Venice Biennale: Pavilion of the Holy See

'The Holy See participates this year for the second time at the Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, with a Pavilion inspired by the New Testament. In the Beginning … the Word became flesh is the theme chosen by the Commissioner Card. Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, at whose request the theme of the “Beginning” has been developed, passing from the 2013 edition’s reference to Genesis to that of the Prologue of the Gospel of John.

Curated by Micol Forti, the structure of the Pavilion is articulated around two essential poles: firstly, the transcendent Word, which is “in the beginning” and which reveals the dialogical and communicative nature of the God of Jesus Christ (v. 1-5); and then the Word made “flesh”, body, bringing the presence of God in humanity, especially where it appears injured and suffering (v. 14). The encounter of these “vertical-transcendent” and “horizontal-immanent” dimensions is the heart of the research. The two “tables” of the Prologue of John’s Gospel are the basic inspiration for the artistic creations of three artists, who have been chosen after a long selection, in light of some precise criteria: the consonance of their own journeys with the chosen theme, the variety of the techniques used, their internationality, diversity and geographic and cultural provenance, and above all the open and evolutionary nature of their work.

Monika Bravo (1964) was born and raised in Colombia, and today lives and works in New York; the Macedonian Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva (1971), currently lives and works in London; the photographer Mário Macilau (1984), was born and raised in Maputo, Mozambique, where he lives.

The catalogue of the Pavilion, edited by Micol Forti and Elisabetta Cristallini, (Italian and English – Gangemi Editore), together with an introductory essay by Gianfranco Ravasi focusing on the theme of the Pavilion, contains texts by Micol Forti, Elisabetta Cristallini, Ben Quash, Octavio Zaya and Alessandra Mauro.'

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Pēteris Vasks - Distant Light.

New beginnings and fresh starts

Here is my Spiritual Life column for today's edition of the Ilford Recorder:

Christianity is a faith which is all about new beginnings and fresh starts. Sometimes it is characterised by others as being a guilt trip but what Christianity actually teaches about guilt is to do with acknowledging our fallibilities in order to be honest with God so that forgiveness can by received and change implemented. The word we use for this is repentance which means a complete turn-around in our lives, a fresh start and a new beginning.
 

The start of a New Year is also about the potential for a fresh start and a new beginning. That is, in part, why we celebrate at New Year and why we make New Year's resolutions. The problem, of course, is that we all carry over into the New Year the issues and challenges that we experienced in the old year. If we weren't able to do in the old year the thing that we are now resolving to do in the New Year, simply moving from one year to the next is unlikely to be enough to enable us to make our resolution stick.
 

For Christians, though, we are not on our own when it comes to change. God's Spirit is within to help us make and maintain changes in our lives and (hopefully) our local Christian community or Church are also there to back us up and support us as we change.

Change is actually happening all the time, in us and to us. Change is normal, because we all need fresh starts and new beginnings all the time. This New Year, why not ask God for his help in making a fresh start and seek support from others around you, including your local Church?

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The Relatives - We Need Love.

Scriptural Reasoning: Introduction to Christian Text on Beginnings

We had a fascinating discussion this evening at the second meeting of our local Scriptural Reasoning group which touched on creation, creativity, rest, the nature of God, Trinity, incarnation, omniscience and debate.

Here is my introduction to the Christian Text on Beginnings (John 1. 1-5) from the Text Bundle we were using:

These words of beginning come from the Prologue or overture to the gospel according to John.  Gospels are ‘good messages’ or ‘good news’ connected with the word ‘angel’ or messenger. “In the Hebrew Scriptures this means the ‘good news’ of God’s peace and salvation, brought to poor and hurting people trapped in pain or oppression. In the Graeco-Roman world, it was used for the latest proclamation from the local government or the emperor.” The good news here comes in the form of a Graeco-Roman biography telling stories about Jesus and the things he said in order to interpret his significance as ‘the Christ, the Son of God’.

