Essential wisdom

Here's the sermon I preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields this morning:

At age 21 Roger Cecil walked away from a scholarship at the Royal College of Art after just one week to ensure he focused on his artwork without being influenced by other students. Was he wise or was he foolish? His decision attracted the attention of the BBC who interviewed members of his family, community, and college for the 1964 film ‘A Quiet Rebel’. Most of those interviewed, for differing reasons, expressed confusion and disapprobation at Cecil’s decision.

At age 30 Jesus began his public ministry knowing it would lead him to Jerusalem and to crucifixion. He repeatedly told his disciples what would happen to him and resisted any attempt to dissuade him. Was he wise or was he foolish? His teaching on his task was either not understood by his disciples or actively resisted, so much so that at the point of his death his disciples either betrayed or denied him or ran away.

The young King Solomon may have been around 20 when he became King and asked for wisdom instead of long life, riches, or the death of his enemies (1 Kings 2.10-12, 3.3-14). He is understood to have been wise. God was pleased with Solomon's request and personally answered his prayer. This has often been understood as being because Solomon did not ask for self-serving rewards. However, there is something deeper happening here, something which connects the destinies of the three people with which I have begun. I hope that by reflecting on their stories we can come to understand what gaining wisdom might look like for us.

We can firstly understand Solomon to be wise already, as he recognised his own limitations as a young man and an even younger King so asked for God's help and wisdom in ruling well. He recognised that he was facing a huge task – ruling a people who were so many that they could not be counted – and that he didn’t have the life experience or knowledge to carry out the task – “I am very young and don't know how to rule.” Wisdom starts with a realistic assessment of the situation we find ourselves in. It is only once we have a realistic understanding of where our starting point is that we can begin to find ways forward. So, Solomon showed wisdom before he asked for and was given wisdom.

Secondly, we can also understand Solomon’s request in terms of something essential to good governance. When the people of Israel first asked for a King, God told them, through Samuel, who was both prophet and Judge, that their Kings would be self-serving by centralising land and wealth in the hands of a few. Later in scripture, after Solomon’s reign, we see that this came to pass, as the majority of those that followed Solomon as King did not possess his wisdom. Instead, they used their position and power to exploit others for their own personal gain. They oppressed and exploited their people in ways that were unjust and when they were then criticised by the prophets God sent to denounce them it was lack of justice that the prophets highlighted. Solomon rejected that temptation by asking for wisdom instead of self-serving rewards and, by doing so, identified that the essence of good governance is that the one with power and resources acts justly for the good of all the people, not simply the few.

Identifying the essence of the role we are to play or the vocation we have in life is key to this story and to the finding of wisdom. Solomon writes in the Book of Proverbs that wisdom was a co-worker with God in creation. When the world and its creatures were being shaped, formed, and defined, wisdom was beside God, making sure everything fitted, delighting in the world of things and creatures, happily celebrating the human family. (Proverbs 8. 30). We see this aspect of wisdom fleshed out in another of the creation stories of the people of Israel, a story about the wisdom of identifying essence. The Book of Genesis gives us the story of Adam, in partnership with God, naming the animals. Names in ancient cultures had power because they described the essence of what it was that had been named. So, in this story, Adam identified the essence of each creature that came before him in order to see and work with that creature’s place in the circle of life. In a similar way, Solomon had to identify the essence of being a monarch in order to understand the role he was to play for the people of Israel. That role was one of identifying justice, equity, and fairness for all. Solomon realised that wisdom involves working with God to identify essence and then working with the grain of that understanding.

Jesus came to a similar place as he explored the scriptures for himself as a child growing up in Nazareth. He identified scriptures about the role of the people of Israel as applying to himself, so that when he later read from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth, he could say that that scripture had been fulfilled in their presence that day. He understood that, through his people, God wished to demonstrate that he is with all people through death into life. Jesus saw that the essence of incarnation was to live that reality, so knew his path through life - crucifixion, resurrection, ascension - and would not be distracted from it.

