Between: August 2022

Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Artlyst - Hidden Depths: The Woman in the Window – Dulwich Picture Gallery

My latest exhibition review for A rtlyst is on 'Reframed: The Woman in the Window' at Dulwich Picture Gallery:

‘It’s such a simple motif – a woman at or by a window – yet, as curator Jennifer Sliwka ably demonstrates in this show, is one that contains hidden depths. This exhibition concisely and clearly maps out the history of this motif, shows us several specific foci of its use over the centuries, while also exploring the extent to which this has been a motif of male artists reflecting the male gaze, before then highlighting ways in which female artists have subverted, used and critiqued the motif.

It is a significant achievement on Sliwka’s part to navigate across so much contested ground with such care and consideration, while delivering an exhibition that never fails to engage visually as well as intellectually. Alongside her consideration of the ‘woman in the window’ motif are also reflections on the nature of windows; not simply openings in walls but, as Sliwka notes, charged thresholds, sites of observation or communication, and signifiers of wealth or spiritual meaning. The layers of meaning explored in this exhibition are, as a result, significant and deep.

The exhibition identifies the key geographic locations, cultures and time periods for which the motif had a particular meaning and what this reveals about issues of gender and visibility. As such, it is instructive to view the exhibition alongside Feminine power: the divine to the demonic at the British Museum, which explores the representation of feminine power or desire in material form. In both, no simple answers are proffered to the issues raised but there is a wealth of imagery and ideas shared with which to engage.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Articles -

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The Innocence Mission - Look Out From Your Window.

Artlyst: Holiday Snaps – End Of Summer Art Diary

My latest diary article for A rtlyst is an additional summer diary based on a trip to Mallorca :

‘At the end of the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth, art and economic development through the growth of tourism went hand-in-hand in Mallorca; one way, among many, in which reason and art became co-terminus. Art and land have had a longstanding symbiotic relation here, whether documenting Mallorcan life or marvelling at natural beauty. Yet despite the broadening of art in media and concept that began in the twentieth century and continues into the present, as these current exhibitions show art retains its connection with the land – never more urgently than in our climate emergency – and also continues to explore personal and societal reasons for existence creating spaces for contemplation, challenge and change.'

For other posts on my Mallorcan visits, past and present, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Articles -

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James MacMillan - O Radiant Dawn.

Tuesday, 30 August 2022

The Psalms Project

It's getting close! Danish/British violinist Emma-Marie Kabanova is performing at St Andrew's Wickford this Friday evening (7.00 - 9.00 pm). Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-psalms-project-tickets-387928995067. The event will be livestreamed so register to join us in the building or to view online.

Emma-Marie Kabanova completed a Master’s degree at Goldsmith’s College, University of London where she specialized in performance of music by late Soviet composers. She completed further studies in violin performance at the Novosibirsk Conservatory and studied privately with a principal violinist of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra in Moscow, Russia.

Formerly based in Moscow, Emma-Marie was a guest Principal with the Moscow Baroque Soloists, performed with Opera Omnia early opera company and was the artistic director of Globus Music baroque ensemble where she created collaborative projects with singers and dancers from the Bolshoi Theatre, the Helikon Opera and the Stanislavsky Theatre. Recent concerts include appearances with the Oxford Alternative Orchestra UK, The National Chamber Orchestra of Moldova, and at festivals in the UK, Hungary and Turkey.

Emma-Marie teaches violin and has worked as a classroom music teacher. Between 2007 and 2014 she set up musical education projects working with terminally ill children in Siberia and young offenders in an institution in Moscow. In 2017 was given a ‘Points of Light’ award by the UK Prime Minister for this work. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Emma-Marie found it impossible to stay in Russia and returned to the UK where she has been working as a freelance violinist.

The Psalms Project is a unique event combining performances of new sacred music with discussion of the Psalms. This interactive event features new psalm-inspired works written by an international collection of Jewish and Christian composers. Curated and produced by Deus Ex Musica.

