Nothing lost, all raised up on the last day

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

Justin Welby once welcomed an Evening Standard campaign on tackling food poverty and waste by saying that as “hunger is a complex, widespread and shocking blight on our country … more needs to be done to highlight this issue.”

In commenting on this statement, the paper noted that the Archbishop had good scriptural reasons to join the Food for London campaign. They noted that after ‘feeding the five thousand, Christ instructed the waste to be gathered up afterwards’ and said that it was in that spirit that the Archbishop had supported this campaign.

It was positive to see a major newspaper quoting scripture and doing so with some understanding. This contemporary reminder of the feeding of the five thousand and the 12 baskets of fragments that were gathered up afterwards gives us one way of reflecting on Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading (John 6. 37 – 40) that it ‘is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.’

These words come in the middle of Jesus’ teaching about being the Bread of Life which followed shortly after the feeding of the 5,000. When Jesus gave thanks over the bread, the word used is ‘eucharistesas’, the word which gives us ‘Eucharist’. Jesus shares the bread around in communion, then, when everyone is satisfied, he instructs his disciples to pick up the fragments using that same phrase, ‘so that nothing may be lost.’ Just as none of this ‘eucharisticized’ bread was lost after the feeding, so, because ‘Jesus is the bread of life, [those who] see and believe in him … receive eternal life [and] become a fragment which he will gather up on the last day.’ (John, Richard Burridge, BRF 1998)

This is the reason why Christ came, which he reveals both here and in the parables he told about the lost sheep and coin. The shepherd and woman in those two stories are exactly the same; because of their concern for the sheep and coin which are lost, they will not give up searching until these have been found. The sheep and the coin are loved and this love is revealed or proved through the search.

The point of those parables is for us to know that we and all souls are similarly loved by God because he also searches for us until we are found. This search is the story of the Gospels:

‘Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death
— even death on a cross.’ (Philippians 2. 6 – 8)

Christ went on that search to seek and save those who are lost and thereby to ensure that none shall be lost and all souls shall be safely gathered in.

How much are we loved by God? So much that his Son left all he had in heaven to become a human being and die to rescue us for God. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, searches for all souls with God’s attentive love, looking and listening, finding and carrying; carrying us home, like a sheep on the shoulders, from the cliff edges of our lives.

The lost almost universally consider themselves worthless but these parables and this story specifically deny that assumption. What is lost is actually the most precious thing or person of all; the person or thing for which everything else will be given up or set aside. What is lost and found is us. We are the ones for whom Christ searches at the expense of all that he has, including, in the end, his own life. We are the most precious lost person for whom he searches. We are precious, we are loved.

We live in the light of this love and as his love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. Stewardship month is an annual reminder to us that that is so when it comes to the contribution we make as Christian disciples; when it comes to the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contribution we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take.

‘God has given you unique abilities, talents, and gifts … If you think your talents are simply for you to make a lot of money, retire, and die, you’ve missed the point of your life. God gave you talents to benefit others, not yourself. And God gave other people talents that benefit you … We’re all a part of the body of Christ, and each part matters. There are no insignificant people in the family of God. You are shaped to serve God, and he is testing you to see how you are going to use the talents he gave you. Whether you are a musician or an accountant, a teacher or a cook, God gave you those abilities to serve others … You are a manager of the gifts God has given to you.’

Ministry belongs to the whole people of God. Every person, because of their baptism, has a ministry. Each of us has special qualities, skills and talents. How could your talents and gifts be used more fully for the work of God through St Andrew’s? Each of us has time, talents and treasure which could be given out of gratitude and to help this church. Will you help in some way? Can you use your gifts to share in God’s plan for his kingdom and for the work of ministry here at St Andrew’s?

Could you offer your time and talents for tasks such as Administering Communion, Contemplative Commuters, Campaigning on issues, Children’s work, MU Committee, Choir member, Musician, DCC member, Odd jobs, Committee member, Painting & decorating, Church officer, PCC member, Cleaning, Toddler Group helper, Coffee Morning helper, Prayer for others, Reading the Bible in church, Sidesperson, among other tasks? I encourage you to reflect on how you use your gifts and talents currently and whether you could give us of your talents in new ways out of gratitude to God and to help this church.

