Between

Saturday, 4 July 2026

Windows on the world (576)

London, 2026

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The Velvet Underground - Beginning To See The Light.

International Times: Crypto-Religious Culture Wars

My latest book review for International Time s is on The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s by Paul Elie:

'taken together, Elie’s The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (a group portrait of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy), Reinventing Bach: Music, Technology, and the Search for Transcendence (a meditation on how sound recording allowed Bach’s music to survive and be reimagined by the likes of Albert Schweitzer, Glenn Gould, and Yo-Yo Ma), and The Last Supper can be viewed as a loosely connected trilogy of twentieth century cultural and spiritual history. In them, Elie undertakes a wide-ranging inquiry into the ways in which religion and faith have shaped human creativity, memory, and community in the modern era by means of the ‘spiritualized encounter’. As Nora Futtner has written, ‘Elie’s work is an invitation—to engage, to reflect, and to explore how faith and culture continually shape one another in unexpected ways.’'

For more of my writing on music, see my article for Seen and Unseen entitled 'Rock ‘n’ roll’s long dance with religion' and my co-authored book with Peter Banks, ‘The Secret Chord’, which has been described as an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief.

The book can be purchased from Lulu - https://www.lulu.com/shop/jonathan-evens-and-peter-banks/the-secret-chord/paperback/product-1pey2g67.html?q=peter+banks&page=1&pageSize=4

Covering a range of musical styles and influences, from gospel music to X Factor, The Secret Chord conveys enthusiasm for music and its transformative powers. The book asks is there really a 'Secret Chord' that would both please the Lord and nearly everybody else as described in Leonard Cohen's popular song 'Hallelujah'?

My earlier pieces for IT are: an interview with the artist Alexander de Cadenet; an interview with artist, poet, priest Sp encer Reece, an interview with the poet Chris Emery, an interview with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, a profile of singer-songwriter Bill Fay, plus reviews of:

In Another World: The Four Seasons of Talk Talk
Hulda Guzman: Please awake - asked Nature kindly' at Turner Contemporary;
'Devotions' by Lucy Caldwell and 'Catholic Modernism and the Irish ‘Avant-Garde’: The Achievement of Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin, and Thomas MacGreevy' by James Matthew Wilson;
the 'Stations' project from Dunlin Press;
'William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy';
Joseph Arthur in concert;
installations by Chiharu Shiota and Yin Xiuzhen at Hayward Gsllery,
U2's 'Days of Ash', Mumford and Sons' 'Prize fighter' and Moby's 'Future Quiet';
'Collected Poems' by Kevin Crossley-Holland;
'Lux' by Rosalía;
'Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere';
'Great Art Explained' by James Payne;
'Down River: In Search of David Ackles' by Mark Brend;
'Headwater' by Rev Simpkins;
'The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art' by Jonathan A. Anderson;
'Breaking Lines' at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art,
albums by Deacon Blue, Mumford and Sons, and Andrew Rumsey,
also by Joy Oladokun and Michael Kiwanaku;
'Nolan's Africa' by Andrew Turley;
Mavis Staples in concert at Union Chapel;
T Bone Burnett's 'The Other Side' and Peter Case live in Leytonstone;
Helaine Blumenfeld's 'Together' exhibition,
'What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise' by David Miller;
'Giacometti in Paris' by Michael Peppiatt,
the first Pissabed Prophet album; and
'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord', a book which derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art.

Several of my short stories have been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'. My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.

IT have also published several of my poems, including 'Spencer Reece at Bemerton' which is based on the visit that I made to Bemerton in 2026 with Spencer Reece, 'The ABC of creativity', which covers attention, beginning and creation, and 'The Edge of Chaos', a state of existence poem. Also published have been three poems from my 'Five Trios' series. 'Barking' is about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey and draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. 'Bradwell' is a celebration of the history of the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, the Othona Community, and of pilgrimage to those places. Broomfield in Essex became a village of artists following the arrival of Revd John Rutherford in 1930. His daughter, the artist Rosemary Rutherford, also moved with them and made the vicarage a base for her artwork including paintings and stained glass. Then, Gwynneth Holt and Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones moved to Broomfield in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. 'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations.

To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'.

I am among those whose poetry has been included in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces, a recent anthology from Amethyst Press. I also had a poem included in All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich, the first Amethyst Press anthology of new poems.

'Five Trios' is a series of poems on thin places and sacred spaces in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The five poems in the series are:

These poems have been published by Amethyst Review and International Times.

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U2 - All I Want Is You.

Thursday, 2 July 2026

Artlyst: The Art Diary July 2026

My July 2026 Art Diary for Artlyst begins with group exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth Menorca and GRIMM exploring disorientation and complexity as zeitgeist themes emerging from contemporary culture. Exhibitions at The Whitworth, V&A, Cento, Gazelli Art House, and Hauser & Wirth Somerset engage with aspects of contemporary culture in different ways, using dialogical and relational approaches that connect with either the past or the environment. Exhibitions at Fitzrovia Chapel engage with aspects of that space’s history while exhibitions at Charleston and Waddington Custot explore artists and movements from the early years of Modernism. Finally, exhibitions at St Oswald’s Ashbourne and the American Visionary Art Museum focus on current expressions of Christian spirituality.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Monthly diary articles -

Articles/Reviews -

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Leigh Nash and Sixpence None The Richer - The Tide.

