formation of Thomistic study circles at the Maritain’s home in Meuden “where close friends of the couple came together – Abbé Lallement, Roland Dalbiez, Doctor Pichet, Noële Denis, the eldest daughter of the painter Maurice Denis, Vitia Rosenblum, the brother-in-law of Stanislas Fumet.” Barré continues, “The year 1921 would see the first circle grow larger: a Romanian prince converted to Catholicism, Vladimir Ghika, a young orientalist eager to bring together the Muslim and Christian worlds, Louis Massignon, the philosopher Henri Gouhier, the writer Henri Ghéon, the future Abbé Altermann, among others, joined the study group.

In The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism Rajesh Heynickx and Jan De Maeyer note that:

“the French poet, writer, and surrealist filmmaker Jean Cocteau converted under the influence of Maritain. For the painters Gino Severini, a pioneer of Futurism, and Otto Van Rees, one of the first Dadaists-both converts - Maritain played the role of spiritual counselor. And when the promoter of abstract art Michel Seuphor embraced Catholic faith in the 1930s, he, too, had extensive contact with Maritain. For all of them, the dictum of the Irish poet Brian Coffey, once a doctoral student under Maritain, applied: modern art needs a Thomist conceptual framework.”

This journey of significant influence began for the Maritain’s with Léon Bloy. The reading of Bloy’s novel Le Femme pauvre led on to their meeting with the man himself. A period of examination by the Maritains of “the life, the doctrines, and the sources of Catholicism” ensued before, on 5th April 1906, “the couple, at the end of “long conversations” confided to Bloy their desire to become Catholics.” Rouault made a similar journey to that of the Maritains, first reading Le Femme pauvre before meeting Bloy. Barré writes that Rouault “seems to have come to the home of this prophet of malediction seeking for other reasons, and always more painful ones, to question himself and to set out towards the unknown.”

Crowe writes that:

"Mauriac and Bernanos ... clearly demonstrated that the spiritual world could have a dynamic presence even in that most secular of literary forms, the novel, and ... also introduced into it a new kind of interiority that was completely different from the stream of consciousness technique used by James Joyce, Virginia Wolff and others. They ... developed and expanded on several themes already introduced by earlier Catholic novelists - the pursuit of the sinner by God, the criticism of materialism and hypocrisy, the futility of life without God, regenerative suffering, and the motifs of sacrificial substitution and intercessory prayer - to which they added a critique of the Catholic community, especially its superficial pieties, its materialism, its arrogance and its neglect of the poor. Yet even in this critique, they disclosed sources of spiritual vitality within the Church - the sanctity of some of its most humble priests, and of the poor, the unchurched, and even the sinners. For the sinner in their works is not simply someone to be corrected and saved. Rather, Mauriac and Bernanos both show how the sinner is at the very heart of Christianity ... This concept would be dramatized in English Catholic novels, where sinners like Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited or Sarah in The End of the Affair not only are enmeshed in a web of grace that draws them in, but also help the larger community of the "saints." This and many other themes explored by these French novelists would animate the imaginations of some very talented Catholic writers on the other side of the English channel ..."

Fraser wrote in 1994 that:

"Born one generation after Bernanos and Waugh of American parents, Julien Green is today one of France's foremost novelists and the first American ever to be elected to the French Academy. (Jacques Maritain wrote of him several decades ago, "I find it marvelous that an American should be the greatest French writer of our times"[quoted in Dunaway, 15].) A prolific writer (and still writing today at a very advanced age), he had attained a certain recognition as novelist in the United States during the 1950s. Since then, though his works continue to be enthusiastically received by a small but fervent group of Francophile Catholics, earlier translations of his novels into English have long gone out of circulation and are virtually unavailable for the larger reading audience. He has, however, recently become the subject of renewed critical attention ... through the publication of what he calls his "Civil War novels." The first of these, Les Pays lointains (1991; The Distant Lands), has in fact been compared favorably in plot, length, and scope with Gone with the Wind, which is not surprising given Green's roots in the American South ...

Green has always refused, even bristled, at his possible designation as a Catholic novelist ("The very idea, he says, "appalls me! [Diary, 219]). Yet when he considers Jacques Maritain's judgement "that my books were those of a man living on the mystical plane," he concedes that "there lies in all my books a deep uneasiness that an irreligious man would never have felt." And he admits that all of his fiction, though written not to advance or support religious dogma, is nonetheless "essentially religious." And in the most succinct definition he will give of what he means by this appelation, he writes, "The anguish and loneliness of my characters can almost always be reduced to what I think I called a manifold dread of living in the world" (Diary, 219)."

