Windows on the world (410)

 

Wickford, 2023

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All About Eve - Martha's Harbour.

Parish Study Day: All Ages Are Welcome

We appreciated an excellent Parish Study Day on Saturday at St Andrew's Wickford exploring “All Ages are Welcome”.

As a result of feedback from the 2022 Study Day we focused on how faith experiences change over the ages, and the 'intergenerational possibilities’ we have. We had two speakers. Jamie Sawtell from Bar’n’Bus helped us look at issues for young people today and how we might reach out to young people in our community. The Revd Canon Hugh Dibbens helped us look at the ministry of the more senior among us. In his session entitled 'Calling all Seniors' we thought about the needs and gifts of senior citizens.

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World Party - Is It Like Today?

Exhibition Viewing Evening: 'The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you)'

 

We shared a very special evening of reflection on the nature of welcome at Unveiled in St Andrew's Wickford tonight through deep and personal insights from Celia Webster, Revd Alan Stewart and Revd John Beauchamp. We also prepared a multi-sensory table of welcome as a special installation that was just for tonight's exhibition viewing evening.

Celia Webster says: “When our third little girl was born with learning disabilities my experience was of no longer fitting in, and of feeling that we didn’t belong anywhere. For me the piece is very moving. The young man leaning on Jesus’ shoulder reminds me of the trust my daughter seems to have in God (well, most of the time!) which often teaches and challenges me. The wounded Jesus reassures me that He is never a distant God and like any loving parent experiences his children’s hurt and suffering as his own. His vulnerability reflects the God that came as a vulnerable baby and then refugee and then victim of torture. It reminds me that, whilst sadly we Christians are a very poor advert for Christianity and can appear bigoted, racist, exclusive, homophobic and judgemental, Jesus is not like this. Jesus is the friend of the overlooked and those on the edge. He is the God of an upside-down Kingdom. However worthless, not good enough, whatever sense of failure we might feel, we are shown in this picture that our true identity is found in Jesus who just wants us to be close to him and love him and allow him to love and transform us!”

The artist, Revd Alan Stewart, intends that this Jesus challenges theological and Biblical imagery of blindness as sin or something to be cured. This is a Jesus who comes from a place of vulnerability, unaffected by the visual appearance of others. Responding to the image, a visually impaired friend of Alan’s has written “as a visually impaired person an image of Jesus who is like me makes me feel accepted … I wish my visual impairment would be cured. But I am glad that Jesus embraces it.”

Revd John Beauchamp, Diocesan Disability Ministry Enabler for the Diocese of London, writes that: “In this Last Supper the marginalised and excluded and devalued are invited to the table. Invited to be with Jesus. To sit and eat with Him. To find themselves with Him and recognise themselves in Him. To find that their embodiment is not a barrier but in fact their passport into the kingdom where all of our human diversity is redeemed and celebrated in a riot of joy and celebration.”

 
The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you) exhibition is at St Andrew's Church (11 London Road, Wickford SS12 0AN) from 9 January until Easter. Do come and experience it for yourself. St Andrew’s Church is usually open: Saturdays from 8.30 am to 12.30 pm; Sundays from 9.30 am to 12.00 noon; Mondays from 1.30 to 3.45 pm; Tuesdays from 1.00 to 4.30 pm; and Wednesdays from 10.00 am to 12.00 noon. To arrange a visit with in-person audio description please contact Revd Jonathan Evens on tel: 07803 562329 or email: jonathan.evens@btinternet.com. See http://wickfordandrunwellparish.org.uk/whats-on.html for fuller information. 

The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you) is an image in charcoal of the Last Supper by Revd Alan Stewart, which includes the central character of a visually impaired Jesus, surrounded by twelve people of differing ages, backgrounds and abilities. At the table, an empty chair invites the viewer to find themselves at the table.

The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you) has been commissioned by Celia Webster, Co-Founder of Wave (We’re All Valued Equally), as part of a project in which it seeds other images of the Last Supper that are truly for everyone. Schools, churches and community groups are being invited as part of this project to create their own Last Supper images.

The exhibition includes additional Last Supper images created by: (Still) Calling from the Edge conference; WAVE (We are All Valued Equally); St Mary's Catholic Primary School in Muswell Hill; and St Paul's CE Primary School in Barnet.
 

The photographs of the WAVE Church Last Supper were taken by Maria de Fatima Campos.  Pupils in year 1 and 2 at St Paul’s CofE School in Friern Barnet created their work with their amazing art teacher, Dimple Sthalekar. The work shows how we begin as roots and then grow. The leaves of the tree are multi-coloured and moveable to show how we can move into different spaces and communities. St Paul's is a hugely welcoming and inclusive school that welcomes children from all backgrounds and faiths and uses the medium of art to convey this.

