Art review: When the Apple Ripens: Peter Howson at 65 (City Art Centre, Edinburgh)

My latest exhibition review for Church Times is on "When the Apple Ripens: Peter Howson at 65: A Retrospective” at Edinburgh's City Art Centre:

'This retrospective is evidence that, in Howson’s case, the apple has ripened and that he has created a substantial body of original and challenging work. When I interviewed Howson in 2018, he spoke about his personal journey, saying: “I am an addictive, hedonistic person by nature. That is destructive to me, and it is bad for the people around me, so I force myself to work, and walk and pray. It’s been a long road, with many wrong turnings, but I’ve never felt that it wasn’t worth it. I believe that I am walking towards something incredible.”

He was probably speaking then of heaven, but this exhibition reveals his body of work to also be an incredible achievement — an achievement that we are fortunate to be able to witness.'

To read my interview with Peter Howson for Artlyst click here, a review of an earlier Howson exhibition is here, and my exhibition for the Visual Commentary on Scripture which includes Howson's 'The Third Step' can be found here.

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.

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Richard Shindell and Dar Williams - The Ballad of Mary Magdalene.

Free from lies and enslavements

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

In this passage (John 8.31-38,48-59) we are given two definitions of what it means to be free. Jesus gives these two definitions to people who were living under Roman rule and where, therefore, a conquered and oppressed people.

The first definition is about living a life in which we are free from entanglements of lies because we know the truth. An article in ‘Psychology Today’ states that “when it comes to the core challenges of adult life—career, money, sexual identity and marriage—fooling yourself can have devastating consequences.”

The article continues: “In each of these domains—think of them as the four horsemen of self-deception—we face situations that require us to make difficult decisions in the face of doubt and uncertainty. The result is anxiety and a strong temptation to hide from the truth. “People keep secrets from themselves because to acknowledge the information would be extremely anxiety-producing,” says New York City psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Gail Saltz. Self-deception and worry reinforce each other, making it harder and harder to face the facts.”

The way out of this situation is to know and accept the truth about ourselves – “accepting our flaws alongside our strengths” as that “provides a bulwark against excessive self-deception” as also “does coming to peace with our own internal contradictions and learning to withstand difficult feelings, such as doubt and fear.” Acknowledging the truth about ourselves sets us free from anxiety, free to leave in peace with ourselves.

Jesus spoke this truth to people who were living a lie. The people say to him: “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Yet, they are people living under the rule of an invading power – the Roman Empire - so are not free. Jesus’ challenge to know the truth about themselves and be set free through that knowledge is, therefore, particularly pertinent to them. In what ways are we also hiding from the truth about ourselves?

The second definition is to do with sin. Jesus identifies sin here with enslavement; in other words, some other power or force that controls us. Such a power could be external, as with the occupying Roman Empire, or it could be internal, as with the kind of lies about ourselves we have been considering which come to define who we are and how we act. The Bible speaks about love of money and various kinds of addictions in those terms and uses the idea of idolatry to describe such forces or powers that come to control us and compromising the freedom that we find in God.

Jesus says that our primary identity, within which we are free from the control of others, is that of being a child of God. When other forces or powers control us, then our identity as God’s child is compromised and we experience separation from both God and the freedom that we find in God’s presence. In what ways do we experience enslavement in our lives? What are the factors or forces that control our behaviours and actions? 

Jesus is saying that when we know and affirm and make central to life our identity as a child of God, then self-deception and other internal or external controls fall away and we are free to become the people we were created by God to be. Fully realising that freedom involves a lifelong journey which reaches its culmination in heaven when we are finally and fully free to be the people we are in God’s presence and to enjoy others for who they are. In the challenges he poses to us through today’s Gospel reading, we are called to begin that process of self-discovery that is also God-discovery by seeking to free ourselves from lies and enslavements by inhabiting our true identity as children of God.

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The Call - What's Happened To You.

Addicted to sin & selfishness

Here is my sermon from today's Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook:

If there was a common theme to the past weekend for me, it involved addiction. There were encounters at both churches with those who were influenced by their addictions, including an attempted theft and incidents of dealing. The lives and behaviour of those involved were clearly governed by their substance abuse making interaction with them difficult and meaning that they tended to reject the sources of support offered to them.

Then on Sunday, in the annual service celebrating the Arts organised by commission4mission, the art group of which I am part which will exhibit here in September, we heard poems, songs and stories for one of our artists, Anthony Hodgson, who has found release from his addictions through faith in Christ. As a result, his art explores the themes of addiction and release.

The effects of severe substance addictions are very clear and can be seen around us daily. It can be easy for those of us who are not in that situation to condemn those who are and to believe that we are not affected by addictions ourselves.

However, that is not what scripture says about our situation. Scripture regularly, as in our Epistle today (Romans 6. 19 - 23), uses the imagery of addiction about our sinfulness as human beings. We see it here in the references to our having been slaves to sin. Essentially, what is being claimed is that we are addicted to selfishness and independence. Until we turn to Christ, we are separated from God because our lives are turned in on ourselves; oriented around our needs, wants and wishes. In our day and time this is a reality which has been used as the basis for our consumerist culture, where we are continually persuaded to buy stuff we don't actually need in order to assuage our sense of inadequacy and boost our sense of ego. Those who manage large or unsustainable levels of personal debt will readily acknowledge the overwhelming nature of the pressures which cause us to spend, spend, spend.