David O'Connell, in his study on Michel de Saint Pierre, noted that the generation born in the decade before World War I produced a number of important authors forwarding the tradition of the French Catholic Novel. These included Jacques de Bourbon Busser, Gilbert Cesbron, Pierre Emmanuel, Saint Pierre, and Jean Sulivan. Fraser contrasts the careers of Saint Pierre and Sulivan as representatives for this generation of writers:

"Saint Pierre ... began his career as a novelist in 1948, a decade before Sulivan's tardy entry at the age of 45. At Saint Pierre's death in 1987 his literary production was far more extensive than that of Sulivan (who had died seven years earlier), and one of his novels, Les Nouveaux Prêtres (1964) - which deals with the struggle for control of the French Church between the conservative "intégristes" and the liberal "progressistes" just after the Second Vatican Council - had even been a best-seller in France.

Saint Michel's novels have continuously been reprinted and are in great demand. In contrast, though all of Sulivan's novels have been published by prominent French publishing houses ... he has so far not been regarded in his own country as a leading writer of his time, nor, for that matter, have his works been published in translation to any major extent abroad ...

Yet in any study of the Catholic novel Sulivan is an important and representative figure in regard to the change in form, emphasis, and themes the genre has undergone in the contemporary period, arguably as much so as the far better known Michel de Saint Pierre. From the start of his career Sulivan has been recognised as a direct literary descendent of the French giants of the Catholic novel's Golden Age - Bloy and Mauriac, but especially Bernanos, whose influence on Sulivan is both immediately obvious and commanding."

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Scott Walker - My Death.

Inspiration

2012-01-03T16:25:00.000Z

G2 in today's Guardian has an excellent feature with various artists giving their thoughts on how to find inspiration. Of course there is no concensus, because inspiration is individual, but these are the ideas which connected with my own experiences of inspiration:

Spending time in your own head is important ... I'm often scribbling down fragments that later act like trigger-points for lyrics.
A blank canvas can be very intimidating, so set yourself limitations.
Just start scribbling. The first draft is never your last draft. Nothing you write is by accident.
The best songs often take two disparate ideas and make them fit together.
Don't be scared of failure

Guy Garvey, Elbow

I seek inspiration in film, theatre, music, art – and in watching other ballet companies, other dancers, and other types of dance.
An idea never comes to me suddenly; it sits inside me for a while, and then emerges.

Tamara Rojo, ballet dancer

Be as collaborative as possible ... Other creative people are a resource that needs to be exploited

Anthony Neilson, playwright and director

I always try to reshape my ideas in other forms ... anything that will keep turning them for possibilities.
An idea is just a map. The ultimate landscape is only discovered when it's under foot, so don't get too bogged down in its validity.

Rupert Goold, director

I have a magpie attitude to inspiration: I seek it from all sorts of sources; anything that allows me to think about how culture comes together. I'm always on the lookout – I observe people in the street; I watch films, I read, I think about the conversations that I have. I consider the gestures people use, or the colours they're wearing. It's about taking all the little everyday things and observing them with a critical eye; building up a scrapbook which you can draw on.

Isaac Julien, artist

Here is my take on some of these sources of inspiration in a poem called 'The Mark':

Begin, begin,
let something be.
Make a blot,
a dash, a stroke.
Make your mark.
Obliterate the anonymity
of the white-blank page.
Intervene
in the seeming
infinite abyss
of nothingness.
From nothing
to something
by means of
mark-making.
Creation waits
to be discovered,
uncovered,
never fully conceived,
growing through
relating.
Follow the trail,
the sign,
one mark
at a time
to a novel,
a poem,
a painting.
Begin, begin,
in the beginning
is the word,
the mark,
the world.

In a similar vein and also in today's Guardian is an article on research led by Deniz Ucbasaran, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Warwick Business School, into the lessons that Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Art Blakey can offer to entrepreneurs. Ucbasaran suggests each one has lessons to offer on how to inspire creativity and innovation within an established structure. Entrepreneurs are like jazz band leaders, Ucbasaran argues, insofar as they have to "build creative tension and give individuals their heads" while working within the framework of a collective. They have to harness the "disparate egos of highly talented people" and somehow keep them working towards the same goal:

"A recurring theme in stories about Ellington, it seems, was his talent for motivation and inspiration. But it was coupled with what the authors call "a laissez-faire attitude towards the behaviour of his musicians". He saw their foibles as the price to be paid for having access to their talents. For Ucbasaran that raises questions for entrepreneurs. "If you have a creative process, you have to have talented employees. But talent is not always easy to manage. To what extent do you accommodate wayward behaviour? You have to give them freedom and space, but direct them in subtle ways so that the end result comes together harmoniously."