Through a combination of live performances and informal discussions, this event invites listeners to consider the ways these new compositions respond to the Biblical texts that inspired them. What insight into these ancient poems do these works provide for us today? How do they help us experience the psalms in new ways? Can they teach us anything about the spiritual dimension of Scripture? What do they tell us about contemporary sacred music’s ability to contribute to dialogues about faith in our secular society?

Moderated by musician, scholar, and teacher Delvyn Case, this event is open to anyone. No religious background or musical experience is necessary. Attendees may participate in the discussion or simply enjoy the music and the conversation.

No tickets required. A retiring collection will be taken.

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Emma-Marie Kabanova - D. Buxtehude - Sonata in A minor BuxWV 272.

Monday, 29 August 2022

Consenting Attention: Simone Weil's Prayer and the Poetry of Denise Levertov

For more on poets, attention and prayer (see my post Poets paying attention to prayer) see also the following:

A Poetics of Consenting Attention: Simone Weil's Prayer and the Poetry of Denise Levertov
Katy Wright-Bushman

Abstract: This article examines the practice of attention as a subject of Denise Levertov's poetry, one that emerges fully only after her commitment to Christianity and its convictions of immanent, incarnate transcendence. Simone Weil fluidly and precisely describes this practice and the receptive consent to the subject that accompanies it in her response to stark contemporary circumstances earlier in the century. I explore Levertov's exemplification of this practice in Weil's terms, arguing that Levertov's hesitant and late-arriving Catholicism, like Weil's own devotional experience, underwrites the responsorial practice of attention. It operates for Levertov as both a poetic method and as a response to contemporary questions of poetics and language, producing a poetics that privileges the possibility of knowing as love and speaking as prayer.

and

Poetry, Attentiveness and Prayer: One Poet's Lesson

Ed Block

Abstract: In The Grain of Wheat, Hans Urs von Balthasar quotes St. Basil on the intent contemplation of God's works. In Letters to Malcolm, C. S. Lewis speaks of making “every pleasure into a channel of adoration”, by praising “these pure and spontaneous pleasures” as “‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.” According to Iris Murdoch, such attentiveness requires a degree of “selflessness” that resembles aesthetic contemplation and— it may be inferred — prayerful reflection. Using these passages and others by Kathleen Norris and Simone Weil, this essay offers related perspectives on the process and the effects of attentiveness, in poetry and prayer. Poets practise, and thereby teach an attentiveness that is analogous to that achieved in certain forms of prayer. Prayer, like poetry, gives thanks for the mysteries — even as it seeks to understand and respond to the injustices and sufferings — of life. Denise Levertov illustrates in her poetry an awareness of how such attentiveness can be productive, in her late religious poems especially.

These themes are also explored in ""passionate reverence / active love": Levertov and Weil in the Communion of Struggle" by Cynthia R. Wallace "in this need to dance/this need to kneel: Denise Levertov and the Poetics of Faith", edited by Michael P. Murphy and Melissa Bradshaw. Wipf and Stock, 2019.

That Denise Levertov (1923-97) was one of the most pioneering and skilled poets of her generation is beyond dispute. Her masterly use of language, innovative experimentations with organic form, and the political acuity disclosed by her activist poetry are well marked by critical communities. But it is also quite clear that the poems Levertov wrote in the last twenty years of her life, with their more explicit focus on theological themes and subjects, are among the best poems written on religious experience of any century, let alone the twentieth. The collection of essays gathered here shed vital light on this neglected aspect of Levertov studies so as to expand and enrich the scope of critical engagement. In a mixture of theoretical considerations and close readings, these essays provide valuable reflections about the complex relationship between poetry and belief and offer philosophically robust insights into different styles of poetic imagination. The abiding hope is to broaden the terrain for discussions in twenty-first-century theology, literary theory, poetics, and aesthetics--honoring immanence, exploring transcendence, and dwelling with integrity within the spaces between.

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Bill Fay - City Of Dreams.

Sunday, 28 August 2022

Supporting and encouraging others in their development and growth

Here's the reflection I shared during Evensong at St Catherine's Wickford this evening:

John the Baptist had been the hot prophet of his time in Israel. He had been the man of the moment with people flocking to him in the desert to be baptized but now there was competition. Jesus, his younger relative, was just down the track at another site where there was plenty of water for baptizing and now the people were flocking to him instead of to John (John 3: 22-36).

