Hidden away at the end of a lane leading from Five Oaks Green Road, set among fields and Kentish Oast houses, is a pretty, compact country church which dates to the beginning of the seventh century, although most of what can be seen today is from the 18th century.
The brick tower and marbled ceiling of All Saints’ Tudeley date from around 1765 while the North aisle was added in 1871. The interior was substantially re-ordered in 1966, creating a greater sense of space and light. It was what came next, however, that created a wow factor; something that is astonishing both in its physical impact and in the uniqueness of its nature.
On my sabbatical pilgrimage I’ve arrived at a church which is one of the UK’s finest examples of religious art and a moving example of the crucifixion as a conduit for a very personal tragedy. As I walk into Tudeley Parish Church I am immediately immersed in intense colours – ‘rich and deep marine blue, with blends of burgundy and bottle green’ – because, as James Crockford has described, every window in the church ‘from great big panes of light, to tiny peep holes’ was designed by the Russian-Jewish artist Marc Chagall. Chagall’s designs swirl with emotive colour and evocative movement. This is stained-glass that shines and glows ‘with a glory that hits you’ through ‘the energy of light and life that bursts or glows through.’[i]
These windows were installed between 1967 and 1985; the east window being followed by the five north windows and two south ones dedicated in 1974 and then finally the four chancel windows installed in 1985. Chagall was initially reluctant to take on the commission, but was eventually persuaded, and when, in 1967, he arrived for the installation of the east window and saw the church, he said, 'It's magnificent. I will do them all.' Over the next 15 years, he designed all the remaining eleven windows, collaborating as usual with glassworker Charles Marq of Reims.
This sustained series of stained glass – inspiration sustained over 15 years and filling all 12 windows in the building - was inspired by Psalm 8, especially verses 4—8:
‘What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.’
There’s a dilemma on entering as the East window draws your attention but the surrounding windows lead up to it. That’s where the flocks and herds, beasts, birds and fish of creation from the Psalm are to be found, so do you begin with the culminating experience - the east window with its depiction of crucifixion and drowning – or the preparatory experience of the Psalm inspired windows? Wherever you begin sustained viewing of this series, which sets death in the context of creation while brightly bathing the building in vibrant colour, is to have an experience of profound spirituality.
The east window is a magnificent memorial tribute to Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid who died aged just 21 in a sailing accident off Rye. Sarah was the daughter of Sir Henry and Lady d'Avigdor-Goldsmid; the family then lived at Somerhill, a Jacobean house situated nearby. As Sarah had shown an early interest in contemporary art and had, with her mother, seen Chagall’s designs for windows in the synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem. Sir Henry and Lady d'Avigdor-Goldsmid commissioned Chagall to design the east window.
Crockford has reflected on what Chagall offers to us through sustained viewing of this visionary series: ‘What I think Chagall offers us so well is a vision that holds together the devastation of a painful tragedy with a vision of hope and renewal. He suggests the real possibility of the transformation of human loss, a loss that seems pretty integral to humanness; yet there is no glimmer of forgetting or diminishing the gravity and depth of that suffering. We see here an invitation to let our suffering be a sharing in his [Christ’s] sufferings, a way of becoming like him, just as, in suffering, he becomes like us. The stories of our lives are drawn up into the reality of Christ: that includes our death and our life, our fear and our freedom, our shame and our glory.’[ii]
Tudeley’s remoteness necessitates giving time to visit and Chagall’s art rewards slowing down to look and linger, to sustain our looking in order that we truly see. As with the art historian who went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician staying for about 10 minutes before then repeating the exercise twice. The art historian’s looking was sustained, just as Chagall’s creation was sustained, yet, as adults, we rarely look in a sustained manner.
Sister Corita Kent suggested that children can give adults lessons in looking:
‘Ask [a] child to come from the front of the house to the back and closely observe her small journey. It will be full of pauses, circling, touching and picking up in order to smell, shake, taste, rub, and scrape. The child’s eyes won’t leave the ground, and every piece of paper, every scrap, every object along the path will be a new discovery.
It does not matter that his is all familiar territory – the same house, the same rug and chair. To the child, the journey of this particular day, with its special light and sound, has never been made before. So the child treats the situation with the open curiosity and attention that it deserves.
The child is quite right.’[iii]
The reason that the child is right is that things ‘constantly change and we may have seen an object only five minutes ago and thought we knew it – but now it is very different.’ Visiting Tudeley on a sunny day is highly recommended and, yet, it doesn't really matter whether the sun is shining or not because, if we really look, something new will be seen in every viewing under differing conditions of light. Such changes are only noticed if our looking is sustained. That is something which children instinctively practice.