Ellington's laid-back approach meant that he kept a cadre of long-serving core musicians together over several decades. Davis, however, rarely chose musicians who knew each other. As the paper puts it, "he felt that prior relationships might lead to the development of routines which hampered innovation and improvisation". So creative tension was his over-riding priority? Lockett nods. "He was less concerned about stability than the other leaders. If it worked, it would be brilliant. If not, he'd disband the team and start again."

Blakey was much more of a father figure, he says. "His speciality was bringing on young musicians. And he was much more concerned about the decorum and behaviour of his team than the other two." Which of the three offers the best guidance to the entrepreneurs of today? "It's impossible to say. All three offer lessons that can be taken on board.""

This research would seem to have clear synergies with the jazz theologies of Robert Gelinas and Carl Ellis.

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Miles Davis - Human Nature.

Windows on the world (177)

2012-01-02T01:00:00.000Z

Birmingham, 2011

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Switchfoot - Vice Verses.

Humility, humanity and shame culture

2012-01-01T15:24:00.000Z

I've been reading Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes and Shusaku Endo's A Life of Jesus, as well as watching Masahiro Shinoda's film of Endo's Silence, over the Christmas period.
De Waal is critical of Ruth Benedict's famous thesis, made in The Chrysanthmum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, "that the Japanese had a culture of shame rather than a culture of guilt." De Waal's criticisms - the simplicity of this polarity and Benedict's own lack of direct experience of Japan - are fairly standard current critiques of Benedict's thesis. What is interesting though is the continuing popularity of the book and it's influence on a Japanese writer like Endo.

Endo writes in his Preface to the American Edition of A Life of Christ that the "religious mentality of the Japanese ... has little tolerance for any kind of transcendent being who judges humans harshly, then punishes them ... the Japanese tend to seek in their gods and buddhas a warm-hearted mother rather than a stern father." He then suggests that if his American readers "keep this point of view in mind as they move through A Life of Jesus, they will ... gain deeper insight into just where the religious psychology of the Japanese and other Orientals coincides with their own, and they will better appreciate those points at which the two psychologies perhaps diverge."

As Adrian Pinnington notes in his interesting paper on the issue Endo clearly accepts the shame culture versus guilt culture thesis and it may be that this reflects the influence of Western Catholicism on his thinking and writing. Doug Cummings, in his essay accompanying the film Silence, writes that "Catholic thought in postwar France was in the midst of intellectual revival and reform" during the period that Endo studied at the University of Lyon - "Philosophers like Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier grappled with theology and modernity" while Endo "focused on writers he called the "grande écrivaines of French literature" ... François Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, and Julien Green ... Catholic novelists who specialized in vivid descriptions of personal struggles, religious doubts, and dark nights of the soul."

Cummings notes a "deep bifurcation within Endo that would remain a part of him and his writing throughout his life: the Western-Christian side and the Eastern-Japanese side, both psychological hemispheres yearning for solidarity but refusing cohesion." As a result, the reigning motifs in his work become "philosophical rifts, religious fervour and weakness, suffering innocents, martyrs and apostates, and the clash of cultures."

Pinnington, however, argues that Endo's "initially negative picture of Japanese culture grows more positive" with "the lack of a strong self" coming to be seen as a "precious asset." This change in Endo mirrors the Japanese response to Benedict's thesis which was "initially accepted in a spirit of contrition after the war, but was later reversed into evidence for the greater humanity of Japanese society." Once this is understood, Pinnington suggests, Endo's early work can also be seen as less negative towards Japanese culture than has often been assumed. In Silence, for example, "Rodrigues, the priest who finally betrays the Church and apostasizes, actually first learns true humility through this action." It is only, Pinnington notes, "after he has abandoned the false absolutes of European culture that he can recognize the action of Christ in his own life, and begin to hear the voice of Christ."

On this basis, it would seem that, while Benedict's thesis cannot simply be accepted per se, its reception in Japan and the use made of it by Endo suggest that her thesis has much that can critique Western culture when understood through Japanese eyes.

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Toru Takemitsu - Rain Spell.

