God will not let us be tested beyond our strength

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

Like many in the 1970’s, my family had an LP of the songs from Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. I remember listening to it frequently and, at some stage, seeing the stage show when it visited Oxford.

The show makes Joseph’s test of brother’s integrity central to the second Act. We can retell the story by quoting lyrics from the show (Genesis 42: 1-25). Back in Canaan the future looked rough and Jacob's family were finding it tough. So, they finally decided to go off to Egypt to see brother Jo. They all lay before Joseph's feet. Mighty prince, give us something to eat. Joseph found it a strain not to laugh because not a brother among them knew who he was. I shall now take them all for a ride, after all they have tried fratricide. Joseph handed them sack loads of food and they grovelled with base gratitude. Then, unseen, Joseph crept out around the back and planted a cup in young Benjamin's sack.

When the brothers were ready to go, Jospeh turned to them all with a terrible stare and said, No. Stop, you robbers - your little number's up, one of you has stolen my precious golden cup. But the brothers said, Benjamin is an innocent man. Show him some mercy, oh mighty one please. He would not do this. He must have been framed. Jail us and beat us, we should be blamed, we are the criminal guilty ones, save him, take me. Joseph knew by this his brothers now were honest men. The time had come at last to reunite them all again.

Joseph’s test is worrying and hard for his brothers but serves to help him see that they have changed and become trustworthy. As a result, he reveals himself to them and they are reunited once more. Joseph’s earlier experiences in Egypt were also testing but he came through with flying colours and was rewarded with high office that then provided him with the opportunity to save his family and to reunite them.

In 1 Corinthians 10, we read that, although we will experience tests and challenges as we go through life, no testing will overtake us that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let us be tested beyond our strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that we may be able to endure it. That is also what we see happening in the story of Joseph and his brothers.

It means that, whenever we are in difficulty or some kind of test, we need to look to God to see what it is we are to learn and where the way out that he has provided is located. This can be a core part of our prayer recognising that, as with Joseph, it took much of his life before he realised how God was using what had seemed bad for good, and, for his brothers, the test was to see whether they would act with integrity under pressure, having failed to do so earlier in the story.

Hebrews 12 also speaks of tests and challenges and encourages in the midst of such experiences to strengthen our feeble arms and weak knees and make level paths for our feet. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote: ‘My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.’ (James 1. 2 - 4)

In a world of conflict and change is that difficulties, challenges and even opposition are inevitable. The key to coping is linked to attitude. Joseph’s integrity in the face of testing and that of his brother’s when Benjamin was accused are examples to us of viewing difficulties as a testing ground – an assault course – to build up our strength in order to go on; to look for the opportunities in our challenges. If we have a deficit mindset that is focused on all the difficulties we face, then we have lost before we have begun. If we have an abundance mindset that views God as providing resources, support and strength even in the most challenging of circumstances, then, like Joseph, we can have hope in the possibility of moving on and overcoming the challenges we face.

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Denison Witmer - Keep Moving Brother, Keep Moving Sister.

R. B. Kitaj: Identity and Analysis

A major retrospective exhibition of the work of R. B. Kitaj (1932-2007) - one of the most significant
painters of the post-war period – will be displayed concurrently in two major venues for its only UK showing.

This international touring show is the first major retrospective exhibition in the UK since the artist’s
controversial Tate show in the mid-1990s and the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s oeuvre since his death in 2007. Comprised of more than 70 works, R.B. Kitaj: Obsessions comes to the UK from the Jewish Museum Berlin and will be shown concurrently at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (23 Feb – 16 June 2013) and the Jewish Museum London (21 Feb – 16 June 2013).

The presentation of the exhibition over the two venues will enable different facets of Kitaj’s identity to be explored in depth for the first time in the UK. Both venues share links to the artist – Kitaj's London studio was designed by the American architect M.J. Long, whose practice Long & Kentish also designed the extensions to Pallant House Gallery and refurbishment of the Jewish Museum London.

The exhibition further returns the American-born Kitaj to the UK, his country of residence from the 1950s until his abrupt departure in the 1990s. In 1994 the great retrospective of his work at the Tate triggered a flood of negative reviews, which Kitaj termed the “Tate War”. This, combined with the sudden death of his second wife, painter Sandra Fisher, led him to leave London for Los Angeles in 1997.


During the 1960s Kitaj, together with his friends Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud were
instrumental in pioneering a new, figurative art which defied the trend in abstraction and conceptualism. Known collectively as the ‘School of London’ - the term Kitaj had first proposed in his seminal exhibition The Human Clay in 1976 - most of them were cultural ’outsiders’, who remained fiercely loyal to the human figure.

From the mid-1970s, Kitaj began to position himself explicitly as a Jewish artist coupled with his study of role models such as Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, and Walter Benjamin. In 1989 he published the First Diasporist Manifesto, the longest and most impassioned of many texts discussing the Jewish dimension in his art and thought. Confronting the history of the mass murder of Europe's Jews, and reflecting on his identity as an outsider, he created a Jewish modern art, which he termed “diasporic”, with a rich palate of colour and enigmatic, recurring motifs.