How would John react? Would he see it as a competition? Would he fight back or drop out and leave without seeing what his competitor would do? His disciples obviously felt aggrieved by what was going on. In verse 26, we read that “they went to John and said, ‘Teacher, you remember the man who was with you on the east side of the Jordan, the one you spoke about? Well, he is baptising now, and everyone is going to him!’.”

John’s reaction was a surprise to his disciples because he wasn’t devastated. Instead, he willingly recognises Jesus’ pre-eminence – describing Jesus as the bridegroom and himself as the best man - and says that Jesus “must become more important” while he, John, becomes “less important.” To John there is no competition, he encourages Jesus in developing his mission and ministry, he actively points Jesus out to others and contributes to the development of Jesus’ ministry and accepts that in the process his role, position and influence will decline.

In this way he gives us a wonderful example of how one generation can support, encourage and bring through a new generation. Each one of us has the opportunity in our homes, our workplaces, our communities and here in our church to support and encourage others in their development and growth as people and in their ministry for God. And, if those we encourage surpass our own achievements, then that is not a cause for resentment or for frustration but instead a cause for celebration and a sign of our success in effectively grooming those people for greatness.

In Isaiah 43 God says, “Do not cling to events of the past or dwell on what happened long ago. Watch for the new thing I am going to do.” By looking for the new thing that God was doing, John the Baptist saw God himself as a human being, uniting heaven and earth, speaks God’s words, full of God’s Spirit, and demonstrating God’s power. I wouldn’t have wanted to have missed that if I had been in John’s shoes but many of his contemporaries did because they were focused on the past instead of looking to the future.

God calls us to be John the Baptist’s, people who are looking out for the new thing that God is doing and then calling attention to it and helping it to emerge. What new initiatives, young people, changing attitudes and roles or social trends are part of the new thing that God is doing in our day and how can we be witnesses to them?

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Al Green - How Great Thou Art.

Everyone in

Here's the sermon that I preached in this morning's Eucharist at St Mary's Runwell:

When the Covid-19 pandemic began, the government set up an initiative called Everyone In. This aimed to provide a hotel room plus support to everyone sleeping rough on the streets. This new national homelessness strategy proved extremely effective and resulted in a large number of formerly homeless people moving into longer-term accommodation and therefore leaving the streets.

The policy demonstrated that with the right levels of funding and support, homelessness can be almost eradicated. The government's motivation for this approach was not so much concern for homeless people, as concern that Covid-19 would circulate more rapidly and aggressively if homeless people remained on the streets.

Without that imperative driving government policy, approaches to tackling homelessness have now returned to what they were pre-pandemic and the numbers living rough on our streets have risen significantly once again, and will rise further due to the cost of living crisis.

In our Gospel reading today (Luke 14.1, 7-14), Jesus talks about the limitations of charitable activity that is based on calculations of benefit for ourselves but also uses self-interest as a motivation to move towards a greater degree of selflessness.

Jesus lived a life of self-sacrifice without benefit for himself in order to bring love to others. Through the incarnation he gave up equality with God the Father to become the servant of humanity, as the teacher of his disciples he gave them an example of service by washing their feet, and, on the cross, he laid down his own life for the sake of all.

His ultimate challenge to us is to live life for the benefit of others or, as he explains here, to invite and welcome all those unable to repay us for our hospitality precisely because they cannot repay. True love is only true when we gain no personal benefit from it. When we benefit from our relationships with others, even with God, it means that we are not loving simply for the sake of the other but for a range of other reasons.

Jesus recognises, however, the challenge that this poses to people like us - each and every human being – as those for whom self-interest and survival are hard-wired into our being. Therefore, he teaches us by means of the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, a story of a shrewd manager who learns the benefits of relationships through self-interest after losing his job or challenges us to go further towards self-sacrifice by saying in the Parable of the Persistent Widow that, if hard-hearted people, like the Judge in that story, can do kind things for selfish reasons, should we not go further.