Run the Race: New Year's Eve sermon

2011-12-31T23:30:00.000Z

This year the world’s premier sporting event - the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics – is coming to London and the UK. London is the first city to stage the Olympics three times. There will be 26 different sports, 17,000 athletes competing representing 205 countries. 63,000 will be involved in staging the games. 9 million tickets are expected to be sold with 500,000 people spectating. 20,000 journalists will cover the games so that millions more can avidly follow every huff, puff, spill and saga of the action. 90% of the UK is expected to watch the Games on television.

The image of an athlete is used three times in the New Testament to teach important truths about the Christian life. A New Year in which we can enjoy the Olympics experience is a good time for reminding ourselves of those truths and making them part of our lives as we begin 2012.

In 1 Corinthians 9. 24-27, St Paul wrote: “You've all been to the stadium and seen the athletes race. Everyone runs; one wins. Run to win. All good athletes train hard. They do it for a gold medal that tarnishes and fades. You're after one that's gold eternally.

I don't know about you, but I'm running hard for the finish line. I'm giving it everything I've got. No sloppy living for me! I'm staying alert and in top condition. I'm not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing out myself.”

All good athletes train hard, Paul writes, and so should we. What does training involve for Christians? Prayer, bible study and Christian fellowship are all key parts of understanding our faith and growing as Christians. Doing those things can help to underpin effective Christian living. But real Christian living is about significant lifestyle change; eradicating our natural selfishnessness and living more generously – loving God will everything we have and loving our neighbour as ourselves. Doing that takes practice. We have to consciously decide to speak and act differently from how we would naturally. It is only with practice that unselfishness becomes natural to us. That is the kind of training which Paul has in mind for as we seek to live for Christ and like Christ in 2012.

We train hard in order that we can run to win. Athletes run to win an individual gold medal but we run to win eternal life; not as an individual prize but eternal life as Jesus spoke it – the coming in full of God’s kingdom of love, mercy, justice and peace. That is a prize worth winning and that is what our giving, our loving and our living should be fully focussed towards.

That’s what we are encouraged to do by Philippians 3. 12 – 15. The writer of this letter says:

“I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward — to Jesus. I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back.

So let's keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision — you'll see it yet! Now that we're on the right track, let's stay on it.”

No distractions, no veering off track; just an absolute focus on the goal which the kingdom of God come on earth as in heaven and the life of Jesus as the pattern and example of what that kingdom looks like when it fully comes.

So we fix our eyes on Jesus, as the text for 2012 at St John's Seven Kings, Hebrews 12. 1-2, tells us, because he is our example and our goal. He has shown us how to run the race – we follow in his footsteps – and he is our goal because his life shows what the kingdom of God will look like when it comes in full.

This text for 2012 gives us one other athletics image to savour and that is of a full stadium cheering us on as we run our race:

"We are surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses – all those who have borne witness to the truth of Christ before us. All the saints, all the heroes of the Bible, all those who encouraged us in our faith but who are no longer with us; each one is there in the stadium stands yelling and cheering to encourage us to preserve, continue and complete the race that we are running.

Do you see what this means — all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running — and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed — that exhilarating finish in and with God — he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honour, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he ploughed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!”

This is what the example provided by those athletes preparing for the 2012 Olympics can teach us. This is what our text for 2012 encourages us to believe and do. To run our race well we need to get rid of all that would distract us or weigh us down, train hard, focus on the example of Jesus and on the goal of the coming kingdom of God, and be encouraged by those who have run before us to run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us.

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Mavis Staples - Eyes On The Prize.

History: a poem for the Year of the Bible 2011

2011-12-29T22:59:00.001Z

At the beginning of Bible Year 2011 I wrote a short story - 'The New Dark Ages' (which can be read by clicking here, here and here) - and, as Bible Year 2011 draws to a close, I have also written the following poem, which took its initial inspiration from the multiplicity of images in George Herbert's 'Prayer I':

History

Fragments of text threaded on a string of meta-narrative,

a bejewelled necklace more desirable than fine gold;

God-breathed words, sweeter than the purest honey,

cutting, like a double-edged sword, to where soul and spirit meet,

judging the thoughts and desires of human hearts;

shaping, as pattern or frame, the believing community;

many voices using differing forms of speech; the result

of editing and re-editing, interpretation and re-interpretation;

record of ongoing dialogue between the human and divine;

centred on The Word of God as homepage to Trinity’s website;

a collage of God, oral and written testimony

to the activity and character of one

whose purpose is ultimately revealed, in the courtroom of history,

as the final purpose of history; His story in ours.