For Kitaj, art was a medium of emotional and intellectual exploration. An avid collector of books, his work frequently referenced themes and motifs in intellectual history and literature. The exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, subtitled ‘Analyst for Our Time’, will feature over 50 major paintings, sketches and prints presenting an overview of all periods of Kitaj's extensive oeuvre from the 1960s to his death in 2007.

It will consider Kitaj's early presentations of a fragmented world, reflecting his interest in art history and intellectuals such as ‘Aby Warburg’, and his paintings and collages addressing issues of European politics, philosophy and literature such as ‘The Murder of Rosa Luxembourg’ and ‘The Rise of Fascism’.

The exhibition at the Jewish Museum London, subtitled ‘The Art of Identity’ will focus on how Kitaj explored and expressed his 'Jewishness'. The exhibition will feature over thirty works, including iconic paintings such as ‘If Not, Not’; ‘Cecil Court, London W2 (The Refugees)’, ‘The Wedding’,
and ‘The Jewish Rider’. It also includes Kitaj’s portrait of the author Philip Roth, ’A Jew in Love’.

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Bob Dylan - Desolation Row.

My Greenbelt 2012 journal (4)

Monday 27^th August

 

The sense of peace from last night holds for me and my final day is less working issues through and more simply enjoyable, particularly as I catch up with friends from church.

John Schad gave a reading from his novel ‘The Late Walter Benjamin’ that being well dramatised heightened his wonderfully interesting and creative take on Benjamin’s life and writings. ‘We penetrate mystery,’ Benjamin said, ‘only to the degree that we recognize it in the everyday world.’ ‘Every second was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter’

This was followed Deborah Fielding on reading and writing short stories. Fielding gave us a personal and eclectic presentation with readings of, quotes about, and hints and tips on the writing of short stories. Read other writer’s short stories then just do it were the main messages that emerged. Her chapbooks combine art, design and narrative in one compendium, always a fascinating combination.

Sessions from Anthony Green and Simone Lia enabled me to finally get the exhibition in the Gallery. The initially unrecognised issue for me with this exhibition has been that the organisers have chosen to show work which break two standard lines in regard to contemporary art. The first is that narrative art is merely illustrative and, therefore, second rate. The second is that it is professional suicide for visual art to be explicit about Christian faith. Each of the artists included here, in different ways, are explicitly narrative (often confessional) Christian artists and within the mainstream art world. This is something to be celebrated but shouldn’t solely apply to those who can make it work in the mainstream art world. Instead, artists such as these should be inspiration for others who also aim to be explicitly confessional or narrative Christian artists but do not have similar standing within the mainstream art world. This exhibition may be a helpful development in affording equal understanding and support to these artists as for those whose vision is to address issues of faith through allusion and elusively.

Having recognised this doesn’t ultimately change my reaction to the work itself. Green, as he eloquently explained in his presentation, paints his life as a petit histoire recognising that to do so sanctifies ordinary life. In doing so, as an ex-Slade student, he would seem to be following in the footsteps of Stanley Spencer. It seems to me that Green’s work, wonderful as it undoubtedly is, has similar weaknesses to that of Spencer when the ordinary aspects of life being celebrated are so personal that a family history is required in order to fully appreciate or understand the imagery. Which brings us back to the standard critique of narrative art – which I think can be applied to Green’s Resurrection – that the work does not stand alone but needs literary explanation. Lia’s worm paintings don’t have this problem but, unlike her graphic novels, seem slight and ephemeral as images. Leunig, by contrast, provides a masterclass in single images which are both simply designed and drawn yet possess real pathos and depth.

Green did, in his talk, eloquently and forcefully emphasise the sanctify of ordinary life and each of us as ordinary people. My resolution of my own issues over this weekend has partly been though accepting the value of ordinary ministry and also the tensions and stretch that come from straddling several different areas of ministry with the risk that none are done as well as they might but also with the potentiality for creativity which comes from the attempt. 

Bellowhead, in their headlining set, played with a spirit of wild abandon that was based on disciplined familiarity with each other and their sources and which therefore provided something more than the acts who preceded them could deliver. Aradhna, who I heard again earlier in the day, also, it seems to me, possess this something more that comes from an ability to inhabit and then transcend the spirit of your sources.

In the tension of the now and not yet,

between order and disintegration,

between anarchy and regimentation,

in between, the broken middle,

the crack where the light gets in,

is the edge of chaos where life evolves,

where change occurs not free of cost –

ragged edges, blind alleys, the snake in Eden –

evolution into consciousness, falling up.

The edge of chaos

is order and disorder,

movement and stasis,

unity and fragmentation,

paradox and mystery

bringing change, development,

creativity, growth and mutation.

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Aradhna - Namaste Saté.