Wednesday, 1 July 2026

You'll Never Walk Alone

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

You’ll Never Walk Alone, along with other songs from musicals, has been included as a hymn in the BBC’s hymn book. Ian Barclay commenting on this in The Guardian wrote that the Songs of Praise programme producers had come to realise that secular songs from shows have taken on some on the status of folk hymns, addressing the spiritual and pastoral needs of many people. Taken out of its context in Carousel, where it is sung by a dead father who has returned to life for one day to the daughter he never knew, it can be sung as a statement of belief that, as Psalm 23 states, God will be with us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death or through the storms of life.

"When you walk through the storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on, through the wind
Walk on, through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone"

Our Gospel reading (Matthew 8: 23 – 27) also speaks about a storm and the way in which God is with those in the storm. The disciples in the boat on Lake Galilee experienced a literal storm but they were also caught up in an event of set of external circumstances that were beyond their control. That is probably the most common way in which we experience storms within our own lives. Circumstances conspire to bring illness or redundancy or debt or breakdown in relationships. We may have made choices that have contributed to the situation – just as the disciples made the choice to go out in the boat – but we end up by finding ourselves in circumstances that are beyond our control and which threaten to overwhelm us.

We tend to think of storms as something to avoid, something to hide or shelter from but in both of these stories God is there in the storm. Although the storm is stilled on the lake, the encounter with God takes place in the storm. To encounter God, we often need to be in the storms of life. And the God that we encounter in the storms of life goes with us through those storms until we find ourselves on the other side. That is the promise of You’ll never walk alone and of Psalm 23; even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for God is with us; his rod and your staff, they comfort us.

The God that we encounter in the storm can release the internal storm from with us. In times of crisis and distress we often keep our emotions bottled up inside us until eventually they explode in anger and violence. The God that we meet in the storm can be an escape valve, the person that we can always turn to, the one who is always there to listen and with whom we can pour out all those pent-up emotions releasing the storm within.

The God that we encounter in the storm is also able to still the storm of external circumstances. He holds that power and that is what we often long when we are caught up in the storms of life. I experienced that power after my younger brother Nick died in the crash of a UN plane in Kosovo. With the families of others who had died I was flown to the crash site and saw the scattered and shattered pieces of the plane on the mountainside. That terrible moment brought home the physical reality of what had happened to my brother. It was the height of the storm for me. On landing again at Pristina Airport I was met by some of the people from Tear Fund with whom Nick had been working in Kosovo to rebuild homes destroyed in the fighting there. They told me stories of the impact that Nick had had on their lives and the lives of the Kosovan people with whom they had worked. As we talked and cried together, God brought an assurance into my heart that he had welcomed Nick into his presence with the words, “Well done, my good and faithful son” and in this way I knew the stilling of the storm.

The God that we encounter in the storm is also able to still the storm of external circumstances. And yet, Jesus was disappointed with the reaction of disciples in the storm on Lake Galilee. “How little faith you have,” is what he said to them. What would have happened if they had had more faith? It is likely that they would have rode out the storm in trust that God would see them through. It is likely that Jesus was asleep in the boat not because he didn’t care about their dilemma but because he trusted that God would go with them through the storm and wanted them to have that same trust too.

We may be in the middle of some storm ourselves today as we sit and listen. We may need the internal storm in our lives to be released in peace. We may have come through storms in our lives but still be bearing the scars or wondering where God was at that time. We may need to take this message to our hearts now because there are storms on the horizon. If that is so, we need to know in our hearts that we do not walk alone. That if we look for him we will see God going with us through the storm. That if we trust him we will come to that place of peace where the storm clouds have blown over and we see the golden sky and hear the sweet, silver song of the lark.

Let us pray that we will recognise God with us in the storms of our lives asking for the faith to come through the storm, for release of our internal storms, and for the stilling of our external storms.

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Delirious? - Find Me In The River.

Tuesday, 30 June 2026

Tracey Walker: Art workshops and exhibition

Children from Wickford Primary School and Abacus Primary School have visited St Andrew's Wickford for art workshops with Tracey Walker, our current exhibiting artist. The workshops provided an opportunity to make abstract art in response to the emotions and rhythms of pieces of music. Tracey spoke about abstract art, showed the children her paintings and sculpture, and led artmaking exercises to the sound of music. The workshops were very enjoyable and were greatly enjoyed by the children

‘Light in the Darkness’
An exhibition by Tracey Walker
8 April – 17 July 2026
St Andrew’s Church, 11 London Road, Wickford SS12 0AN

St Andrew’s is usually open: Sat 9am-12.30pm; Sun 9.30am-12 noon; Mon 2-3.45pm; Tue 1-4.30pm; Wed 10am-12 noon; Fri 10am-1pm.

See https://wickfordandrunwellparish.org.uk/whats-on.html for more information.

Tracey Walker

From a traditional art background, through a long career in commercial art, Tracey now finds freedom in her artistic practice, allowing her to express her joyful, spiritual creativity.

She loves to explore themes of light, faith and hope in her paintings, using colour, form and texture to evoke emotions and create atmospheres, drawing the onlookers into a bright and beautiful world.

She is passionate about encouraging people to explore their own creativity through a variety of art groups and workshops.

A member of Chelsea Arts Club and Artists at the Meadows, she exhibits and sells her work throughout the UK and internationally.

www.tawalker.com

IG: tawalker_art
FB: Tracey Walker Art

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Nick Drake - Things Behind The Sun.