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James MacMillan - Dominus dabit.

Bad As Me

2011-12-29T14:27:00.000Z

Romans 3. 23

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Paul Merton - The Series.

Windows on the world (176)

2011-12-25T07:28:00.000Z

London, 2011

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Spocks Beard - Wind At My Back.

Christmas at St John's (2)

2011-12-25T07:16:00.001Z

This year we sang carols at a local supported housing complex before carol singing on the streets; another new opportunity to open up for us at St John's Seven Kings this year. We raised funds for the Church Urban Fund with our carol singing and at our Nativity and Tree Lighting service, where we also collected presents for children known to Barnardos. Numbers were up on the previous year at all our main Christmas services. Work began on refurbishing our Fellowship Room which will give us level access throughout the whole building.

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Extreme - Peace.

What can I do for you?

2011-12-24T22:07:00.000Z

The story of Santa Claus begins with a man called Nicholas, who was born during the third century in the village of Patara. At the time the area was Greek and is now on the southern coast of Turkey.

His wealthy parents, who raised him to be a devout Christian, died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young. Obeying Jesus' words to "sell what you own and give the money to the poor," Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to those in need, his love for children, and his concern for sailors and ships.

Through the centuries many stories have been told of St. Nicholas' life and deeds. These help us understand his extraordinary character and why he is so beloved and revered as protector and helper of those in need.

One story tells of a poor man with three daughters. In those days a young woman's father had to offer prospective husbands something of value — a dowry. The larger the dowry, the better the chance that a young woman would find a good husband. Without a dowry, a woman was unlikely to marry. This poor man's daughters, without dowries, were therefore destined to be sold into slavery. Mysteriously, on three different occasions, a bag of gold appeared in their home providing the needed dowries. The bags of gold, tossed through an open window, are said to have landed in stockings or shoes left before the fire to dry. This has led to the custom of children hanging stockings or putting out shoes, eagerly awaiting gifts from Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus, as we call him today.

Sometimes the true meaning of Christmas gets hidden by all the festivities. How many of us, for instance, remembered when we saw Father Christmas at stores and bazaars and schools or while we were hanging up our stocking that he is actually a follower of Jesus. How many of us remembered that he is originally St Nicholas who gave away all he had because Jesus had first given him all he had? Jesus gave himself to us by coming into our world as a baby and growing up to die on the cross as our Saviour. This is what is at the heart of Christmas and so we need to remember that Christmas is about giving to others instead of getting for ourselves.

This year, unusually, a Christmas advert has captured this truth in exactly this way. I’m thinking of the John Lewis advert with a little boy and a present. The background music to the ad – ‘Please, please, please, let me get what I want’ a song written by the Smiths – leads us to believe the boy is desperate to open his presents on Christmas morning but the ‘catch in the throat’ moment that is the ad’s punchline is that he’s actually desperate to give his parents their present from him. So, while, like all ad’s, this ad wants us to buy the company’s products, it is also reminding us that the real joy of Christmas is found in giving rather than getting.

This Christmas, Bible Society is asking everyone to take part in a new campaign called: ‘What can I do for you?’ To celebrate the birth of Christ, they are asking everyone to take a moment of their time, on 25th December, to offer help – however large or small - to one other person by asking them this simple question and then fulfilling their request.

The answer may be: “peel the potatoes” or “call me more” – it really doesn’t matter. It just means that, for a few moments or more, on the 25th of December, people are given the chance to experience what Jesus meant when he said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive”.

Of course, there’s no need to only ask that question of others on Christmas Day and there are lots of initiatives and groups that can help us. Here are just two others:

If you’d like ideas and reminders regularly about ways of giving to others and living more generously then you could join a group like Generous which is building a global community of people who believe in changing the world for good … one step at a time. Generous is about imagining a different way of living, about innovating, trying new things, believing that things can be better, simpler, more beautiful. Every action unknown to everyone else - from unplugging appliances to dumping bottled water, from sharing your car journey to buying Fair Trade - incrementally shifts history in favour of the planet and its people. The more people who go Generous, the greater their impact.