We do so because we are the most precious lost person for whom he searches. We are precious, we are loved. We live in the light of this love and, as his love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. Amen.

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Moby featuring Gregory Porter - In My Heart.

Gather us in ...

Here's my sermon from this morning's Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Jesus takes the child’s five loaves of bread and two fish, blesses them by giving thanks for them, breaks them for distribution by his disciples to the crowd, then asks his disciples to gather up the broken fragments of the meal in baskets so that none is wasted (John 6. 1 - 21). Jesus has yet to institute the Eucharist at the Last Supper, but we recognise the basic elements of the Eucharist in this story; bread that is blessed and broken before distribution in order that those receiving the broken body of Jesus are gathered up and formed into the whole Body of Christ, which is the Church.

Could you look for a moment at the leaflet you have been given for ‘Something Worth Sharing’, our annual conference on disability and Church, as there you will see an image which has the same elements included? There in the centre is bread that is broken; a priest’s wafer broken into seven pieces each held by a diverse group of people. Are they taking the broken pieces of the host to themselves or are they reforming the host into a whole? We do not know from this image, which was the inspiration of Fiona MacMillan. The image encompasses both the breaking apart and the bringing together and that is significant as both feature in the pattern of the Eucharist which we see enacted here in the feeding of the 5,000.

At the beginning of June Carol Ashby spoke at our Bread for the World service on this passage, the feeding of the 5,000, reflecting particularly on the fact that Jesus told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ She said that, just as Jesus needed helpers and just as all the leftovers were gathered up and kept, so each one of us is needed here at St Martin's and in God's kingdom and nothing we offer or give is wasted or goes unused. I want to build on the inspiration that Carol provided by suggesting three further ways in which to think about the gathering up of fragments so that nothing may be lost. The first concerns the gathering up of food waste, second, the gathering up of the fragments of our lives and third, the gathering up that is the kingdom of God. All these relate to our being gathered up and gathered in today at this Eucharist.

So, my first reflection is very literal and concerns food waste. In 2016 the Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed ‘the Evening Standard’s campaign on tackling food poverty and waste,’ by saying that as ‘hunger is a complex, widespread and shocking blight on our country and more needs to be done to highlight this issue.’ In commenting on this statement, the paper noted that the Archbishop had good scriptural reasons to join the Food for London campaign. They noted that after ‘feeding the five thousand, Christ instructed the waste to be gathered up afterwards’ and said that it was in that spirit that the Archbishop had supported this campaign.

It was positive to see a major newspaper quoting scripture and doing so with some understanding. This contemporary reminder of the feeding of the five thousand and the 12 baskets of fragments that were gathered up afterwards give us one way of reflecting on Jesus’ words. In the UK we throw away edible food worth £470 per household each year and a third of perfectly edible vegetable crops are discarded from our fields due to supermarkets’ strict cosmetic standards. This wasteful food cycle has a big carbon footprint, making climate change worse.

Earlier this year, the Church of England’s General Synod backed a motion calling upon the Government to tackle food poverty and take steps to minimise waste throughout the supply chain. The motion outlined ways in which retailers and Church of England members can attempt to tackle food poverty in Britain. The motion called for the Government to consider steps to reduce waste in the food supply chain, urged parishes to help lobby retailers on food waste and stressed the need for church members to reduce waste in their own homes.

Following that literal application of Jesus’ teaching, we can also think in terms of a metaphorical understanding of the fragments as representing the disparate elements of our own lives. The catalyst for the feeding of the 5,000 was the offering up of his lunch by the young boy. His offering was offered to God, multiplied and the result was that there were 12 baskets of fragments to be gathered, so as not to be wasted. This suggests that our offering of ourselves to God provides a means by which what is disparate and fragmented within our lives can gathered up and unified.

That was certainly my experience in offering for ordained ministry. In my working life I had experience of partnership working to create employment opportunities, with a particular focus on assisting disabled people in finding and keeping work. In my church life I had involvement in setting up a church-based day care business and a detached youth work project reaching out to disaffected young people. In my personal life I was writing and painting and finding a limited range of opportunities to share my creative work.