On this occasion, he challenges those who are self-interestedly taking the places of honour at a meal by using the logic of their self-interest to argue for greater humility on their part. He says it's actually of greater benefit to you to take the lower place initially and be called up, than to take the higher place and be demoted. He makes this argument, however, to try to start them on a journey towards greater humility and awareness of others, not to simply maintain them in a mindset of self-interest.

So, where, I wonder, are we on this journey towards selflessness? Are we at the beginning, like the guests at the meal, competing for the places of honour but open to the idea that there may be a different way to achieve their goals? Or are we further down the road of selflessness finding ways to be with others that don't involve personal benefit for ourselves? The important thing is to begin and to recognise that it's a lifelong journey.

Like any journey, though, it is one with a destination. The destination towards which we are heading is heaven, a place where we enjoy God, others, and ourselves for who and what we are, rather than for the benefit we can receive from others.

In heaven there is nothing to fix and nothing we need – no more death, mourning, crying or pain - instead there is just the experience of being with others and growing in appreciation for who they are as themselves. That is the reality Jesus is looking towards here with his talk of relationships that don't involve repayments for us. Once we go beyond relationships from which we get personal benefit and move into relationships which are simply about enjoying others for who they are, then we are approaching heaven.

With that mindset, the name of the government's pandemic homelessness strategy takes on additional significance. Everyone in. That's what Jesus is talking about when he says we should invite to our meals those who are normally excluded and cannot repay us. Everyone in. That's what our churches should be like, because they should be providing a taste of heaven. Everyone in.

But note that what Jesus commends here is also just a stage on the journey. Inviting those who cannot repay because they cannot repay is a way of creating in us a mindset of seeing God in others by appreciating others for who they are, rather than what they can do for us. When we have that mindset, then we are in heaven by being with others and enjoying them for who they are. That is when inclusion becomes reality, with others and ourselves accepted and appreciated and understood and loved as we are. Everyone in. A real taste of heaven. That's the destination towards which Jesus wants us to travel. Have we begun?

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Ho Wai-On - You Are Not Alone.

Windows on the world (392)

Port de Pollensa, 2022

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Pēteris Vasks - Presence.

Friday, 26 August 2022

BasildON Creative People and Places

BasildON Creative People and Places is a radical, new cultural programme for people living, working and socialising in Basildon borough.

The mission is simple; to unleash the creative spirit that runs through the veins of our community and provide more opportunities for local people to commission, create and participate in cultural activity in Basildon.

They say:

"Most importantly, BasildON Creative People & Places is all about YOU driving and deciding what cultural activity YOU want to see on your doorstep.

Together, we can uplift the town centre with bright and beautiful murals. We can turn our public squares into dance floors. We can even transform vacant shops into music hubs…

Nothing is impossible, if we all work together!

We have three years and £1.7million to make this happen, so let’s get cracking!"

There are five core projects that sit within the BasildON Creative People & Places Programme, which you can read about here. However, what is even more important is that YOU can have a genuine say in what these projects look like. Join their mailing list or check out the latest opportunities for you to get involved as an artist, volunteer or resident.

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Depeche Mode - Just Can't Get Enough.

Wednesday, 24 August 2022

The greatest among you must become like the youngest

Here's the reflection I shared at today's midweek Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

At my first training weekend as a curate the then Bishop of Barking, David Hawkins, performed a handstand to demonstrate the way in which Jesus, through his teaching in the beatitudes, turns our understanding of life upside down. He was thinking of the way in which Jesus startles us as paradox, irony and surprise permeate his teachings flipping our expectations upside down: the least are the greatest; adults become like children; the religious miss the heavenly banquet; the immoral receive forgiveness and blessing. Bishop David's action turned our expectations, as curates, of Bishops and their behaviour upside-down at the same time that it perfectly illustrated his point.

