Conversation as communion

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

In the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke - Jesus is portrayed as a teller of pithy and pointed stories but in John’s Gospel this is not the case and, instead, Jesus is portrayed as engaging in conversation with those around. Nathanael, Mary, the mother of Jesus, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the crowds of Jews and their leaders, Mary and Martha, and Pilate are all examples of people who are recorded as having significant conversations with Jesus.

Like them, the writer of this Gospel has entered into conversation with God himself and has entered “into the maturity and fullness of the Lord’s Prayer as a dialogue between Father and Son” learning to listen as well as to speak, “as Jesus listened to the Father and offered himself to bring to carry out the secret purpose which the Father could not bring to fruition without him”. For him, as for Jesus, self-consciousness has become prayer – a conversation with God. It is this same conversation into which he, following Jesus, wishes to draw us.

Jesus as God’s Son is in conversation with both God the Father and with God the Spirit. Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.” (John 5. 17-30)

The Son claims that he hears from the Father and speaks just what the Father has taught him (John 8: 26 – 29). He also claims that his relationship with the Father is not just one way, rather the Father also always hears the Son (John 11: 41 & 42). Similarly, he says that the Spirit will not speak on his own but only what he hears (John 16: 13). The Spirit is sent, like the Son, by the Father, but comes in the name of the Son to remind the disciples of everything that the Son said to them (John 14: 26 & 27). This interplay or dialogue within the Godhead between Father, Son and Spirit can be summed up in the words of John 3. 34-35: “For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God; to him God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.”

John’s Gospel dramatises for us the extent to which Jesus was in the conversation with God and to which this conversation was Jesus. Conversation here is essentially another word for communion: “God is no more than what the Father, Son and Spirit give to and receive from each other in the inseparable communion that is the outcome of their love. Communion is the meaning of the word: there is no ‘being’ of God other than this dynamic of persons in relation”.

Stephen Verney called this the ‘Dance of Love’, the interplay between the Father, the Spirit and Jesus into which we are invited to enter: “”I can do nothing”, [Jesus] said, “except what I see the Father doing”. If he lays aside his teaching robes and washes the feet of the learners … it is because he sees his Father doing it. God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, is like that; he too lays aside his dignity and status as a teacher. He does not try to force his objective truth into our thick heads, but he gives himself to us in acts of humble service; he laughs with us and weeps with us, and he invites us to know him in our hearts through an interaction and an interplay between us. It is this knowledge that Jesus has received from the Father, and in the to and fro of this relationship he and the Father are one. They need each other. That is the pattern of how things potentially are in the universe, and of how God means them to be”.

In saying that we are called to enter in to this interplay within and between the Trinity, Verney is saying that we are called to join the conversation between Father, Son and Spirit. It is this that we see happening in John’s Gospel as Nathanael, Mary, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the crowds of Jews and their leaders, the disciples, Mary and Martha, and Pilate among others are all drawn into the conversation within the Godhead.

God wants us to be in conversation, in dialogue, in debate, with him so that we can find him for ourselves, find ourselves in him, and embody his characteristics and interests in ourselves. The philosopher, Martin Buber, has argued that “God is not met by turning away from the world or by making God into an object of contemplation, a “being” whose existence can be proved and whose attributes can be demonstrated.” Instead, we can know God only in dialogue with him and this dialogue goes on moment by moment in each new situation as we respond with our whole being to the unforeseen and the unique.

Our dialogue with God interrogates the very nature of what we are, and how we understand our identity, as it is from the art of conversation that truth emerges and our identity is constructed. It is through this conversation that the Father loves us, showing us all that he is doing. Truth emerging and identity constructed are the greater works which he shows to us through this conversation and which astonish us. Amen.

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The Innocence Mission - Every Hour Here.

Tears in the Fence: The Salvation Engine by Rupert M. Loydell (Analogue Flashback)

My latest review for Tears in the Fence is of 'The Salvation Engine' by Rupert Loydell:

" With this collection, as with all his work, Loydell wants to challenge his readers to think about what language is and how ‘it is used around and indeed against us’, as ‘language is how we think about and construct the world’."