St Mary's Catholic Primary School focused their piece on the empty chair included in Alan Stewart’s drawing. Pupils in Years 4 and 5 created ‘Take a Seat,’ a piece which uses the technique of mono-printing to create lots of empty chairs as an invitation for everyone to sit down and join the table. They began the project by talking about the empty chair and what it could mean. They also compared and contrasted it with the commissioned drawing to talk about difference and what forms that can take. Through the process, the children decided that the peace dove would make a good representation of god. The words around the dove invite us to take a seat, to unite us in love and community.

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Linda Perhacs - I'm A Harmony.

Church Times Art review - M. K. Ciurlionis: Between Worlds at Dulwich Picture Gallery

My latest review for Church Times is of M. K. Ciurlionis: Between Worlds at Dulwich Picture Gallery:

'In bringing together the celestial and the earthly, the physical and the spiritual, music and painting, the fantastical and the real, the figurative and the abstract, Ciurlionis employed a range of techniques and approaches, including the blurring and blending of forms through light and colour; a layering of lines and colours which enables an interweaving or interpenetration of states and forms; the reversing of forms or states of being, such as sea and sky; and a focus on the horizon as the meeting point between zones or worlds, in which the horizon line often functions as a bridge between worlds.'

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. My writing for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here. See also Modern religious art: airbrushed from art history?

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St Martin's Voices - Light Of The Minds That Know Him.

Conversion of Paul

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

Today the Church remembers the conversion of St Paul (Acts 9. 1-22); a feast that has been celebrated in the Church since the sixth century but which became universal in the twelfth century. Paul’s conversion has become a classic Christian encounter with God, to the extent that the phrase ‘a Damascus Road experience’, meaning an extraordinarily dramatic conversion or a profound life-changing experience, has come into common usage.

Saul’s Damascus Road experience literally turned his life upside down as is symbolised by his fall. One moment he was up on his feet - a leader of others with a warrant from the High Priest to arrest heretics – the next, he was flat on his back in the road with God telling him that those he was persecuting were actually God’s own people – the body of Christ. In one moment, everything he thought he knew was shown to be false and the entire direction that his life had taken up to that point was reversed so that he goes from this encounter to preach the Christ whom formally he had persecuted. The story suggests that this is the power of God’s presence – encounter with God reveals the inadequacy of all that we have known up to that point and turns us around to receive and know the truth.

This is also symbolised by the light which shines in this story. In the Bible, Jesus is spoken of as ‘the light of the world.’ This light shines in the darkness of error and reveals truth. John 3. 18 – 20 says: “This is how the judgement works: the light has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil. Those who do evil things hate the light and will not come to the light, because they do not want their evil deeds to be shown up.” Saul comes into the light, sees that his deeds are evil, turns away from them and begins a new way of life signalled by taking a new name.

Through this encounter Saul sees: that Jesus is God; Jesus has been raised from death and is alive; and Jesus is in his people - the Church, which is the Body of Christ. Or does he? One of the strange aspects of this story is that in the story Saul does not see. He does not actually see Jesus - instead he hears his voice - and the immediate result of the encounter is that Saul is blinded and cannot physically see.

So, what is going on here? Is this encounter with God as straightforward as my earlier comments suggested? It may be that sight distracts us from hearing the still, small (perhaps inner) voice of God; that it is only once he has been blinded by the light that Saul can hear what God wishes to say to him. So, there may be an element of asceticism in the story – the closing off of physical sight in order to enhance spiritual insight.

We might also suggest that darkness, blindness, lack of sight and lack of knowing is actually essential to true encounter with God. As God cannot be defined or fully comprehended by human beings, it may be essential to true encounter with God to realise our inability to fully ‘know’ God and therefore to accept and rest in the darkness and blindness of our lack of knowing.

We also need to remember that his conversion experience was a beginning: Saul took some time to become Paul and some time to begin to understand that his call to preach -- to Jew and to Gentile -- the saving power of Jesus, the Son of God, was something that was a whole life's journey for him. Paul says in his Letter to the Church in Galatia, "God set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace ... Three years after (the Damascus Road conversion), I went up to Jerusalem." The preparation for this moment of his conversion was his whole life.

Finally, it is easy for us to think that to be effective our testimonies must be dramatic as was the testimony of Paul. The story of how the persecutor of the faith became the Apostle to Gentiles, including his Damascus Road experience, was and is a story full of drama and one which had huge impact in its day and has had since.

However, we should not, as a result, despise other less dramatic and more gradual testimonies of faith. My own story is one of growing up in a Christian family and of coming to faith as a child after hearing an account of the crucifixion at a Holiday Bible Club. That night I knelt by my bed and asked Jesus into my life. As a shy teenager very aware of my own shortcomings I later doubted whether I was good enough for God but in my late teens was shown Romans 5. 8, which says “while we were still sinners Christ died for us,” by a youth group leader and, as a result, recommitted my life to Christ. Over the course of my life, I have felt God leading me to develop the particular mix of community action, workplace ministry, artistic activities and relationship building that characterises my ministry today.