It is ‘the gospel according to John’, not necessarily written by John but ‘according to’ his teaching and interpretation. “It was quite common in the ancient world for the followers of a great man to write up his ideas and teachings, as Plato did for Socrates.” While John has traditionally been identified as the apostle John, it seems best to think of John as the ‘authority’ for rather than the ‘author’ of the gospel ‘according to John’.  

“Whoever was involved in writing and producing this gospel was very familiar with the multi-faith, multi-cultural world of the eastern Mediterranean in the first century. It was a real melting pot because of the Romans’ deliberate policy of bringing all peoples together in one empire of peace and easy communications.” The gospel is “steeped in the Hebrew scriptures and Jewish beliefs” but is trying to present Jesus in a culture saturated by the dualist Greek philosophical tradition, which contrasted the invisible realm of the intellect, soul and the gods with our material physical universe, Stoicism, which stressed the logical rationality behind cosmic order, and religious cults, which abounded with stories of divine figures coming from the realm of light above to save us in this dark world.  

In this overture to the Gospel, which introduces key themes and words that will recur throughout, Jesus is called ‘the Word’. In the Hebrew scriptures God’s word is seen as being alive and active (Isaiah 55. 11) from the creation (referred to here by the phrase, ‘In the beginning’), when God has only to say, ‘Let there be ...’ for things to come into being (Genesis 1. 3, 6, 9, etc.), to God’s word coming through all the prophets. In Greek philosophy from early thinkers like Heraclitus to the Stoics, the ‘word’, logos, was used for the logical rationality behind the universe. In later Jewish beliefs, this masculine principle was complemented by the feminine figure of Lady Wisdom, who was present with God at the creation (Proverbs 8. 22 – 31).

“John pulls all these threads together with the amazing idea that the Word was not only pre-existent with God but also personal.” He “carefully writes ‘the Word was God’, divine, personal, existing in the unity of the Godhead and yet somehow distinct – for ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1. 14).”

“The Word which God spoke had a reality and being of its own. Though it flowed out of the source which was God, it had life in itself, and entered into a living relation with God. God spoke the Word, and the Word spoke to God. This is the reality which is reflected in the experience of every author who writes a book, for as s/he writes the words, the words have a life of their own and enter into a dialogue with the author ... As the music of Bach expresses Bach, and the music of Mozart expresses Mozart, so we may think of God speaking a word which expresses himself. His Word expresses his own unique nature, which is Love.”

We speak about God only by means of analogies. The analogies here are of: the Creative Idea which sees the whole work of the world complete, the end in the beginning, as the image of God the Father; and the Creative Activity bringing that idea to life in time as the image of the Word, the Son of God.

The presence of the Word is the ‘light come into the darkness’. “The first act of God’s creation was in the words “Let there be light” ... and he “separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1. 3f). “The light does not eliminate the darkness, but it goes on shining. There is no peaceful coexistence of light and darkness. The business of light is to banish darkness” yet “darkness remains the background to the story which John will tell”. The image therefore is of “a lighthouse or beacon throwing one bar of light through the darkness.”

“The light which shone in Jesus, and which shines on in the name of Jesus is proclaimed throughout the world, is none other than the light of God himself, his first creation, the light that enlightens every human being (John 1. 9).”

(This introduction is based mainly on material from ‘John’, Richard A. Burridge, The Bible Reading Fellowiship Oxford, 1998 but also uses quotes from: ‘Water into Wine’, Stephen Verney, Fount, 1985; ‘The Mind of the Maker’, Dorothy L. Sayers, Methuen & Co London, 1942; ‘The Light Has Come’, Lesslie Newbigin, The Handsel Press Edinburgh, 1987; and ‘Readings in St John’s Gospel’, William Temple, Macmillan & Co London, 1968)

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Houses - Beginnings.

The importance of how we travel

Think about this question. What is the most important part of a journey? The beginning, middle or end? Why we travel, where we travel or how we travel?

At Epiphany we focus on the journey made by the Magi in order to be able to kneel and worship the baby king Jesus. In the ancient world, Jupiter was the ‘king star’, and at the time of the birth of Jesus, Jupiter appeared in the night sky very close to Saturn, which represented Israel. If you were reading the sky you’d see ‘new king in Israel’.