While on holiday I saw a retrospective exhibition of Roger Cecil’s work, the final exhibition for the foreseeable future in a series organised by the artist’s estate following his death in 2015. Entitled ‘A Secret Artist’ the exhibition provided answers to the central secret held by Cecil and his art. At its heart was a secret love to which he was devoted; a love that combined home, Wales, and the landscape of Abertillery.

When interviewed in 1964 for the BBC film ‘A Quiet Rebel’, Cecil spoke of his worry that at the Royal College of Art each artist would become 'a bit of everybody', each influencing the other. He left and went home to 'do painting my way ... the way I feel it.' At 21 he knew the essence of his art was the landscape of Wales and that of his home in Abertillery in particular. For him, to have been separate from that source of inspiration would have diluted his art.

45 years on from walking out of the Royal College of Art and after a career in which he made the art he wanted in the way he wanted and still found access to galleries and sales, he said: ‘I am very lucky, because ... ninety-nine per cent of people, they don't know what they do, all their life. You imagine that. Terrible, isn't it! To think they go through life and they don't know what they do. Now, I'm lucky. I'm very fortunate. I knew from when I was about ten. I wanted to do art. And I've done it.'

Wisdom comes from knowing who we are and who or what others are in God. Remembering we are fearfully and wonderfully made by God in our mother's wombs and therefore have unique contributions to life only we can make through the particular combination of gifts and talents and personalities we have been given. Such wisdom is gained by understanding essence and working with it.

Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes about the importance of remembering your creator in the days of your youth, “before the days of trouble come … and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12.1&7). I think one understanding of that statement is about finding the wisdom of essence early on in life, as was the case for Solomon, Jesus and Roger Cecil. We are most likely to do so if, like Solomon, we recognise the limitations of youth and use that understanding as motivation to cry out for insight, seeking wisdom like silver, and searching for it as for hidden treasures (Proverbs 2.3&4).

However, Solomon’s statement was not primarily about coming to that understanding early in life but instead more about finding that wisdom before death comes to us, in the time that we have available to us. For many, perhaps most of us, that is the journey of a lifetime.

That has certainly been my own experience. My call to ordination came in my forties and involved the recognition that my interests and experience in church, the Arts, social action, and employment, could all come together and be blended within ordained ministry. Experiencing that blend within my ministry in East London meant that when, in my fifties, I saw the advert for the role I now have here at St Martin’s - which through the 4 Cs brings together congregation, culture, compassion and commerce – I could see that this was a role that fitted perfectly with my experience and interests and through which the essence of who I am in God could be expressed. It took more than half a lifetime to reach that point but that was not wasted time, rather essential preparation for recognising and relishing the role.

Finally, the urgency of Solomon’s statement is because identification of essence is essential wisdom. It is wisdom that leads us to Christ, for the individual identity of any object is the stamp of divine creation on it. That was the great insight of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins; that the world is “news of God” and therefore “its end, its purpose, its purport, its meaning and its life and work is to name and praise” God.

How do God's creatures "give him glory"? Hopkins’ answer was “Merely by being themselves, by doing themselves”, by living out their essence. “Selfhood is not a static possession, but an activity:

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves-goes itself; myself it speaks and spells;
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.”[i]

All things, Hopkins wrote, “are charged with love, are charged with God and if we know how to touch them give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him.”[ii] By being our essential selves Christ is revealed in us. Hopkins concluded:

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Hopkins claimed we are most Christ-like when we act as our essential selves because then we are most fully in touch with the person we were created to be. We have briefly considered how Solomon, Jesus and Roger Cecil each discerned their essence. Solomon considering his legacy as David’s son and as a child of God before then looking at the demands of the role he had to play. Jesus in searching the scriptures to understand the call on his life and Cecil realising his love for the landscape of his home before making that the essence of his art. What is it that characterises your life and loves? What is it that only you can do for God as a result? In searching for the answers to those questions, you will act in God’s eye what in God’s eye you are – Christ – and know wisdom, as Christ plays to the Father through the features of your face. Amen.

For more on essence see my Bread for the World reflection on 'Creativity and sacramental sight' by clicking here.

[i] The Creation of the Self in Gerard Manley Hopkins, J. Hillis Miller, ELH, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Dec., 1955), pp. 293-319
[ii] The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Leonard Cohen - Steer Your Way.