That simple, undramatic testimony will I hope be an encouragement to those of you here today who, like me, don’t have dramatic testimonies to tell but who nevertheless have real encounters with God and real growth in faith to share as part of our testimonies. When we do so, we are witnesses to Jesus and to the impact and effect that he has had on our lives. 

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Bob Dylan - Precious Angel.

'Bob Dylan' and 'The Philosophy of Modern Song'

Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut album was released in 1962. It included thirteen songs; two original compositions, with the rest being covers of folk, blues, country and gospel. The album only sold 5,000 copies in its first year of issue and has tended to be overlooked in comparison to the wonders of those albums that quickly followed in its wake. However, it contains, in essence, the seeds of nearly all that Dylan would go on to explore over the course of his lengthy career.

Folk rocker, Frank Turner, says that “You can hear the beginnings of what he was trying to do gathering on this record” because it is “the blueprint” which shows “where he was coming from and, with the benefit of hindsight, what he was heading towards.” Similarly, Campbell Baum has noted that, “What’s great about [Bob Dylan] is it gives you context for the rest of what he did.”

Each genre of song that Dylan included on Bob Dylan has its own significant period in his later career from the early folk albums to his country period, then the gospel albums of the late 70’s and early 80’s to the pre-dominantly blues influenced albums from Time Out of Mind onwards. The only period not really reflected by the song choices on Bob Dylan - although his choice of a song by Jesse Fuller may tip his hat in that direction, given the range of Fuller’s own work - is that of the Great American Songbook as featured on Shadows in the Night, Fallen Angels and Triplicate. The amazing original compositions which featured first on two tracks within Bob Dylan are what gained him his reputation and led to the award of a Nobel Prize and yet covers and covers albums have regularly punctuated his career and renewed his inspiration from the mass of covers among the Basement Tapes through the originally derided Self Portrait to his two acoustic albums from the early 90’s and on to the Christmas album and the three albums mining the Great American Songbook. All these are essentially prefigured by Bob Dylan.

These aspects of Dylan’s debut are worth recalling in relation to The Philosophy of Modern Song, in which Dylan reflects on 66 songs deriving from 1924 through to 2004, and the related interview for the Wall Street Journal following its publication. In that interview, Jeff Slate asked Dylan about his current favourite genre of music and received the following response: “It’s a combination of genres; an abundance of them. Slow ballads, fast ballads, anything that moves. Western Swing, Hillbilly, Jump Blues, Country Blues, everything. Doo-wop, the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, Lowland ballads, Bill Monroe, Bluegrass, Boogie-Woogie. Music historians would say when you mix it all up it’s called Rock and Roll. I guess that would be my favorite genre.” The Philosophy of Modern Song bears out the truth of that response being based, as is Bob Dylan, on a diversity of genres. It is that same diversity of genres that leads Dylan away from the purity of the folk movement to Rock and Roll where he can play with genres in a way that he thought not possible when labelled, at that time, as a ‘folk’ singer.

This has, at least, two implications. First, as Robert McCrum has written, “you can find the secret of his greatness, his ability to play at will in the fields of an Anglo-American oral culture that fuses hillbilly blues with the plangent melancholy of the Celt twilight.” His ability to combine genres constitutes a core element of his genius, particularly when combined with his poetic gift. As Dylan tells Slate, a great song “crosses genres” and “is the sum of all things”.

Second, as he told Newsweek’s David Gates in 1997: “Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like ‘Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain’ or ‘I Saw the Light’ — that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.” So, when he tells Slate his “first love,” musically speaking, is “sacred music, church music, ensemble singing” and states, “I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it”, it is “the religiosity and philosophy in the music” of which he is speaking.

The Philosophy of Modern Song doesn’t offer a philosophy for creating modern songs, instead it describes “the religiosity and philosophy” that Dylan has found in modern songs.

Andrew Tolkmith has written of this in terms of The Philosophy of Modern Song being “deeply rooted in Christian culture.” He begins his argument by suggesting that it is “at least noteworthy, even if it is only pure coincidence, that there are sixty-six chapters, the same as the number of books in a Protestant Bible, and the book is replete with references to Catholicism and Scripture, some more serious and some more flippant.”

He notes, too, that it has “long been argued that Dylan’s music cannot be understood without a deep knowledge of the Bible, and the same is true for the music that Dylan reveres” giving examples from Dylan’s notes on ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Blue Bayou’ and ‘If You Don’t Know By Now’:

“Many songs Dylan explores clearly signify elements of Christianity, and for good reason: most of these songs were created in a world that was Christian socially, morally, and cultically. Up through the revolutions of the 1960s, elements of Christendom permeated the wider Western culture and held strong influence in the arts. This holds true in most music genres of the time, the same genres that hold Dylan’s attention in this book: blues, country, folk, bluegrass, jazz, and early rock and roll. Dylan puts it this way in the same chapter on “If You Don’t Know Me by Now”:

One of the reasons people turn away from God is because religion is no longer in the fabric of their lives. It is presented as a thing that must be journeyed to as a chore—it’s Sunday, we have to go to church. Or, it is used as a weapon of threat by political nutjobs on either side of every argument. But religion used to be in the water we drank, the air we breathed. Songs of praise were as spine-tingling as, and in truth the basis of, songs of carnality. Miracles illuminated behavior and weren’t just spectacle.”