I realised, as I went through the selection process for ordination and then my ministerial training, that ordained ministry could hold and utilise all these disparate experiences and, as a result, could provide a frame within which all these disparate fragments of my life could be gathered up, held together and unified. And so it has proved, as each context for my ministry to date has provided unique opportunities to make connections between faith, work, art and social action through partnerships and projects. That has, of course, never been more so than here where our mission model and HeartEdge, our growing ecumenical network of churches, integrates congregation, culture, commerce and compassion.

Mission and ministry in, from and outside the church provides a framework, forum or context in which all of our skills, experiences, interests and failures can be gathered up, integrated and used for God’s glory and in God’s service. My personal experience of this reality has been in relation to ordained ministry but, the model of mission that we use here is clear that this gathering up of all that we offer applies to us all, whether lay or ordained.

Later in John 6, Jesus gives a cosmic or eschatological twist to this phrase we are considering when he says it ‘is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day’ (John 6. 37 – 40). These words come in the middle of Jesus’ teaching about being the Bread of Life which followed the feeding of the 5,000. When Jesus gave thanks over the bread, the word used is ‘eucharistesas’, the word which gives us ‘Eucharist’. Jesus shared the bread around in communion, then, when everyone was satisfied, he instructed his disciples to pick up the fragments using that same phrase, ‘so that nothing may be lost.’ Just as none of this ‘eucharisticized’ bread was lost after the feeding, so, because ‘Jesus is the bread of life, [those who] see and believe in him … receive eternal life [and] become a fragment which he will gather up on the last day.’ (John, Richard Burridge, BRF 1998)

This is the reason why Christ came, which he revealed both here and in the parables he told about things that were lost; the lost sheep and coin (Luke 15. 1 - 10). The shepherd and woman in those two stories are exactly the same; because of their concern for the sheep and coin which are lost, they will not give up searching until these have been found. The sheep and the coin are loved and this love is revealed or proved through the search.

The point of those parables is for us to know that we are similarly loved by God because he also searches for us until we are found. That search is the story told in the Gospels; that Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he laid down his own life for us becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross – in order that all might be safely gathered in as those who are gathered in rise with him and return to God. Christ went on that search to seek and save those who are lost and thereby to ensure that none shall be lost and all shall be safely gathered in.

Those who are lost almost universally consider themselves worthless but these parables and this story of the fragments gathered up specifically deny that assumption. What is lost is actually the most precious thing or person of all; the person or thing for which everything else will be given up or set aside. What is lost and found, discarded but then gathered up, is us. We are the ones for whom Christ searches at the expense of all that he has, including, in the end, his own life. We are the most precious lost person for whom he searches, the discarded fragment that will not be overlooked and will not be wasted. We are precious, we are loved. As a result, we have a basis for saying with the poet Walt Whitman that: ‘Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, / No birth, identity, form — no object of the world, / Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing.’

And so we can pray, in words from a call to worship by the Wild Goose Resource Group that we used regularly in my previous parish: ‘Gather us in, the lost and lonely, the broken and breaking, the tired and aching who long for the nourishment found at your feast. Gather us in, the done and the doubting, the wishing and wondering, the puzzled and pondering who long for the company found at your feast. Gather us in, the proud and pretentious, the sure and superior, the never inferior, who long for the levelling found at your feast. Gather us in, the bright and the bustling, the stirrers, the shakers, the kind laughter makers who long for the deeper joys found at your feast. Gather us in, from corner or limelight, from mansion or campsite, from fears and obsession, from tears and depression, from untold excesses, from treasured successes, to meet, to eat, be given a seat, be joined to the vine, be offered new wine, become like the least, be found at the feast. Amen.

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Marty Haugen - Gather Us In.

Nothing shall be lost

Here is my sermon from today's Choral Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Yesterday, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that he welcomes “the Evening Standard’s campaign on tackling food poverty and waste,” as “hunger is a complex, widespread and shocking blight on our country and more needs to be done to highlight this issue.”

In commenting on this statement, the paper noted that the Archbishop has good scriptural reasons to join the Food for London campaign. They noted that after ‘feeding the five thousand, Christ instructed the waste to be gathered up afterwards’ and said that it was in that spirit that the Archbishop had supported this campaign.