Creativity and sacramental sight

In tonight's Bread for the World service at St Martin-in-the-Fields I spoke on the creativity of God and 'seeing sacraments'. Because of a technical difficulty part way through this beautiful service was recorded in two parts and can be viewed here and here.

The reflection I shared was as follows:

At our recent Parish Day the poet-priest Malcolm Guite shared many insights with us about the imagination of God and ways in which we can participate in God’s imaginative work. Some of what he shared began with words from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

‘The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.’

This description of the way in which imagination works is about noticing and naming. It begins with the poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven and, therefore, noticing aspects of what is in heaven and what is on earth, as well as connections between them both. Grayson Perry has said that his job as an artist is to notice things that other people don’t notice. When we really pay attention to what is around us and notice things that others don’t, we are being artists.

What the eye notices, the poet’s pen then turns to shapes, giving a local habitation and a name. With our eyes we see what no one else has seen and with our words or speech we name what it is that we see. When we do so we are poets. That is how imagination works; by noticing and naming. We can all pay attention, so that we notice, and can all describe and define, so that we name. In other words we can all be artists and poets.

I wanted to explore this further in terms of the creation stories in the Book of Genesis, as these are where we see the imagination of God most clearly at play, and by doing so see the way in which a movement between seeing, speaking and silence enables our noticing and naming.

The Book of Genesis and the Bible as a whole begins in silence. Speech first happens in verse 3 when God says, ‘Let there be light.’ In the beginning there was silence and in the silence God saw that the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Before creation began God was there in silence and stillness, the Spirit hovering over and seeing a realm of possibility yet to be realised, a realm of possibilities waiting to bodied forth, shaped and named by imagination.

Silence enables sight because sight precedes speech. The child looks and recognises before it can speak and so it is here, in this description of the time before time. Therefore, we need to regularly return to silence in order to see afresh, as we will also see God doing in this story.

Then God speaks, imaginatively embodying possibilities, shaping and naming possibilities as realised and actualised entities – let there be light, let there be sky, let there be land, let there be seas, let there be vegetation, let there be creatures, let there be human beings, let there be … After the speaking, the shaping, the defining, the naming, after all those things there is rest; the return to silence and stillness in order to see. God saw all that had been made, and indeed, it was very good and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that had been done.

In the time of God’s sabbath rest, we are invited to become sub-creators – co-creators - with God to continue this pattern or process of contemplative creation. The Lord God brought every animal of the field and every bird of the air to humans to see what we would name them; and whatever we called every living creature, that was its name. We gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field.

God was no longer creating by bodying forth, shaping and naming, but, as he rested, wished to see how his creativity was shared and replicated within his creation. We were asked to co-create by naming all other creatures. Names in ancient times described the essence of the creature or object so named. That is what we did in this story. We looked for the essence of each creature and then named that essence. 

Naming is a key human speech-act. Describing and defining is a tool for navigating existence and is the basis of scientific discovery, and it all begins with seeing. In order to accurately describe or define or map, we have first to see what is there. That is the sequence within this story. God brought animals to us. We looked at each one and then described or defined each by naming them.

We come to know the essence of a thing by imaginatively exploring its various possibilities. This process of paying attention to an object and using our imagination to explore its possibilities in order to realise its distinctive essence is what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called instress. He called the essence that we identify the inscape. Ultimately, ‘the instress of inscape leads one to Christ, for the individual identity of any object is the stamp of divine creation on it.’

Hopkins wrote about this in a poem called ‘Kingfishers catch fire’:

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

When we do what Adam did – when we notice and name – we are being creative, we are artists and poets, we are fulfilling the potential God created in us when he made human beings in his image as creative beings. When we notice and name we are seeing sacramentally because we are seeing the divine essence in all things.

This is the purpose for which we were created and for which the creation itself is crying out. James Thwaites has suggested that this is what Paul, in Romans 8, suggests creation is crying out for from us as human beings (Romans 8: 19-22): ‘It must be crying out for its goodness to be fully realised and fully released. The creation cannot be good apart from the sons and daughters because we alone were given the right to name it; we are the image bearers who were made to speak moral value and divine intent into it. We were created to draw forth the attributes, nature and power of God in all things.’