Tolkmith concludes: “We have forgotten the musical traditions that form the bedrock of our music, and we need to return to them. If we heed his words, we will find that those traditions matured in a Christian culture.”

As Dylan put it in 1997, in a quote that could form the blurb for The Philosophy of Modern Song: "Those old songs are my lexicon and prayer book. All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from `Let Me Rest on that Peaceful Mountain' to `Keep on the Sunny Side.' You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs. I believe in Hank Williams singing `I Saw the Light.' I've seen the light, too."

And all this was prefigured and there in essence on Bob Dylan.

Read my posts on Dylan and apocalypse here, Springtime in New York here, Trouble No More here, Dylan as Pilgrim here, and all my posts featuring Dylan here. For more on The Philosophy of Modern Song see here. More reflections on Dylan can be found in my co-authored book The Secret Chord.

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Bob Dylan - Gospel Plow.

There is time

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

Last year, I led a Memorial Service for a friend from St Martin-in-the-Fields who died an untimely death. For those of us who gathered for the Memorial, there was no getting away from that fact, and lockdown had also meant that for many of us our contact with our friend had been less than it might otherwise have been. Those were tough truths and caused us real sadness as we gathered to remember her and give thanks for her life.

Nevertheless, the reading from Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes 3.1-11) that she had chosen for that reminded us that, although the time she had had with us was shorter than we would have liked, there had been time for her life to impact us and others, while there was also time for her to live through the whole gamut of life's experiences from great joys to great sorrows.

At her Memorial we heard of childhood friendships enduring into adulthood and later friendships built on lived experience of discrimination, leading to advocacy on behalf of others. There was time to reflect on places that, at points, provided safe space and community space to her and also places like the Wards of the Hospitals in which she stayed that were restrictive and conflicted spaces in which to be. There was time too, to also hear the voice, as through her writings, she had articulated her experiences and advocated on behalf of others whilst acknowledging the many ways in which hers was a voice insufficiently heard, sharing experiences that are insufficiently understood and appreciated. In her life there had been time for travel to places like Palestine that impacted her deeply and which gave lifelong commitments and also times in which she was confined to one place, whether on a ward or in her flat during lockdown. There had also been time for talking - conversation, prayer, presentations, advocacy - and time for silence - whether of reflection or of discrimination when her voice went unheard.

Her Memorial Service provided time in which we could say that ‘This was the woman I knew’ and time to hear others saying, ‘This was the woman I knew’. There was time to gather up the richness, the fullness, the diversity of her personality and experiences in order we all experienced a greater depth in our understanding of her, all that we appreciated about her, all that we had shared with her, could share of her with others and could learn of her from others. There was time for anger at the discrimination and lack of understanding that she and others face. There was time for inspiration from the experiences she articulated, the statements she left and the example she provided. There was time in which the extremes, the contradictions, the confusions, the paradoxes of life and experience could be held and where the limits of our own understandings could be acknowledged in a time and space where we each one valued and affirmed her for the dear, special, unique and gifted person that she was and came to know that we can now hold and appreciate in our hearts forever the time that each of us shared with her and had now shared with one another.

Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 tells us that there is time, even when lives are cut short, if we use the time that is available to us. All too often we do not take the time we have to be with those that are important to us. All too often we distract ourselves with unimportant tasks and fail to do the things that are truly of importance to us. Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 encourages us to use the time that we have. So, as we often pray during funerals, grant us, Lord, the wisdom and the grace to use aright the time that is left to us on earth. Let us use that time to know others more completely, appreciate them more fully, love them more deeply, and, in that knowing, know ourselves more intimately. For to know and appreciate and love and enjoy each other in that way is heaven. 

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U2 - 13 (There Is A Light).

Making decisions about future directions in life

Here's my sermon from today's Eucharist at St Catherine’s Wickford:

Am I in the right place? Following the right path? In the right work? What is God’s will for my life? What is my vocation? These are just some of the questions prompted by this passage (Matthew 4. 12-23), as we read of Jesus, those who heard him, and his first disciples all making key decisions about their future direction of travel. Hopefully, we shall see some of the factors which play a part in their decision making.

Jesus hears that John the Baptist is no longer able to continue his public ministry because he has been imprisoned. As John was his predecessor, the one who was preparing the way for Jesus' own ministry, Jesus judges that the time is now right for his ministry to begin. So circumstances seem to provide the trigger or opportunity for Jesus’ ministry to begin and can play a part in our lives too. Jesus seemed able to read circumstances well, we not always able to do that as well as he did and sometimes only understand what was happening to us at the time when we look back.