That was the starting point for their journey but it didn’t give them exact directions. They didn’t know exactly where they were going on their journey. They knew they were going to find the new king in Israel but they had to trust as they travelled that they would be guided and led to find him. They clearly travelled a great distance and, obviously, didn’t have cars, trains or planes, so they would have probably travelled on camels. But the distance and effort didn’t stop them because meeting the child was so important.

When they arrived, they gave extravagantly to welcome Jesus with gifts, time, effort, the risk of danger, and humility. But their gifts pale next to Jesus coming to earth to show God’s love for us; Jesus came from heaven, eternity and majesty to earth, time and humanity. He went on an even more incredible journey to show us God’s love. After they had found Jesus the journey of the Magi began again as they were guided by God to return home by another route and, as T. S. Eliot makes clear at the end of his great poem about their journey, their lives were forever changed by the experience.

So, their starting point was important but it didn’t tell them how to find their way and when they did finally arrive, their arrival actually meant the beginning of a new journey. All of which means that how we travel may be as important as why or where we travel. That at least is what our Text for 2013 at St John's Seven Kings, taken from Matthew 6. 34, seems to say:
 

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

Simon Small writes in ‘From the Bottom of the Pond’ that: “Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed.”

But, he says, “Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is”: “To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.”

This is very much what Jesus seems to be saying to us in Matthew 6. 34 and in his teaching on worry and anxiety found in Matthew 6. 24 – 34. 

When we are preoccupied with what might happen in the future, we are not living fully in the present and may well misunderstand or misinterpret what is actually going on. Jesus encourages us to live fully in the present because, as Simon Small says, that is where we encounter God.

When we genuinely encounter God in the here and now we know that his love and forgiveness surround us and that his Spirit fills us. As Jesus prayed in John 17, he is in us and we are in him. When we know this in our hearts in the here and now, we can relax because whatever happens to us we are accepted, forgiven, loved and gifted by the God who created all things and who will bring all things to their rightful end. We are held in the palm of his hands and, as Julian of Norwich put it, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”.

Even in the difficult times, we can still know that this is true because, as our Text for 2013 puts it, God will help us deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Jesus is saying that the more we live in the present and the more we encounter God’s love in the here and now, the less we will be anxious or worried. Prayer is able to help us do both things and therefore helps us to reduce our sense of anxiety or worry. Not because we have listed all our worries to God and believe that he will solve them all for us, but instead because, through prayer, we have encountered more of God’s love and, as a result, trust that he will be with us whatever comes our way. 

 

This is important because so much of our sense of dissatisfaction with our lives and the complaining we do about other people stems from our own worries and anxieties rather than what may or may not have happened or what others may or may not have done. Instead of focusing on other people and what we think they should or should not do or have done, we need to begin with ourselves and our relationship with God by giving our entire attention to what God is doing right now, and not getting worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. Then God is able to help us deal with whatever comes up, whether hard things or blessings, when the time comes.

We don’t know what 2013 will bring. Some predict an upturn in the economy, others a worsening. We can’t be sure and, of course, the future will be different for each of us. But, as Brian Davison reminds us in the current edition of the ‘Ilford Recorder’, “if the prospect of what lies ahead seems dark or threatening, remember the words with which King George VI reflected on the closing year in his 1939 Christmas broadcast. “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” (Minnie Louise Haskins).

Like the Magi, we can only travel in hope that we will be guided by God. So, “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

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Julie Miller - By Way Of Sorrow.

Poem: The Mark

Begin, begin,
let something be.
Make a blot,
a dash, a stroke.
Make your mark.
Obliterate the anonymity
of the white-blank page.
Intervene
in the seeming
infinite abyss
of nothingness.
From nothing
to something
by means of
mark-making.
Creation waits
to be discovered,
uncovered,
never fully conceived,
growing through
relating.
Follow the trail,
the sign,
one mark
at a time
to a novel,
a poem,
a painting.
Begin, begin,
in the beginning
is the word,
the mark,
the world.
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The Band - When I Paint My Masterpiece.