On Thursday afternoon at St Stephen Walbrook we used the works of art in Terry Ffyffe's 'Transformation' exhibition for a guided 'Thy Kingdom Come' prayer event.
Terry says: “Art should inspire the viewer, ideally raise the consciousness and elevate the mind to think of higher things like the beauty and mystery of the natural world, to contemplate the deep questions as to purpose and meaning, like ‘What is the origin of this life? What is Reality? Questions that have no easy answer but require a personal journey of developing awareness.”
His exhibition coincides with the Feast of Pentecost, celebrating the ‘Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles’, an event that transformed them from cowering in fear to boldly proclaiming the “Good News”. Terry, formerly a figurative painter in the classic tradition had a “transformation” experience himself and is now firmly established in his new direction of depicting the beauty of the hidden world of nature and the inner world of the mind”. The exhibition brings together the last works that he was working on before this profound change. He says, ”The early paintings are about the Historical Jesus and the New Paintings are about the Holy Spirit”.
Based on my reflections about the incarnate and Cosmic Christ from the exhibition's Private View, we bookended this time of prayer with prayers from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
Since … I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will
raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself;
I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all
the labours and sufferings of the world …
My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid
widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner
of the earth and converge upon the Spirit. Grant me the remembrance and the
mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the new day.
One by one, Lord, I see and I love all those whom you
have given me to sustain and charm my life. One by one also I number all those
who make up that other beloved family which has gradually surrounded me, its
unity fashioned out of the most disparate elements, with affinities of the
heart, of scientific research and of thought. And again one by one — more
vaguely it is true, yet all-inclusively — I call before me the whole vast
anonymous army of living humanity; those who surround me and support me though
I do not know them; those who come, and those who go; above all, those who in
office, laboratory and factory, through their vision of truth or despite their
error, truly believe in the progress of earthly reality and who today will take
up again their impassioned pursuit of the light.
This restless multitude, confused or orderly, the
immensity of which terrifies us; this ocean of humanity whose slow, monotonous
wave-flows trouble the hearts even of those whose faith is most firm: it is to
this deep that I thus desire all the fibres of my being should respond. All the
things in the world to which this day will bring increase; all those that will
diminish; all those too that will die: all of them, Lord, I try to gather into
my arms, so as to hold them out to you in offering. This is the material of my
sacrifice; the only material you desire.
Once upon a time men took into your temple the first
fruits of their harvests, the flower of their flocks. But the offering you
really want, the offering you mysteriously need every day to appease your
hunger, to slake your thirst is nothing less than the growth of the world borne
ever onwards in the stream of universal becoming.
Receive, O Lord, this all-embracing host which your whole
creation, moved by your magnetism, offers you at this dawn of a new day. Amen.
Hymn to the Universe
(extract)
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
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