It is positive to see a major newspaper quoting scripture and doing so with some understanding. This contemporary reminder of the feeding of the five thousand and the 12 baskets of fragments that were gathered up afterwards give us one way of reflecting on Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading (John 6. 37 – 40) that it ‘is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.’

These words come in the middle of Jesus’ teaching about being the Bread of Life which followed shortly after the feeding of the 5,000. When Jesus gave thanks over the bread, the word used is ‘eucharistesas’, the word which gives us ‘Eucharist’. Jesus shares the bread around in communion, then, when everyone is satisfied, he instructs his disciples to pick up the fragments using that same phrase, ‘so that nothing may be lost.’ Just as none of this ‘eucharisticized’ bread was lost after the feeding, so, because ‘Jesus is the bread of life, [those who] see and believe in him … receive eternal life [and] become a fragment which he will gather up on the last day.’ (John, Richard Burridge, BRF 1998)

This is the reason why Christ came, which he reveals both here and in the parables he told about the lost sheep and coin. The shepherd and woman in those two stories are exactly the same; because of their concern for the sheep and coin which are lost, they will not give up searching until these have been found. The sheep and the coin are loved and this love is revealed or proved through the search.

The point of those parables is for us to know that we and all souls are similarly loved by God because he also searches for us until we are found. This search is the story of the Gospels:

‘Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death
— even death on a cross.’
(Philippians 2. 6 – 8)

Christ went on that search to seek and save those who are lost and thereby to ensure that none shall be lost and all souls shall be safely gathered in.

How much are we loved by God? So much that his Son left all he had in heaven to become a human being and die to rescue us for God. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, searches for all souls with God’s attentive love, looking and listening, finding and carrying; carrying us home, like a sheep on the shoulders, from the cliff edges of our lives.

The lost almost universally consider themselves worthless but these parables and this story specifically deny that assumption. What is lost is actually the most precious thing or person of all; the person or thing for which everything else will be given up or set aside. What is lost and found is us. We are the ones for whom Christ searches at the expense of all that he has, including, in the end, his own life. We are the most precious lost person for whom he searches. We are precious, we are loved.

As a result, we have a basis for saying with Walt Whitman that:

‘Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form — no object of the world,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere
confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space — ample the field and
nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold — the embers left
from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim shall duly flame
again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings
and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible land
returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and
corn.’

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Orlando Gibbons - O Lord, Increase My Faith.  

For at least a short while, all will seem a great deal better in the world

The Rt Revd David Walker, the Bishop of Manchester, writes in the Church Times:

"It is that time of year when church doors are flung wide to welcome both familiar faces, and those who are, shall we say, less frequent in crossing our thresholds. Special acts of worship, from carol services to Christingles, pack our pews.

But who are these people joining us in Advent, whom we don’t see through the rest of year? They might be “cultural Christians”, devoid of faith, drawn by a mixture of nostalgia and aesthetics; but there might be something deeper stirring within them ...

This Christmas, as at every Christmas, we will be opening our doors to the slightly familiar faces of those who occasionally come to church. My plea is that we try to understand them better, and thus be a little more informed and hospitable to their needs. Who knows? They may come back again."

Similar questions have been preoccupying other writers in the mainstream press as well. Quentin Letts writes in the Evening Standard that:

"Church regulars should capitalise on this once-a-year influx and simultaneously learn from the invasion; equally, the visitors should make the most of their rare visit to church. Millions of nominal agnostics will have a chance to reconnect fleetingly with a faith from which they have drifted. The evocative lighting, the sturdy New Testament lessons and the familiar harmonies of those carols can work a strange form of alchemy, if that is the word.

If the service is done well — and that is quite a big “if”, for too many of today’s clergy are clunking amateurs when it comes to liturgical theatrics — these new congregants may leave church altered. They may find that for an hour or so they feel less stressed, more secure, not quite so hemmed in by the hassles of 21st-century life. They may even, heavens above, smile at their neighbours and stuff a tenner or more in the collection. For at least a short while, all will seem a great deal better in the world. Church can do that for you."

David Fay, in his piece on carols in The Big Issue, quotes anthropologist Daniel Miller as saying that Christmas "works best as a unifying festival, connecting people with their own traditions of celebration and with past generations. Simultaneously, it connects the domestic family, the region and nation through to an ideal of global humanity, celebrating the same festival at the same time."