As with any addiction, it is vital that we reach a point in our lives where we acknowledge that we are actually powerless in the grip of powerful forces which control us - slaves to sin, as we have acknowledged that St Paul expresses it - and need to recognise that we need outside help. That, of course, is where God comes into the picture, as it is only when we can look outside ourselves that our addiction to selfishness can begin to be broken.

Looking to God firstly addresses the insecurities and fears which underpin our focus on protecting and benefiting ourselves. God's unconditional love means that we can be sure that we are loved absolutely and can therefore look outside ourselves, our fears and anxieties. Looking to God also involves acknowledging the claim that others have on our lives and gives us a frame of reference beyond ourselves. Jesus speaks of this in terms of love for God, for neighbours and for ourselves.

Our reality, whether this is visibly apparent or hidden, is that each of us is gripped by forces beyond our control and that it is only as we become open to God and others that the addiction to selfishness can be managed and mitigated.

Alcoholics Anonymous teaches its users that they are always recovering alcoholics. Christianity teaches that we are all recovering sinners. Just as those who go to AA have a 12 step programme which enables them to be a recovering alcoholic rather than an alcoholic, I wonder whether we have the equivalent in place to deal with our own personal addictions. The 12 steps of AA are actually as relevant to all other addictions as they are to alcoholism. The starting point is to admit that we have been powerless in relation to our actions and that our lives had become unmanageable. Then to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity and to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.

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The Verve - The Drugs Don't Work.

Simon Evans Goes to Market

How do you make economics funny? How do you put the comedy in commodity? That is the challenge that comedian Simon Evans has set himself with Simon Evans Goes to Market. The first series was interesting, thought-provoking and informative, as well as being funny. 'The market in radio comedy being what it is - [he] was rewarded with a second series.'

'In this new series for BBC Radio 4, he looks at the markets of four goods that might perhaps be referred to as 'Bads' - coffee, alcohol, tobacco and sugar. Addictive, stress inducing, even deadly - but a big part of our daily life that we just can't do without.

With the help of a variety of experts and regular co-host, presenter of More or Less, Tim Harford, he shows how economics really is part of our everyday life.'

Miranda Sawyer notes that Evans' humour 'doesn't quite fit the comedy norm' as he's 'not particularly leftwing, he has no time for cool posturing and he likes to know about stuff.' He laces 'proceedings with his clever jokes, some scripted, some off the cuff', and 'illuminates a subject as he riffs about it, takes it seriously and gets the laughs.'

Thanks to Paul Trathen for a good night out.

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Florence + The Machine - Ship To Wreck.

Free us, Lord, from our addictions

This was my assembly on addiction, given yesterday as chaplain of Venus College at St Edward's Church of England School and Sixth Form College:

Think of something that you really like and that makes you feel good. It can be anything you like; something you do, something you watch or listen to, something you eat, someone you like to be with.

Now think about the feeling that you get and how it makes you feel.

Imagine not simply enjoying that feeling but beginning to crave it; so that, rather than being something great when you happen to experience it, you start to want to have that same feeling more and more frequently.

Imagine now that you begin wake up craving that feeling so that you have to satisfy your craving that day.

Imagine that the craving is so strong that you will lie, steal, cheat, hurt, and maybe even kill to ensure you get that feeling that day.

What began as something good has become something ugly. What began as something you were free to enjoy has become something which controls everything about you. What began as something that enhanced your life has begun to destroy it.

That is how addiction works. We are most familiar with talk of addiction in terms of alcohol, drugs or smoking but we can actually become addicted to all sorts of things and addiction has taken hold when we can no longer cope without the thing to which we have become addicted. 

Earlier in the week I watched an interview with the shock rocker Alice Cooper; someone who has had a well-publicized battle with addiction, often consuming an entire bottle of whiskey each day. He has said, “Nobody ever sees the alcoholism coming. It’s one of those things that broadsides you. There’s never a place where the drug or the alcohol says, oh, by the way, it’s time to stop now. It just keeps going until your body tells you, ‘If you don’t stop you’re going to die.’ I never met anybody who was an alcoholic or a drug addict that ever walked out of it going, ‘Yeah, what a good idea that was.’ For me it was never a great idea.’”

Cooper has said that divine intervention is what broke his drinking habit in the mid-1980s. "I honestly think I was simply and completely healed. I guess you can call it a miracle. It's the only way I can explain it. It was absolutely eliminated from my life." He once told the Sunday Times, "Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that's a tough call."


So how can Christianity help when it comes to addiction. First, the Bible commends moderation to us. “Moderation is better than muscle, self-control better than political power.” (Proverbs 16. 32) We need to be clear that the Bible doesn’t try to ban the good things in life, but does say don’t allow those things to control by becoming addictions. The way to do that is to enjoy things in moderation. The second thing it encourages us to do is to put God first. “Do not get drunk with wine, which will only ruin you; instead, be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5. 18) If we put God at the centre of our lives then everything else will find its proper place and won’t be addictive or controlling.


So, with those thoughts in mind, let us pray:


Lord Jesus, You said, "I have come to set the captives free." We are captive and need Your healing touch. Free us, Lord, from our addictions, so that we will be:
... free from the cares and worries that stifle our happiness;
... free from sins that cling to us, and to which we cling;
... free from all compulsive behaviour that prevents us from becoming what You, Lord, have planned for us.
Bring us, loving Saviour, to the experience of abundant life which You promised. Amen.


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Alice Cooper - Poison.