Instead of the selfish and wasteful exploitation of creation’s resources – the domination and abuse – which characterises human engagement with the world, we are intended to creatively realise the inherent possibilities, the essential goodness, of creation through our imaginative ability as those who notice and name. As God did when resting on the seventh day, it is as we return to silence in order to contemplate that we see more clearly and can notice and name once again. So, may we realise our inherent creativity as human beings in order that we learn to care for creation once again.

We end with more from Gerard Manley Hopkins:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins - God's Grandeur.

Review - Barbara Hepworth: Divided Circle

My latest review for Church Times is of Barbara Hepworth: Divided Circle at The Heong Gallery:

'The works in this exhibition demon­strate Hepworth’s intuitive and spiritual understandings of form and energy. Form is inherent in the material and needs to be discerned by the artist to be realised. This con­cept of truth to materials is a spir­itual search for the inscape (the term coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins) or essence of objects and artefacts as originally created by God. Energy is found in ideas, the imaginative concept that gives life and vitality to the material; and this vitality is its spiritual inner life, force and energy.'

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here.

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Bill Fay - In Human Hands.

Start:Stop - Cultivating creation and developing new possibilities

Bible reading

God took the Man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order … Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” (Genesis 2: 15 - 23)

Meditation

This part of the Creation stories in Genesis suggests that work is intended to be about creativity and care - naming the essence and possibilities of a good creation. Our task is to cultivate creation (to make it fruitful) and to care for it (to maintain and sustain it), just as God told Adam to work the ground and keep it in order. Cultivating creation is a creative activity based on understanding the essence of each thing that we cultivate. This understanding comes from the task God gave to Adam of naming the creatures brought to him. Names in ancient culture were descriptive of the essence or meaning of objects or people. So, in this story Adam’s task was to identify the essence of each creature that God brings to him.

Because the creation is good, Adam is being asked to name all that is good, integrated and coinherent within it. James Thwaites has suggested that this is what creation is crying out for (Romans 8: 19-22): “It must be crying out for its goodness to be fully realised and fully released. The creation cannot be good apart from the sons and daughters because we alone were given the right to name it; we are the image bearers who were made to speak moral value and divine intent into it. We were created to draw forth the attributes, nature and power of God in all things”.

As we look for the essence - the attributes, nature and power of God in all things - we also see possibilities inherent in creation. Everything in creation is both what it is in its own right and what it could become. God has given us the task of naming both what things are - their actuality - and what they could become - their possibilities.

So, in our work, we are to look both for the good in the work itself and in those with whom we work and we are to name the good when see it. We are also called to look for new possibilities in our work - both in the work itself and in those with whom we work - and to name these possibilities as we see them.

Prayer

Creator God, you have given us the task of naming what things actually are, by looking for the essence of things and seeing the attributes, nature and power of God in all things. Enable us to do this in our work and for those with whom we work by naming the good when see it and by speaking moral value and divine intent into our workplaces and relationships. Through our speech, may we draw forth the attributes, nature and power of God in others.

Guide us to see the good in our colleagues and workplaces. May we name and develop new possibilities in our work and colleagues.

Creator God, you have given us the task of naming what things could become - their possibilities. Enable us to look for new possibilities in our work - both in the work itself and in those with whom we work - and to name these possibilities as we see them.

Guide us to see the good in our colleagues and workplaces. May we name and develop new possibilities in our work and colleagues.

Creator God, you have said that our work is intended to be about creativity and care - naming the essence and possibilities of a good creation. May we cultivate creation by making it fruitful and care for it by maintaining and sustaining it. Enable us to cultivate creation as a creative activity based on understanding the essence of each thing that we cultivate.

Guide us to see the good in our colleagues and workplaces. May we name and develop new possibilities in our work and colleagues.

Blessing

Cultivating creation, seeing the good in our colleagues and workplaces, developing new possibilities, speaking moral value and divine intent into people and places, drawing forth the attributes, nature and power of God. May those blessing of God almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rest upon us and remain with us always. Amen.

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The Welcome Wagon - But For You Who Fear My Name.