Today’s Gospel reading (Luke 22.24-30) is one of those passages where Jesus turns conventional thinking on its head by telling his disciples that “the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves.” Jesus turns the meaning of greatness and leadership upside down. No longer are they to be understood in terms of garnering wealth and power for oneself. Now they are understood to be about service; giving your life that others might live. Jesus, as the servant King, says to us, ‘I, your Lord and Teacher, have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash one another’s feet. I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you.’

The most radical reversal in a culture where the elders were revered is that “the greatest among you must become like the youngest.” Years before, the prophet Isaiah had promised a child born for us who would establish endless peace upheld with justice and righteousness. Isaiah described a time when the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard would lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, with a little child leading them (Isaiah 11.1-9).

Isaiah's vision of the peaceable kingdom was centred on a child born to be the Prince of Peace. When that promised child came among us at Jesus, he said: ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs’; ‘Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’; ‘Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’ and ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’

The child born for us leads us to become like children. Why is this so? Children see the peaceable kingdom, until adults teach them otherwise. That is why the children are our future and can lead the way into a better future. We need to unlearn the dirty devices of this world in order to become, as it were, a little child again that we may enter into the Kingdom of God.

Nicola Ravenscroft, the creator of the mudcub sculptures that we have at St Andrew’s this autumn, intuitively understands these truths and, as a maternal sculptor, creates children that through their connection to nature grant us a vision of the peaceable kingdom toward which they wish to lead us. Her mudcub sculptures, simply dressed in soft silk tulle, hesitate in time, leaning forward, hopeful, poised to dive, eyes closed, dreaming into their future, anticipating things unseen.

Nicola writes that “as an artist, I am visionary, sculptor, mother to many, and grandmother to even more.” She adds that she breathes life into life taking “clay, dirt and stardust, shaped and twisted torn smoothed and broken lost, found and moulded wax and singing molten bronze through white-hot crucible-refining fire, Earth’s own core breathing life into revealing-truth, a giving-birth to energy.” The result is this collection of mudcubs – children intimately connected to the earth – reminding us of our duty of care to life, to love, to planet earth.

She says they are, are “earth’s messenger-angels: silently calling us all to live in peace with nature”: “Earth’s children are life’s heartbeat: they are her hope, her future ... they are breath of Earth herself. Creative, inquisitive and trusting, children are Earth’s possibility thinkers. They seek out, and flourish in fellowship, in ‘oneness’, and being naturally open-hearted, and wide-eyed hungry for mystery, delight and wonder, they embrace diversity with the dignity of difference.”

These are the children we are called to welcome, the children we are to become, the children to whom the peaceable kingdom belongs. They stand together, peacefully, as friends, vulnerable and strong, silently singing out their call to change. These little children lead with trusting feet, plump and bare. The Prince of Peace is with them and calls us to let them lead the way.

As we contemplate these children this autumn, may we be led by Jesus to become like little children ourselves.

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Raphael Ravenscroft - "... and a little child shall lead ..." Isaiah 11:6.

Monday, 22 August 2022

Coming events in the Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry

Messy Church is a way of being church for families and others. It is Christ-centred, for all ages, based on creativity, hospitality and celebration. Messy Holy Day, 2-4pm, 27 August, St Mary’s Vicarage garden Runwell. Kids must bring an adult. Contact Revd Sue: sue.wise@sky.com or Emma: emmacdoe@googlemail.com. Date for your diary - Messy Harvest, 8 October.

The Psalms Project

A unique event combining performances of new sacred music with interfaith discussion. Performed by acclaimed violinist Emma-Marie Kabanova, this interactive event features new psalm-inspired works written by an international collection of Jewish and Christian composers. Curated and produced by Deus Ex Musica.

Through a combination of live performances and informal discussions, this event invites listeners to consider the ways these new compositions respond to the Biblical texts that inspired them. What insight into these ancient poems do these works provide for us today? How do they help us experience the psalms in new ways? Can they teach us anything about the spiritual dimension of Scripture? What do they tell us about contemporary sacred music’s ability to contribute to dialogues about faith in our secular society? Moderated by musician, scholar, and teacher Delvyn Case, this event is open to anyone. No religious background or musical experience is necessary. Attendees may participate in the discussion or simply enjoy the music and the conversation.