Kent therefore describes life as a succession of moments and says that to live each one is to succeed. For us to do so we must become ‘able to adjust to these subtle differences’ which means ‘looking anew’; repeated and sustained looking ‘with what new materials we have gathered up inside ourselves – as well as noting what changes have taken place within the object.’ In this way Kent suggests, we become ‘aware of what we don’t yet know.’ Henri Matisse suggested that, to look in this way, to repeatedly look at something ‘as though you had never seen it’ requires ‘great courage.’[iv]
My colleague at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Richard Carter built the concept of steadfastness or staying with into the rule of life for the Nazareth Community he set up there. Staying with is about sustained contemplation; returning again and again to God because it is so easy and so quick to ‘become disorientated and separated from the source of our being.’[v] He used the image of a swimmer returning to the pool because, whatever the weather, the pool is there. Similarly, whether the sun is shining or not, we can return on a sustained basis to the practice of slowing down in order to see contemplatively.
Staying with - sustained looking and praying – also enables us in the context of uncertainties, mysteries and doubts. Carter notes the use of the phrase ‘negative capability’ by John Keats ‘to characterize the human potential to pursue a vision of beauty even when it leads through intellectual confusion or uncertainty.’ He argues that there ‘is an importance in staying with the discomfort of the unknown, fear and the unresolved, because it is in that place that we reach the borders of what we are and discover what we could become.’[vi] It is as we sustain our contemplation over time through a multiplicity of reflections on all that is uncertain, confusing or challenging within our world and experiences that we come to see where beauty might lie within our brokenness. That is the basis on which Tudeley’s stained glass was created, both in the tragic events memorialised and Chagall’s meditative response.
Makoto Fujimura's work is a slow art requiring sustained looking which enables us to see beauty in brokenness. Fujimura combines the traditional Japanese painting technique of Nihonga with Abstract Expressionism. Both influences prioritise surface in the work. Nihonga, as it uses ground minerals such as azurite, malachite and cinnabar mixed with animal hide glue applied to handmade paper. Abstract Expressionism, as it has no external reference existing purely as pigment on canvas.
Fujimura describes letting: ‘The layers of azurite pigments, spread over paper as I let the granular pigments cascade. My eyes see much more than what my mind can organize. As the light becomes trapped within pigments, a "grace arena" is created, as the light is broken and trapped in refraction.’[vii] His minerals, ‘when layered in the correct manner, can refract, as each individual granule acts as a prism, so the surface traps light.’ He says that this ‘subtle, quiet way of capturing light’ intrigues him.
At first glance the malachite surface looks green: ‘But if the eye is allowed to linger on the surface—it usually takes ten minutes for the eye to adjust—the observer can begin to see the rainbow created by layer upon layer of broken shards of minerals. Such a contemplative experience can be a deep sensory journey toward wisdom. Willingness to spend time truly seeing can change how we view the world, moving us away from our fast-food culture of superficially scanning what we see and becoming surfeited with images that do not delve below the surface.’[viii]
Fujimura sees ‘in the very process of painting a parable of life: how our lives, too, need to be refractive of light as people created in God’s image.’ How often, he asks, ‘do we experience grace in the midst of trial (as our lives are being “pulverized” to reveal inner beauty)?’[ix] The minerals he uses ‘must be pulverized to bring out their beauty’.
As a result, he argues that: ‘The Japanese were right in associating beauty with death … Art cannot be divorced from faith, for to do so is to literally close our eyes to that beauty of the dying sun setting all around us. Every beauty also suffers … Prayers are given, too, in the layers of broken, pulverized pigments. Beauty is in the brokenness, not in what we can conceive as the perfections, not in the "finished" images but in the incomplete gestures. Now, I await for my paintings to reveal themselves. Perhaps I will find myself rising through the ashes, through the beauty of such broken limitations.’[x]
Perseverance in prayer is commended by Jesus in the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge (Luke 18.1-8) and the Friend at Midnight (Luke 11.1-13). I wonder whether that practice, which is about sustained prayer in which we stay with the one for whom we pray, is not so much about our needing to change God’s mind and more about our coming to see the ways in which beauty is to be found in brokenness and redemption in desolation. For many of us, this is also our regular experience of the depth of scripture; that we can return again and again to the same passage or story and find something new each time. Sustained attention, praying or reading all enable to see
It may only be as we sustain our looking, praying or reading that such revelations come. Chagall looked for 15 years, the art historian looked for half an hour, Fujimura thinks ten minutes is necessary for our eyes to adjust and see the prismatic nature of his slow art. The specific length of time our looking can be sustained is not the primary issue; the issue is how we see and the extent to which we surrender to what we see.