As a teenager, I didn’t get the grades needed to get into University and felt like dropping out of education altogether. I was persuaded to go through clearing however and got a place at Middlesex Polytechnic, so came to London instead of Leicester, where I’d been intending to study. As I was applying late, there was no accommodation available in Halls and so I had to find somewhere to live off site. Once I’d settled in, I started going to the parish Church which was where I met Christine, who became my wife. I thought at the time that doing less well in my A levels was a disaster, but without that happening I would not have had the marriage and family that I now have. I was being led through circumstances to something wonderful but had no idea that that was the case at the time.

While circumstances played a part, Jesus also allowed scripture to shape the form that his ministry would take. The Gospel writer includes a quote from Isaiah 9, a passage which is often read at Christmas, to explain what Jesus was doing. A key theme of the prophecies collected in Isaiah is that of Israel as God’s servant. Jesus takes this servant role assigned to Israel in prophecy as his ministry template or job description and so, guided by scripture, he chose to begin his ministry in Galilee.

We can also base our lives and ministry on a template or job description. Our template is Jesus himself - so, for example, the letter to the Philippians talks about knowing Christ in order to become like him. Christlikeness should be our goal as Christians; not that we ever attain in this life. Our job description is essentially Jesus’ own manifesto taken from the Book of Isaiah and read at Nazareth near the beginning of his ministry: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to … bring good news to the poor … proclaim liberty to the captives … recovery of sight to the blind … set free the oppressed … and announce that the time for salvation has come.

Jesus’ message to those who listened to his preaching was that Israel was on the wrong path and must turn around and move in the opposite direction. Tom Wright writes that, “Jesus believed that his contemporaries were going in the wrong direction. They were bent on revolution of the standard kind: military resistance to occupying forces, leading to a takeover of power … The problem with all these movements was that they were fighting darkness with darkness, and Israel was called - and Jesus was called - to bring God’s light into the world. That’s why Matthew hooks up Jesus’ early preaching with the prophecy of Isaiah that spoke about people in the dark being dazzled by a sudden light … Jesus could see that the standard kind of revolution, fighting and killing in order to put an end to … fighting and killing, was a nonsense. Doing it in God’s name was a blasphemous nonsense.

But the trouble was that many of his contemporaries were eager to get on with the fight. His message of repentance was not, therefore, that they should feel sorry for personal and private sins (though he would of course want that as well), but that as a nation they should stop rushing towards the cliff edge of violent revolution, and instead go the other way, towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness, for themselves and for the world.”

What do we as a nation need to turn away from in order to turn towards God? Some years ago, William Butler, then chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, was quoted as saying that we have lived beyond our means year after year and the nation collectively has to consume less while Janice Turner argued that consumerism has become like a religion to us leading us to believe that living standards would keep being upgraded like mobile phones. The cost of living crisis means that we can’t spend as we did and can’t live beyond our means any longer, but, can we, as a nation, stop rushing towards the cliff edge of consumerism, and instead go the other way, towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness?

Maybe, if we catch once again a vision of Jesus as he really is, we can. The integration of Jesus' message with his personality and actions was so attractive for his first disciples that they left their livelihoods to be with him doing the things that he did and becoming part of his mission bringing the rule of love in the kingdom of God. Why did they give up the security which they had to follow a wandering preacher? “The answer can only be in Jesus himself, and in the astonishing magnetism of his presence and personality. This can be known and felt today, as we meditate on the stories about him and pray to know him better, just as the first disciples knew and felt his presence 2,000 years ago.”

So, are we able to demonstrate in some way the kingdom of God where we work or live? Is what we do currently contributing to the coming of Jesus' revolution of love? Do we need to turn around and leave what we are currently engaged with in order that we might be engaged with the kingdom of God or do we need to listen to circumstances and scripture in order to understand how to live under the rule of love in the place where we are right now?

These are just some the questions which arise from the varying ways in which see Jesus, his disciples, and those who heard his preaching, making decisions about their future direction in life. Lead us, Lord, in your ways that we may live under your rule of love revealing your kingdom where we live and work.

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Rev Simpkins - Sing Your Life.

Windows on the world (409)

 London, 2023

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The Byrds - My Back Pages.

ArtWay Visual Meditation: In Him All Things Hold Together

My latest Visual Meditation for ArtWay is on Canticle for Assisi by Andrew Vessey:

'This painting was the fruit of a visit to Assisi by the artist Andrew Vessey (b. 1945) and his wife. They were hosted by an artist who was then working on a ‘tavola’ of St Francis, to hang in the Franciscan Church in Assisi and match one made earlier on the life of St Clare, one of St Francis’ first followers and founder of a Franciscan order for women, The Poor Clares. Through excursions and little pilgrimages made during the stay Francis was brought to life for Vessey and his wife, enabling a vision of Christ to emerge – as had inspired St Francis at nearby San Damiano – when he began a painting intended to gather up his impressions of Assisi.