Tears in the Fence is an internationalist literary magazine based in the U.K. Publishing a variety of contemporary writers from around the world, it provides critical reviews of recent books, anthologies and pamphlets and essays on a diversity of significant modern and contemporary English and American poets. Each issue features a number of regular columnists adding wide focus and independent thought on the contemporary poetry world. A wide range of book and pamphlet reviews are also published on the magazine’s blog.

My first review for Tears in the Fence was of 'Modern Fog' by Chris Emery.

My poetry reviews for Stride include a review of two poetry collections, one by Mario Petrucci and the other by David Miller, a review of Temporary Archive: Poems by Women of Latin America, a review of Fukushima Dreams by Andrea Moorhead, a review of Endangered Sky by Kelly Grovier and Sean Scully, a review of John F. Deane's Selected & New Poems, a review of God's Little Angel by Sue Hubbard and a review of Spencer Reece's 'Acts'.

To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'. My latest poem, 'The ABC of creativity', has been published by International Times. It cover attention, beginning and creation and can be read here.

I am very pleased to be among those whose poetry has been included in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces, a new anthology forthcoming in 2024 from Amethyst Press. Check in at Amethyst Review for more details, including a publication date in July and an online launch and reading in September. I also had a poem included in All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich, the first Amethyst Press anthology of new poems.

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

• 'Barking';
• 'Bradwell';
• 'Broomfield';
• 'Pleshey'; and
• 'Runwell'.

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

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

For more on poetry, read my ArtWay interview with David Miller here and my interview with the poet Chris Emery for International Times here. My review of 'Modern Fog' by Chris Emery is on Tears in the Fence. I have also written an article for Seen & Unseen 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

Stride magazine was founded in 1982. Since then it has had various incarnations, most recently in an online edition since the late 20th century. You can visit its earlier incarnation at http://stridemagazine.co.uk.

I have read the poetry featured in Stride and, in particular, the work of its editor Rupert Loydell over many years and was very pleased that Rupert gave a poetry reading when I was at St Stephen Walbrook.

Rupert Loydell is a poet, painter, editor and publisher, and senior lecturer in English with creative writing at Falmouth University. He is interested in the relationship of visual art and language, collaborative writing, sequences and series, as well as post-confessional narrative, experimental music and creative non-fiction.

He has edited Stride magazine for over 30 years, and was managing editor of Stride Books for 28 years. His poetry books include Wildlife and Ballads of the Alone (both published by Shearsman), and The Fantasy Kid (for children).

His latest collections are Damage Limitation and The Salvation Engine. Reviewing both collections, Dominic Rivron writes that:

"Damage Limitation is part of Loydell’s ongoing investigation into cults and obsession. It begins with a brief, potted history of the band Throbbing Gristle and Genesis P-Orridge’s subsequent venture, Psychic TV, outlining the way both bands managed their public image, pressing ‘all the obvious buttons’ to portray themselves as provocative, transgressive and offensive; while all the time Genesis P-Orridge ‘wanted to control everything, despite their questioning the very notion of power and control’.

The hypnotic lure of TG and PTV lies in ‘the counterculture’s desire for psychic understanding’, while, in fact, the whole project is a microcosm of capitalism, its ‘industrial music revolution’ holding up a mirror to the Industrial (non-musical) Revolution. And the machines we build are not merely physical: the processes whereby people can groom, control and abuse others could be described as a form of psychic machine-building."

"The Salvation Engine ... which came out before Damage Limitation, ‘grapples with the frightful mix of personality cults, religious populism, liturgical experiment, rave culture, censorship, puritanical mindlessness, and stupidity within the organised church, questioning and critiquing its power structures and beliefs, not to mention a lack of safeguarding and accountability, which allow and sometimes encourage abuse, manipulation, greed and desperate beliefs to thrive.’"

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Mumford and Sons - Carry On.