Building on this theme, he also quotes Andrew Blyth, a bandmaster and assistant musical director in the Salvation Army, as saying that "The familiar tunes bind people together, young and old."

Angus Farquhar, again in The Big Issue, writes about the power of music in sacred space:

"I went to a service for All Souls after losing my Mum earlier this year; you light a candle, a full choir was singing. I took enormous comfort from that sound of the pure voice focused on ritual intent. The deeper qualities of pure and focused though have an impact, that sense of creating a heightened atmosphere in a building that is either is or was a church, mosque or synagogue. Something has often been imbued into the walls ...

I don't subscribe to the dogma of Christianity or Islam but they got the ritual right. Music in a dedicated ritual space, it's very powerful. There's nothing like it."

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Bright Eyes - O Little Town Of Bethlehem.

London stands in solidarity with Paris

The Bishop of London had an article in yesterday's Evening Standard in response to the attacks in Paris. In the piece he reflected on his recent visit to Moscow where he gave a speech at a bi-lateral symposium with the Russian Orthodox Church and also met with Russia’s Islamic leader, the Supreme Mufti.

Bishop Richard’s article is also published in full on the diocesan website: London stands in solidarity with Paris.

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Francis Poulenc - O Magnum Mysterium.

Music update: Stephen Hough, James Morrison, Floating Points and Spiritual Jazz

'Catholicism was central to all the composers in the recital [Schubert, Franck and Lizst], which included the pianist himself. [Stephen] Hough’s own third sonata, subtitled Trinitas, here received its premiere. It is a striking contrast with its more restless but equally idiomatic 2012 predecessor, carefully structured around the number three, moving confidently and always articulately through major and minor thirds from austere to perky and affirming. Hough played it from the score and it more than held its own in such exalted pianistic company.' (Martin Kettle, The Guardian)

'“I got demons” wails the voice, before the 2007 Brit Award-winner [James Morrison] attempts a confession of St Augustine proportions: “I close my eyes and talk to God / Pray that you can save my soul.”

It may be the sound of someone desperately trying to stay positive in the post-Ed Sheeran era, but actually, desperate positivity is a good sound for him. Higher Than Here is almost Nashvillean in its godly striving, as reflects an epiphany that Morrison had after three deaths in his family.' (Richard Godwin, Evening Standard)

'As a young boy, [Sam] Shepherd was a chorister at Manchester Cathedral and went on to study piano at Chetham’s School of Music. His father is a vicar and the family vicarage turned into a studio for musical experiments: “I could set up cellos in the kitchen, drum kits in my sister’s room,” he says mischievously. A teacher gave him some jazz records and it was then that he “stopped thinking of classical and jazz as two different things”, and started seeing them harmoniously. “Kenny Wheeler is so beautiful that [his music] could have been Rachmaninov,” he enthuses. “And Bill Evans is similar to the colourfulness of Debussy.”

Like his favourite spiritual jazz records, Elaenia is improvisational and designed to be heard in one go. But Shepherd says he “finds it difficult to reconcile not being religious with being into spiritual music”. Instead, he admires the genre architecturally. “Spiritual jazz, for me, feels like building a space out of nothing and within that space [the musicians] build their house, their city, their entire universe through music,” he says excitedly. “They exist in this black hole and they create an amazing place without form, without structure, without harmonic beginnings …”' (Kate Hutchinson, The Guardian)

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Stephen Hough - Born In Bethlehem.

Commerce and climate change

Today's Guardian and Evening Standard both have stories of fascinating sculptural pieces in London.

Barnaby Barford was inspired by the story of the Tower of Babel to create a teetering tower at the V&A formed of 3,000 china replicas of retail outlets from every postcode in London. He says, “I thought how London is like hundreds of different countries and languages all in one city, how this is expressed through our shops, and how I could build a tower that would be both a celebration and critique of commercialism.”

The second is a 'sculpture, entitled The Rising Tide, has been installed near the bankside of Vauxhall bridge and is the work of Jason deCaires Taylor, 41, a British artist best known for creating the world’s first underwater museum in Cancun, then again in the Bahamas.'