Vessey has described what happened as he painted: ‘As the painting developed something wonderful began to happen. Having painted the city steps and turrets, combining elements from above, below and around the city, its olive groves and poplar trees out on the plain, it was as if the arms and body of the crucified Christ became the perfect cohesion needed to hold everything together. The stretched out body of the crucified Christ … started to emerge through the countryside, wrapping even the hills in its embrace.’'

My review for Church Times of Andrew's recent exhibition at St Edmundsbury Cathedral can be found here.

My visual meditations include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Jake Flood, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, Lakwena Maciver, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Sidney Nolan, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Nicola Ravenscroft, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton, Anna Sikorska, Alan Stewart, Jan Toorop, Edmund de Waal and Sane Wadu.

My Church of the Month reports include: All Saints Parish Church, Tudeley, Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsingham, Coventry Cathedral, Église de Saint-Paul à Grange-Canal, Eton College Chapel, Lumen, Metz Cathedral, Notre Dame du Léman, Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Plateau d’Assy,Romont, Sint Martinuskerk Latem, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, St Alban Romford, St. Andrew Bobola Polish RC Church, St. Margaret’s Church, Ditchling, and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, St Mary the Virgin, Downe, St Michael and All Angels Berwick and St Paul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Henri Matisse.

Blogs for ArtWay include: Congruity and controversy: exploring issues for contemporary commissions;
Photographing Religious Practice; Spirituality and/in Modern Art; and The Spirituality of the Artist-Clown.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker, Peter Koenig and Belinda Scarlett. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst.

I have reviewed: Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace, Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe and Jazz, Blues, and Spirituals.

Other of my writings for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Church Times can be found here. Those for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here. See also Modern religious art: airbrushed from art history?

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Sinead O'Connor - Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace.

Saturday Solace: Beautiful Scars

Here's the reflection I shared during Saturday Solace at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

Bible reading:

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. (Luke 24.36-43)

Meditation: Beautiful scars

When Jesus says to his disciples, “Look at my hands and feet … Touch me and see”, it is the scars from the nails that were driven into his hands and feet while on the cross and the spear that was thrust into his side that he is asking his disciples to look at and touch. These scars are part of Christ’s resurrected body.

Christ’s resurrection is only achieved by way of the wounds he gained from the crucifixion. He is for us the risen Christ because he was firstly for us the crucified Christ. In a similar way our wounds inevitably form and shape us. We would not be who we are as we now are without having gone through or having endured those wounding experiences.

In Isaiah 53 we read: “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering … and by his wounds we are healed.” Jesus saves us through his wounds. Those who are wounded often become wounded healers, with their experience of living with their wounds shaping their ministry to others facing similar experiences and circumstances.

We are all wounded and scarred, that is reality for all of us, but the marks of our pain can be turned into beautiful scars if we view the wounds we bear as being embraced by Christ, as formative in our lives and as opportunities which create potential in us to minister in future to others.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, who carries on his body the scars of our salvation, make our scars beautiful like your scars. May wounds in our lives, which at one time were signs of harm, become signs of care for others as our experience of living with our wounds comes to shape our ministry to others as wounded healers. We pray for this resurrection experience and ask that what was once harmful and destructive in our life be transformed to become life-giving for us and for others. Amen.

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Merry Clayton - Beautiful Scars.

Gala Fundraising Concert

 

Join us and Ladybirds Song Group for a Gala Concert on Saturday 21st January at St. Andrew's Church in Wickford, doors open 7pm, for a fundraising concert in aid of restoration work at St. Catherine's Church. Admission free but there will be a retiring collection. Refreshments and raffle also on the night. We hope to see you there.

Urgent work is required to the Tower of St. Catherine’s Church Wickford as a result of ground movement caused by the long dry summer. This resulted in subsidence of the foundations in the North West corner of the church which caused a number of large cracks to appear in the walls and some stonework to fall. As a result, urgent safety and weather protection work costing £23,000 is required followed by the investigations needed to design a long-term solution to the problem.

A fundraising campaign to raise an initial £23,000 has been launched, but this is only the beginning of a much longer project to effectively underpin the church in order to prevent the regular recurrence of the issue. This first stage of the project will involve: removing or temporarily fixing loose stonework; undertaking temporary roof repairs and loose filling of walls for weather protection; removal of loose internal plasterwork; temporary covering of affected windows; and the reinstatement of the lightning conductor.

"Our churches are seeking to be at the heart of the community in Wickford but also need the support of the wider community in the town, particularly as we address the problems of subsidence at St Catherine's Church and the expense of maintaining this much-loved community building given the effects of significant climate change."

“Our recent consultation exercise in the Parish revealed that the churches in Wickford and Runwell are seen as contributing to the sense of community and are valued both for the support they bring to others and as centres for peace and prayer which provide a sense of Christian presence. Many local people have been baptised or married at St Catherine’s or have family members commemorated in the churchyard. For all these reasons, we believe many locally will want to support this campaign to ensure that this much-loved community building is repaired and secured for the future.”