Acts of Kindness is a project by artist Michael Landy celebrating everyday generosity and compassion on the Tube. Landy’s project invites us to notice acts of kindness however simple and small. The artist explains, ‘Sometimes we tend to assume that you have to be superhuman to be kind, rather than just an ordinary person.’ So, to unsettle that idea, Acts of Kindness catches those little exchanges that are almost too fleeting and mundane to be noticed or remembered. Landy has invited passengers and staff to help by sending stories of kindness that have been seen or that people have been part of on London Underground and he has chosen a selection of the stories to place in Central line stations and trains. Acts of kindness between strangers undermine the idea that we should compete and always strive to be independent. Instead, they’re an acknowledgement of our shared humanity. Landy says, ‘That’s what “kindness” means – we’re kin, we’re of one kind.’

Rachel Rounds, Senior Press Secretary at Bible Society, has said: “The act of giving of ourselves reminds us that we are part of a wider community; it reminds us of the practical outworking of the two greatest commandments - to love God first and then our neighbour. Somewhere in the midst of all the noise, that still small voice may ask us all: What matters most to you?’”

May we all hear that still, small voice this Christmas whether it’s through St Nicholas, the John Lewis ad, ‘What can I do for you?’, generous, Acts of Kindness, or the Christmas story itself.

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Valdemar - What Can I Do For You.

Peace on earth

2011-12-24T22:00:00.000Z

One of my favourite rock bands is U2 whose lead singer and lyricist, Bono, is a big fan of the Psalms. He has written that a lot of the psalms feel to him like the blues. Man shouting at God - "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me?" – and some of the songs he has written do the same.

In ‘Peace on Earth’ he writes:

“Heaven on Earth, we need it now
I'm sick of all of this hanging around
Sick of sorrow, sick of the pain
I'm sick of hearing again and again
That there's gonna be peace on Earth …

Hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history won't rhyme
So, what's it worth?
This peace on Earth”

It was over 2,000 years ago that that glorious song of old was first sung by angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold: "Peace on the earth, good will to men, from heaven's all-gracious King." So where is it? Why hasn’t it come? These are good questions to ask. Good questions to shout at God, just as occurs in the Psalms and in the blues.

While the Psalms and the blues pose questions, our carols may provide some answers. The carol I’ve just quoted, ‘It came upon the midnight clear,’ acknowledges the lack of peace that we find in the world:

“Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;”

But the problem is then put firmly back in our own court:

“And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.”

The wars we wage throughout our lives drown out the song of the angels and mean that we pay no attention to the peace that the Christ-child came to bring. That is also what our reading from John’s Gospel said:

“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God …”

We have to recognize and receive him in order to access the peace that he brings, as another carol, ‘Joy to the World,’ says clearly:

“Joy to the World, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,”

So tonight, on this silent, holy night, the questions turn back to us. Are we hushing the noise of our strife sufficiently to hear the song of peace which the angels sing? Are we preparing room in our hearts for Christ to be born or are we like the innkeepers who said, “No room.” Are we recognizing and receiving him into our lives in order to become children of God?

You’ll probably have heard the slogan of the Dog’s Trust, ‘a dog is for life, not just for Christmas.’ Perhaps we need to adapt that slogan to say, ‘Christ is for life, not just for Christmas’ because it is only when we live as Christ lived that the peace he brings comes in our own lives and also between those we know. It is when we live as Christ lived that we give time and care to those who are housebound or elderly; that we feed those who are hungry, that we provide shelter for those who are homeless, that we open our homes to those who are refugees and asylum seekers. All actions that the churches in Redbridge have taken and are taking as we seek to follow in the footsteps of Christ and to live, however imperfectly, as he lived.

It is when we live as Christ lived that he rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and the wonders of his love. It is when we live as Christ lived that the new heaven and earth shall own the Prince of Peace, their King, and the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.

If we are sick of all of the hanging around - sick of sorrow, sick of the pain, sick of hearing again and again that there's gonna be peace on Earth – then we need to prepare room for Christ to be born in our hearts so that we will live as Christ lived and bring peace on earth – to our lives, our friends and family, our community and world.

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U2 - Peace On Earth.

Martin, Richter, Sasnal, Krokatsis and McElheny

2011-12-22T22:32:00.000Z

John Martin is one of those artists who have enjoyed huge popularity combined with critical opprobrium, both in his own day where he was derided as a 'people's painter' and later where few other artists have been subject to such posthumous extremes of critical fortune, and yet, despite the critical drubbing, have been hugely influential:

'Martin's paintings anticipate biblical epics and disaster, movies and CinemaScope; sci-fi illustrations, concept albums and heavy metal graphics; Spider Man and the avatars of video games. Film directors have acknowledged the immense debt, from DW Griffith to Cecil B DeMille and Roland Emmerich' - The Observer, 25 September 2011

Artists like Martin and, in particular William Blake, must surely be inspirations to all those artists whose creative vision is not fully understood or appreciated within their lifetime.