Friday 2 September 2022, 19:00 – 21:00 BST, St Andrew's Church, 11 London Road, Wickford SS12 0AN. No tickets required. A retiring collection will be taken. Let us know you're coming by registering at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-psalms-project-tickets-387928995067.

Quiet Day: Praying through the Week

Wednesday 14 September, 10.30 am – 3.30 pm, St Mary’s Runwell (Runwell Road, Runwell,
Essex SS11 7HS)

Explore how to hear from and encounter God in the ordinary, everyday things, people, situations and emotions around you. Reflect in the magnificent mediaeval building that is St Mary’s Runwell, and relax in its beautiful churchyard. St. Mary’s itself is often described by visitors and by regular worshippers as a powerful sacred space to which they have been drawn. Experience this for yourself, while also exploring its art and heritage. Led by Revd Jonathan Evens, Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell

Cost: £8.00 per person, including sandwich lunch (pay on the day). To book: Phone 07803 562329 or email jonathan.evens@btinternet.com.

Gospel and Culture: churches as meeting places

Explore the relationship between churches and Culture with Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on whose theology much of HeartEdge’s thinking is based. Sam Wells sees churches as meeting places of human and divine, gospel and culture, timeless truth and embodied experience, word and world. As a result, they are like estuaries.

Estuaries, where salt water mixes with fresh in a confluence of river and tidal waters, are environments of preparation where, for example, young salmon, striped bass, and other fish come downstream after hatching. Churches that regard themselves as meeting places of the human and divine are essentially functioning as estuaries. Creating cultural estuaries in churches happens when the creative capital of an artist, the social capital of a minister or community leader, and the material capital of finance or business, converge.

Explore these ideas further with Sam Wells, Revd Paul Carr (Team Rector, Billericay and Little Burstead Team Ministry), Nicola Ravenscroft (Sculptor), Sarah Rogers (HeartEdge), and myself in ‘Gospel and Culture: Churches as meeting places’ at St Andrew’s Wickford on Tuesday 20 September, 10.30 – 3.30 pm. To register, go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gospel-and-culture-churches-as-meeting-places-tickets-391772731787.

Consultations

We are currently consulting with our congregations and the wider community on what people value about the area, issues to be addressed, and how churches should engage with the community. Would you be willing to give us your views? If you would, please complete either our our Church survey at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/QGSJJG5 or our Community survey at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/QGDCM3F.

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Sofia Gubaidulina - Offertorium.

Sunday, 21 August 2022

Vocation: interests, insecurities and arenas

Here's the sermon I preached today at St Catherine's Wickford:

In the film ‘Chariots of Fire’, Eric Liddell says “God made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” Liddell was one of the most famous athletes of modern times and the Olympic glory of Scotland. He was also a Christian who refused to compete on Sunday and refused to compromise. And yet, more than anything else, Eric Liddell believed that “God made me for China.” After the Olympics in 1924 Liddell went to China to serve as a missionary teacher. He remained in China until his death in a Japanese civilian internment camp in 1945. In the Weihsien Internment Camp he was forced into a foretaste of hell itself but there he became legendary and his witness for Christ astounded even many of his fellow Christians.

We currently have another 100 metres runner who feels free when he runs, just as he does when he sings for God in church. Jeremiah Azu, bronze medallist in the 100 metres at the European Championships, puts his sporting success down to his faith in God. “My faith is massive for me. For me, it means athletics isn’t the be all and end all. It helps me take the pressure off myself by knowing I’ve got God on my side. I know there’s nothing to worry about.” The prophet Jeremiah is someone he says he would have liked to have met as he has his name, but also thinks there’s a lot of stuff in that book that relates to him. He says he prays most that God’s will is done in his life.

So, here are two people who believe, like Jeremiah, that they were born to do what they do for God, in their case to run. How do they know that? As the appropriately named Jeremiah Aze says, there is much in the Book of Jeremiah with which we can identify, not least the story of his calling. Let's look at that story now to see three ways in which we can identify our own individual callings and be confident that, like Jeremiah, we, too, are born to do the things we do for God (Jeremiah 1:4-10).