Our fundraising campaign begins with a series of fundraising events involving Ladybirds Song Group, Rumatica Ukulele Group and a Quiz Night:

• Ladybirds Song Group: Saturday 21 January, 7.30 pm, St Andrew’s Church (11 London Road, Wickford SS12 0AN). The Ladybirds Song Group sing all over South Essex performing popular songs from the 1950s to the present. No tickets required. A retiring collection will be taken.

• Quiz Night: Saturday 4 February, 7.00 pm, 1st Runwell Scout Hall (Runwell Gardens SS11 7DW). £5.00 p/head. Tables of up to eight. Bring your own snacks & drinks (Tea and Coffee available). To book a table email StCatherinesQuiz@hotmail.com. Street parking in Church End Lane.

• Rumatica Ukulele Group: Saturday 11 March, 3.00 pm, St Catherine’s Church (120 Southend Road, Wickford SS11 8EB). A local band playing and singing a wide range of popular songs including rock, pop, country, swing, rock and roll. Enjoy a cream tea afterwards in the church hall.

Those wishing to contribute to this campaign, can send cheques made out to Wickford and Runwell Parochial Church Council to The Rectory, 120 Southend Road, Wickford SS11 8EB or phone 07803 562329 / email jonathan.evens@btinternet.com for the bank details to use for a bank transfer.

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Sufjan Stevens - Ring Them Bells.

Come and See

Here's the Sermon I shared in the All-age Eucharist at St Mary’s Runwell this morning:

Andrew says to Jesus, ‘Teacher, where are you staying?’ Jesus says, ‘Come and see.’ After spending the day with Jesus, Andrew goes to his brother and essentially says to him, ‘Come and see Jesus’ (John 1: 29-42).

What Andrew does is essentially what Jesus wants us to do, to say to others ‘Come and see’.

That’s also my offer this morning as we gather here together. ‘Come and see’. I wonder if any of the children here would like to ‘Come and see’ some interesting parts of the church.

[Invite someone to come and see with you]

Here’s a copy of our Reflective Tour of the church which enables us to pray our way around the building. We’ll use some of the information and prayers in it as we come and see what’s by the font first.

So, come and see 'The Baptism of Our Lord' by Enid Chadwick. Enid Mary Chadwick, who was known for religious art and children's religious material, lived in Walsingham for more than fifty years and her paintings appear in the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Peter Kwasniewski has written that Chadwick’s work is “simple enough for young children, and yet at the same time full of complexities for those who are attentive.”

What do you see in this painting?

With its flat, outlined style and use of gold leaf, ‘The Baptism of Christ’ has the feel of an icon without having been written as a traditional icon. Christ is framed by John the Baptist on the left, angels on the right and above, the hand of God the Father and the dove of the Spirit. In this way, Chadwick has created a simple, yet unified design, centred on Christ and the significance of baptism as a doorway to faith. The painting was gifted to the church by Fr David John Silk Lloyd.

Come and see the altar table and cross in our side chapel. Local woodworker David Garrard crafted Stations of the Cross using the motif of the Runwell Cross (which is found originally on the Prioresses Tomb) which have been placed around the church. David Garrard also built this altar for the side chapel together with the inscribed cross above.

What do you notice about the cross and the altar?

The words carved on the cross encourage us to reflect on our start in life, our own personal mortality, and the ways God has been present with us on our journey through life and will be with us into eternity.

Finally, come and see what’s in the sanctuary.

This tomb is known as the Prioress’s tomb because it may have been the tomb of the last Prioress of the Nunnery alongside the running well which is located a couple of miles away and may have given Runwell its name. If you look closely, you’ll see the Runwell Cross on the tomb. Reflecting on the Runwell Cross, we notice that it is formed by four circles in a square; the instrument of our redemption is set within a sign of the perfection of God. So, here we can pray that we might know God more fully in his divinity and his humanity.

I hope we’ve seen the value of coming to see for ourselves. When we allow others to show and share what and who they know, there is much that we can learn and much on which we can reflect.

That was the lesson that Andrew learnt in today’s Gospel reading and which he then shared with his brother Simon Peter. He came to see Jesus and, in doing so, realised that Jesus was the Messiah they had been expecting. In the Prologue to John’s Gospel, we read that Jesus is God the Father’s only son become flesh and blood and sharing the fullness of his Father’s glory. No one has ever seen God, we read, but through God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, he has been made fully known.

That is what Andrew realised by coming to see; he was not seeing another ordinary man, instead he was seeing God in Jesus.

As Andrew invited his brother to also come and see Jesus, so we can do the same for our friends and family. Jesus calls us to make that same invitation. We might make that invitation my inviting them to come to church or by taking them round the church on a reflective tour that introduces them to Jesus or by giving them a copy of John’s Gospel to read. However, we do it our part in the process is to be the one who invites others to come and see Jesus. What happens after that is always down to God. 