Gerhard Richter and Wilhelm Sasnal stand in the opposite space as current critical favourites but no less vital for all that. It seems appropriate that both have had major exhibitions which have overlapped in London as, in a visual culture flooded by photographic images, the work of both attests to the continuous spellbinding power of painting. In their work painting is addressed to historical crisis while their use of readymade images explores the nature of appearance and the capacities of vision.

Richter is also fascinated by reflection, both in plain glass and in mirrors. He showed his first Mirror in 1981 but this was a continuation of his work with glass begun with the 4 Panes of Glass in 1967. Richter treats both glass and mirrors as a source of uncertainty and unpredictable visual effects. These are works which are concerned with chance because the images presented change all the time. According to Richter, they 'show something that isn’t there at all, at least not where we see it.'

Playing with reflection is currently a popular activity. Henry Krokatsis’ works are composed solely of the bevelled, faintly ornamental mirrors that were mass-produced and ubiquitous to British suburban interiors between the 1920s and the 1960s. These relics have been reconfigured and expanded to reference the high-status interiors of Europe’s grandest Rococo houses, with their cabinets de glaces and pier mirrors. These works reference minimalism via their geometry, austerity and lack of gesture yet they simultaneously embrace arbitrariness, material history and the narrative reward of subject matter.

Josiah McElheny's The Past Was A Mirage I Had Left Far Behind has transformed Gallery 2 at the Whitechapel Gallery into a hall of mirrors through the use of seven large-scale, mirrored sculptures arranged as multiple reflective screens for displaying reconfigured abstract films. The sculptures refract the projections and reflect the viewer within the work, saturating the gallery in images and light.

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Arcade Fire - Black Mirror.

Windows on the world (175)

2011-12-19T07:46:00.002Z

Ilford, 2011

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Al Green - Feels Like Christmas.

Christmas at St John's (1)

2011-12-18T23:06:00.000Z

We had our All-Age Christingle Service and Service of Nine Lessons and Carols by candlelight today at St John's Seven Kings. Also above are photographs from our Youth Group's Christmas Party and our Christmas Bazaar plus our Christmas Tree. During the week we have had both the Aldborough E-Act Free School and Downshall Primary School in church for Christmas shows and assemblies. New opportunities this year have included the link with the Free School and a Carol Service held at a local supported housing complex, which has led on to a monthly service also being requested. Tomorrow will find us carol singing in the parish, while on Tuesday we have our Carol Tea.

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Solomon Burke - Silent Night.

Incarnation

2011-12-18T22:28:00.002Z

knew what it meant to be born into poverty

knew what it meant to survive genocide

knew what it meant to be forced to live as a refugee

knew what it meant to grow up disadvantaged

knew what it meant to experience the stigma of illegitimacy

knew what it meant to go to school and to learn a trade

knew what it meant to turn to God in prayer, faith and hope

knew what it meant to offer up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears

knew what it meant to be hungry and thirsty

knew what it meant to be tempted and tested

knew what it meant to share food and drink with friends

knew what it meant to be feted and praised

knew what it meant to feel compassion

knew what it meant to meet people’s needs

knew what it meant to be criticised for doing good

knew what it meant to shed tears at the death of a friend

knew what it meant to be questioned and rejected

knew what it meant to wrestle with God

knew what it meant to be arrested and imprisoned

knew what it meant to be put on trial

knew what it meant to be beaten and tortured

knew what it meant to be scarred

knew what it meant to be abandoned by a father

knew what it meant to learn obedience from suffering

knew what it meant to die

Emmanuel – God with us

made like his brothers and sisters in every way

tempted in every way, just as we are

able to sympathize with our weaknesses

Emmanuel - became flesh and blood

moved into our neighbourhood.

God was born as a baby 2,000 years in order that he would not be remote from us but would be one of us. Just as he has come to us, so we can now come to him. As Hebrews 4. 14-16 say: “Now that we know what we have — Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God — let's not let it slip through our fingers. We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all — all but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.”

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Rickie Lee Jones - Nobody Knows My Name.