'The installation, which sits less than a mile from the Houses of Parliament, comprises four life-size shire horses, standing as a symbol of the origins of industrialisation but also as a warning for the bleak future it is creating for the world by their representation of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

While the bodies of the figures and horses are moulded from real life, each of the horses’ heads has been replaced by the “horse head” of an oilwell pump – a political comment on the impact of fossil fuels on our planet.'

'At high tide, you might barely know they’re there. But as the water level of the Thames comes and goes twice a day with the tide, the four ghostly heads – and the horses they sit atop – slowly emerge fully into view.'

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T. Bone Burnett - Humans From Earth.

Spokesperson for the silent throng of things made by the human hand

The Evening Standard has four pieces written in appreciation of Neil MacGregor following the announcement that he is to step down as Director of the British Museum. This is fitting because "he has popularised the extraordinary riches of the museum in such as a way as to make them part of an intelligible human story, accessible to the ordinary public."

Michael Prodger writes that MacGregor "sees no conflict between popularity and scholarship and instinctively grasps that the public wants information as much as entertainment."

Antony Gormley described MacGregor as "the spokesperson for the silent throng of things made by the human hand, heart and brain over all time. Like no other before him, he has helped us see, empathise and interpret the huge diversity of humanly made things, allowing us to understand what they are and the world from which they come."

I was pleased to see that his future projects "include working with the BBC and the museum on a new Radio 4 series on faith and society." His series 'A History of the World in 100 Objects' was, in part, an inspiration for my short story The New Dark Ages, which can be read using these links - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

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The Band - Don't Do It.

Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden

Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden opens at Tate Modern today. Ben Luke in his review for the London Evening Standard says that the show 'proves that painting can still agitate at the big questions in a unique way' and left him 'feeling haunted.'

I reviewed Dumas' Forsaken exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery in 2011 for the Church Times and wrote then that 'Dumas’s work is both bold and fragile, brash and delicate; passages of cool minimalism — blank spaces and unpainted charcoal lines — combine with the textured gestural brushstrokes of vigorous expression­ism: a stylistic both/and that comple­ments her imagistic exploration of the reality of paradox.'

I concluded that review by saying: 'By beginning with Christ’s cry of forsakenness and using that moment as a metaphor for our common experiences of isolation and loss, these are crucifixions which begin a conversation capable of taking us deeper into both the experience and consequences of Christ’s death. Could they be afforded – and Dumas is among those contemporary artists for whose work collectors pay the highest prices – these crucifixions would speak powerfully within sacred space. There is nevertheless something apposite about the strange company they keep in this exhibition that recalls the company Christ kept in his ministry and on the cross.'

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The Staple Singers - When Will Be Paid (For The Work We've Done).

Eden at the Serpentine

Kieran Long has written a very interesting piece in the London Evening Standard about this year's Serpentine Gallery pavilion created by Peter Zumthor.

Zumthor has referred to his pavilion as a "hortus conclusus", an enclosed garden, and Long notes that  the reference inherent in this garden/cloister hybrid goes "to the very roots of Western culture, the mystical Christian tradition of the inviolate Eden that the Latin words call to mind":

"It is not simply a monastic kitchen garden; it has to do with how gardens connect us to the most universal of themes. In Zumthor's essay about the pavilion, he begins by writing: "We come from nature and return to nature; we are conceived and born; we live and die; we rot or burn and vanish into the earth." These are not the words of an artist merely engaged in the manipulation of sensory effects.

Perhaps death, life, religion and the mystical universals implied by walled gardens are taboo at the press conference of a fashionable art institution but it is undoubtedly in the background of Zumthor's thinking, even if he doesn't quite make it explicit. He has spent the past few years working on projects deeply connected with the Catholic Church. The first, a modest chapel in a field in Germany (Bruder Klaus Chapel, 2007) is made of the roughest concrete blackened by intentional charring, with a poured lead floor. The second is the beautiful Kolumba museum in Cologne, run by the catholic Diocese of Cologne (2008), which works with existing historic ruins to make an ambiguous civic monument. Neither of these projects is in any way dogmatic about Catholic faith, but both of them deal with how architecture can help us understand our place in the world."

Long applauds Zumthor's "serious-minded attention to the most universal themes in architecture."

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Ed Sheeran - Wayfaring Stranger.