Andrew said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, where are you staying?’ Jesus said, ‘Come and see.’ After spending the day with Jesus, Andrew went to his brother and said to him, ‘Come and see Jesus’. I invite you to go and do likewise.

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Graham Kendrick - We Worship At Your Feet (Come And See).

Parish Study Day and 2023 Lent Course

 

JANUARY 28th – WICKFORD & RUNWELL PARISH STUDY DAY

St Andrew’s Church, 9.30am - 2pm

“All Ages are Welcome”

As a result of feedback from the 2022 Study Day we will focus on how faith experiences change over the ages, and the 'intergenerational possibilities’ we might have.

We have two speakers. Jamie Sawtell from Bar’n’Bus will help us look at how we might reach out to the young people in our community. The Revd Canon Hugh Dibbens will help us look at the ministry of the more senior among us.

There will plenty of time for discussion and questions and a light lunch will be provided. Please sign up on the sheets at each of our churches.

Lent Course 2023: Ways to Pray (Pray how you can)

We all need prayer, yet all struggle to pray. Experience different ways to pray, and find a way to pray that’s fits you! A five-week course exploring some different ways of praying: Being Still with God, Prayer Through the Day, Using the Imagination, Multi-sensory prayer, Using Art. 

These will be offered on Tuesday evening and Thursday afternoon and evening, depending on numbers, starting the week of 27th February. Please complete the sign-up sheets at our churches and hand them back to a member of the ministry team.

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Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus - Prayer.

Windows on the world (408)

 London, 2023

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Chagall Guevara - Surrender.

Short story: The New Dark Ages

International Times, the Magazine of Resistance, have just published my short story The New Dark Ages, a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies.

This is the third of my stories to be published by IT. The others are: The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes, the first of three about Nicola Ravenscroft's mudcub sculptures which were recently exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford, and The curious glasses, a story based on the butterfly effect.

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Mark Heard - Treasure Of The Broken Land.

Press coverage of fundraising campaign

Our fundraising campaign for St Catherine's Church has been featured in the Billericay & Wickford Gazette and the Echo. See here for the Gazette coverage and here for the Echo's coverage. I also spoke on Sunday Breakfast with June Woolerton on BBC Radio Essex about the campaign last Sunday. To hear that interview, click here.

Urgent work is required to the Tower of St. Catherine’s Church Wickford as a result of ground movement caused by the long dry summer. This resulted in subsidence of the foundations in the North West corner of the church which caused a number of large cracks to appear in the walls and some stonework to fall. As a result, urgent safety and weather protection work costing £23,000 is required followed by the investigations needed to design a long-term solution to the problem.

A fundraising campaign to raise an initial £23,000 has been launched, but this is only the beginning of a much longer project to effectively underpin the church in order to prevent the regular recurrence of the issue. This first stage of the project will involve: removing or temporarily fixing loose stonework; undertaking temporary roof repairs and loose filling of walls for weather protection; removal of loose internal plasterwork; temporary covering of affected windows; and the reinstatement of the lightning conductor.

"Our churches are seeking to be at the heart of the community in Wickford but also need the support of the wider community in the town, particularly as we address the problems of subsidence at St Catherine's Church and the expense of maintaining this much-loved community building given the effects of significant climate change."

“Our recent consultation exercise in the Parish revealed that the churches in Wickford and Runwell are seen as contributing to the sense of community and are valued both for the support they bring to others and as centres for peace and prayer which provide a sense of Christian presence. Many local people have been baptised or married at St Catherine’s or have family members commemorated in the churchyard. For all these reasons, we believe many locally will want to support this campaign to ensure that this much-loved community building is repaired and secured for the future.”

Our fundraising campaign begins with a series of fundraising events involving Ladybirds Song Group, Rumatica Ukulele Group and a Quiz Night:

• Ladybirds Song Group: Saturday 21 January, 7.30 pm, St Andrew’s Church (11 London Road, Wickford SS12 0AN). The Ladybirds Song Group sing all over South Essex performing popular songs from the 1950s to the present. No tickets required. A retiring collection will be taken.
• Quiz Night: Saturday 4 February, 7.00 pm, 1st Runwell Scout Hall (Runwell Gardens SS11 7DW). £5.00 p/head. Tables of up to eight. Bring your own snacks & drinks (Tea and Coffee available). To book a table email StCatherinesQuiz@hotmail.com. Street parking in Church End Lane.
• Rumatica Ukulele Group: Saturday 11 March, 3.00 pm, St Catherine’s Church (120 Southend Road, Wickford SS11 8EB). A local band playing and singing a wide range of popular songs including rock, pop, country, swing, rock and roll. Enjoy a cream tea afterwards in the church hall.

Those wishing to contribute to this campaign, can send cheques made out to Wickford and Runwell Parochial Church Council to The Rectory, 120 Southend Road, Wickford SS11 8EB or phone 07803 562329 / email jonathan.evens@btinternet.com for the bank details to use for a bank transfer.

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Rumatica Ukelele Band - Sit Down.