Pop goes the Bible meme

2011-12-18T01:40:00.001Z

Yesterday, as the 400th anniversary of the translation of the Bible into English drew to its close, Paul Gambaccini picked out some of the 100's of pop songs that have been inspired by the Old and New Testaments in Pop goes the Bible! on Radio 4. The stories, characters and text have led to a huge catalogue of songs ranging from Elvis Presley ('Adam and Evil'), to Bob Dylan (Highway 61 Revisited), Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice ('Joseph' and 'Jesus Christ, Superstar'), The Byrds (Turn! Turn! Turn!), Leonard Cohen ('Hallelujah'), and U2 ('40' and 'Yahweh').
What would be your Top 10 pop songs inspired by the Bible? My starter for 10 is:

Bruce Cockburn - Cry of a Tiny Babe;
Daniel Lanois - The Maker;
Mavis Staples - Eyes on the Prize;
Marvin Gaye - God is Love;
Galliano - Prince of Peace;
Bob Dylan - Sweetheart like You;
Victoria Williams - You R Loved;
Violent Femmes - Rejoice and be Happy;
This Picture - The Offering;
Rickie Lee Jones - I was There.

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King's X - Faith, Hope, Love.

It's time to embrace uncertainty

2011-12-15T21:44:00.000Z

It's time to embrace uncertainty Susanne Moore argues in today's Guardian:
"The world is full of people proclaiming about stuff they don't know much about. My trade depends on it. Pundits, politicians and economists, too, all depend on some kind of bladder-busting meta-analysis to keep us quiet. In fact, they are just winging it ...

What is valued is certainty. What is devalued in such a world is uncertainty. Those who aren't sure are weak. Poor. Faithless. Uncertainty is often worrying and feminised. Real men know real things ...

How weighed down is public life with its emphasis on certainty. How dumbed down is belief. The big divides are not between different beliefs, but the differing degree of certitude in which those beliefs are held.

No one knows. No one has the answers. Uncertainty is where we are. It is to be embraced."

I agree with Moore's basic thesis and recently highlighted another comment piece in the Guardian in which Jenni Russell made similar points and concluded: "We should be more willing to admit that the complexity of the world means those leading us will make mistakes."

However, in this post I want to question the assumptions made here about belief. Moore wrote that "those who most understand the value of uncertainty are scientists," highlighting the comment piece in the Guardian by "the delightful" Jon Butterworth on Tuesday. Butterworth set up a contrast between science and belief: "We should all know that science is a betting system, not a belief system. Near-certainty arises from a morass of uncertainty, it does not drop from heaven gift-wrapped."

Like Richard Dawkins, Butterworth argues that science is superior to belief but they use opposite arguments to reach the same conclusion. Dawkins argues that science is evidence based while belief is not and therefore is uncertain, Butterworth argues that belief is about given certainties while science honestly accepts and values uncertainty. Belief is therefore damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.

The reality is that science works with both - uncertainty and evidence - as also does belief. It is the unnecessary opposing of science and belief in both Dawkins and Butterworth that provides a note of certainty (and therefore falsity) in what they write. Their certitude comes from their belief that scientific knowledge is better than the knowledge which comes through religious belief. This certitude is a belief because it cannot be proved. Therefore, Moore's comment that, "The big divides are not between different beliefs, but the differing degree of certitude in which those beliefs are held," which seems aimed at those holding religious beliefs would also seem applicable to Dawkins and Butterworth. A fuller embrace of uncertainty would seem to understand that, as Polanyi argued, all knowing is ultimately faith-based.

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Sam Phillips - Gimme Some Truth.

Top 10 album listening during 2011 meme

2011-12-13T23:33:00.000Z

Via Banksyboy, this is my Top 10 of albums that I've got hold of during 2011:

Dead Rock West - Bright Morning Stars
Florence + the Machine - Ceremonials
Low - C'mon
Robert Randolph and the Family Band - We Walk This Road
Buddy Miller - Majestic Silver Strings
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Gungor - Beautiful Things
Gillian Welch - The Harrow and the Harvest
Peter Case - The Case Files
Mojo presents - Communion

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Dead Rock West - God Help Me.

Windows on the world (174)

2011-12-11T22:11:00.001Z

Ilford, 2011

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Chagall Guevara - I Need Somebody.

Photographs: St Peter's and OPEN

2011-12-11T21:39:00.001Z

Today I've been at St Peter's Aldborough Hatch for their morning service (see sermon) and have been back this evening for their Service of Nine Lessons and Carols with the joint choirs of St John's and St Peter's. In between I've also been to the fourth session of OPEN.

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This Picture - The Great Tree.