Explore
The Art Stations of the Cross began in 2016 in London with an exhibition in 14 iconic destinations that enabled the Passion to be experienced as a pilgrimage for art lovers. For Christians, the Stations of the Cross represent 14 moments in Jesus’ journey through Jerusalem, from condemnation to crucifixion and burial. Across the chasm of two thousand years, this tortured path resonates with current events for people of many faiths and cultures. In particular, it calls to mind the hazardous journeys of refugees from today’s Middle East.
The exhibition invited people of all backgrounds to experience London as a ‘new Jerusalem.’ It told the story of the Passion in fresh ways, provoking passions by using existing masterpieces and new commissions by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim artists. Those visiting all 14 destinations had to sustain a journey through London and let the Stations sustain them.
The project has been sustained further by being replicated in other parts of the world and through a website which collates each version of the Art Stations. Exploring this website enables sustained reflection on different aspects of each Station as there have now been five different manifestations of the project with little replication of specific artworks. The website, therefore, asks us to look at each Station from a range of different perspectives thereby offering the opportunity for sustained reflection.
Dwelling in the Word is a simple, but profound way of reading the bible in community, based on Lectio Divina while being subtly quite different from that ancient practice. Dwelling in the Word is a spiritual practice of reading and dwelling in the biblical text by listening deeply to God and to one another. Reading for spiritual formation involves patiently allowing the text to intrude into our lives, address us, and enable our being encountered by the God of mystery.
There is a significant difference between approaching God’s Word through informational reading and formational reading. Formational Reading involves: living in the same text for a period of time; multi-layered reading with depth that changes our quality of being; receiving the Word as a servant; being formed and transformed by the text; being with the Word humbly and willingly; and being open to the God of mystery addressing us.
Dwelling in God’s Word in community enables a focus on new insights and understandings through a process of sharing with others; not seeing only what we heard or read about the particular text or what we already think we know about it. As such, it involves slow, sustained and conscious reading.
Dwelling in the Word in community invites the Living Word to penetrate to the innermost being of our personal and communal lives because it is here that God desires to dwell.
Wonderings
I wonder when you last had an experience of being so captured by something that you were unable to look away.
I wonder what has been the most sustained commitment or relationship in your life.
I wonder what benefits you have found from an experience of staying with.
Prayer
All-knowing God, you look at me so intently that you can count the hairs on my head. Help me to see as you see; to look at people, creatures, and the world in which we live, with lingering gaze of love. You looked and all you saw was good. Captivate the eyes of my heart that I look and look again until I see what you see. Amen.
Spiritual exercise
Think of something in your home of which you have more than four examples (e.g. books, family photos, objects you collect etc.). Bring together a good selection of these items and spread them out wherever you can. Take time to look at and handle them. Remember why you have them, where they came from, when they came into your possession. Turn those memories into prayers (whether of thanksgiving or healing) and sense what God is saying to you about the sustained place that they have in your life.
Art actions
View the Chagall windows online at https://www.tudeley.org/chagallwindows.htm and plan a visit.
Discover more about the Art Stations of the Cross and Dwelling in the Word at https://www.coexisthouse.org.uk/stations2016.html and https://churchmissionsociety.org/resources/dwelling-word/
[i] J. Crockford, ‘Chagall at Tudeley’, Sermon preached at University Church, Oxford, 7th April 2019 - https://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk/sermons/chagall-tudeley?fbclid=IwAR3hxj1Lah8A5Uq2yYjggxw1rafwJlxq-4V86olsvwSdpyoLAJ11kKNvKAc
[ii] J. Crockford, ‘Chagall at Tudeley’, Sermon preached at University Church, Oxford, 7th April 2019 - https://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk/sermons/chagall-tudeley?fbclid=IwAR3hxj1Lah8A5Uq2yYjggxw1rafwJlxq-4V86olsvwSdpyoLAJ11kKNvKAc
[iii] C. Kent & J. Steward, Learning by Heart, Allworth Press, 2008, p.14
[iv] C. Kent & J. Steward, Learning by Heart, Allworth Press, 2008, p.12
[v] R. Carter, ‘The City is my Monastery: A contemporary rule of life’, Canterbury Press, 2019, p. 219
[vi] R. Carter, ‘The City is my Monastery: A contemporary rule of life’, Canterbury Press, 2019, p. 224
[vii] https://www.makotofujimura.com/writings/beauty-without-regret/
[viii] M. Fujimura, Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering, IVP, 2016
[ix] https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-fate-of-the-arts/articles/interview-with-artist-makoto-fujimura
[x] https://www.makotofujimura.com/writings/beauty-without-regret/
Click here for the other parts of 'Seeing is Receiving'. See also 'And a little child shall lead them' which explores similar themes.
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U2 - Stay (Faraway, So Close).
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