First, our calling is to be found in the unique people we are. Jeremiah was told by God, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Now, we might think that God has never said anything similar to us. If that is so, then I suggest reading Psalm 139 which begins: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. / You know when I sit down and when I rise up; / you discern my thoughts from far away. / You search out my path and my lying down / and are acquainted with all my ways. / Even before a word is on my tongue, / O Lord, you know it completely.” The Psalmist continues: “it was you who formed my inward parts; / you knit me together in my mother’s womb. / I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. / Wonderful are your works; / that I know very well. / My frame was not hidden from you, / when I was being made in secret, / intricately woven in the depths of the earth. / Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. / In your book were written / all the days that were formed for me, / when none of them as yet existed.”

God knows each one of us intimately and prepares us for our calling before we are born, so we need to trust that our interests, skills and talents are gifts from God to be used for his glory. Then, as St Paul wrote to the Colossians, “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3.17). Whatever our task, he wrote, we are to put ourselves into it, as done for the Lord (Colossians 3.23). The poet George Herbert wrote that this way of thinking is the “famous stone / That turneth all to gold.” So, this is where we begin with our calling, looking carefully at our natural interests, abilities and talents and putting them to use where we are doing what we do in the name of the Lord Jesus and for his glory.

Second, we consider our insecurities and look to increase our trust in God to resource as we need it. Like many of us and, like Moses before him, Jeremiah lacked confidence in his ability to speak publicly. He said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” God responds, “I have put my words in your mouth.” So, God promises to give him the words to speak. We see the same happening with Moses when he is called. Moses has at least four objections based on his insecurities, including being “slow of speech and slow of tongue.” Again, God promises, “I will be with your mouth and will teach you what you shall do” (Exodus 3 & 4). Jesus makes the same promise to his disciples, including us, when he says to them: “When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how or what you will answer or what you are to say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.” (Luke 12.11-12) So, God promises to give us resources that we don’t think we have in the moment as we step out in faith by using the gifts and talents we have in God’s service and to God’s glory.

I’ve certainly found this to be true in relation to my ministry. As I went through training, I wondered how I would continually find new things to say in sermons about the same passages. I thought I would at some stage need to get up in the pulpit and say, well, I’ve got nothing new to say about this particular passage. That hasn’t happened yet. In practice, have found that God always provides new thoughts and insights as they are needed.

Finally, God gives Jeremiah a task to perform using the gifts and talents with which he was born and the insights and resources that God provides along the way. That task is to “pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” It sounds dramatic but it’s primarily about discerning what needs to stop and what needs to start; a task which is ever new and always relevant. Jeremiah took on that role for a whole people which made him a prophet but we can all contribute in someway to reflection on what has reached the end of its useful life and what needs to begin as a replacement.

So, ask yourself what you are able to see in regard to those two things? Are you someone with the courage to say that something has come to its natural end? Are you someone with the vision to start something new? Then, ask yourself whether there is an arena in which you can see or sense these things more readily. If that’s in relation to your own life and family, then your ministry will be primarily around home-making. If in relation to the church, then church leadership, whether lay or ordained. If in relation to your work, then you should probably be looking for some kind of managerial role. If in relation to the wider community, then you’re likely to be an effective community activist, and, if in relation to the wider society, then politics is going to be your sphere.

So, Jeremiah’s call provides us with some areas for reflection and questions that we can all explore including: identification of our natural interests, gifts and talents; insecurities that can hold us back from realising our God-given potential; and those arenas in which can discern most clearly what needs to be started and what needs to stop. I invite you to think about those three areas for reflection in the course of this week and then fill in our church questionnaire which in many respects is asking for your views on these things, including ways in which you can contribute to the ongoing mission and ministry of our Team Ministry.

Once you find your answers to these three aspects of calling, you will be able to say, with Jeremiah, Eric Liddell and Jeremiah Azu, I was born to do this and, when I do it well, I feel God’s pleasure.

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Delerious? - Find Me In The River.