Prayers on the Move @ Stations of the Cross 2016

Station ​Two on the Stations of the Cross 2016 trail is Philip Jackson's statue of Mahatma Gandhi (2015) in Parliament Square.

"Jackson took inspiration from a 1931 photograph of Gandhi standing outside Downing Street, where he had come to argue the case for Indian self-governance. Befitting Gandhi’s radically egalitarian vision, the sculpture stands on a modest plinth, humbly approachable by passerby. As Gandhi himself recognized, his dedication to non-violence and the pursuit of truth resonate powerfully with Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels. Jesus was, Gandhi wrote, ‘the highest example of One who wished to give everything, asking nothing in return, and not caring what creed might happen to be professed by the recipient…I believe that He belongs not solely to Christianity, but to the entire world; to all races and people.’ Much as Jesus stood before Pilate, Jackson’s Gandhi looks toward the Houses of Parliament with gentle but steadfast resolve. Both were imprisoned and killed for the principles they espoused. Are we willing to take up the cross for our beliefs?"

Today, Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Speaker's Chaplain, spoke and prayed at this Station as part of the prayer walk organised by Prayers On The Move. The prayer walk started at Westminster Abbey and ended at Trafalgar Square. Along the way, those walking stopped off at some major landmarks and discussed prayer and spirituality in the modern world. Most importantly, they joined together in some prayer! Speakers included the Bishop of London and Seth Pinnock. A free #prayersonthemove Oyster Card Wallet was given to all participants and the walk involved multiple prayer exercises and discussions.

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Aretha Franklin - I Say A Little Prayer.

Chichester Cathedral: a reconciliation of the Artist and the Church

One of the distinguishing features of Chichester Cathedral, is the use of modern works of art to invigorate and beautify the cathedral. This idea, initiated by Bishop George Bell in the early 1950s, was largely put into effect by Walter Hussey during his deanship between 1955-77.

On 27th June 1929, the day he became Bishop of Chichester, George Bell famously expressed, in his enthronement address, his commitment to a much closer relationship between the Anglican Church and the arts:

‘Whether it be music or painting or drama, sculpture or architecture or any other form of art, there is an instinctive sympathy between all of these and the worship of God. Nor should the church be afraid to thank the artists for their help, or to offer its blessing to the works so pure and lovely in which they seek to express the Eternal Spirit. Therefore I earnestly hope that in this diocese (and in others) we may seek ways and means for a reconciliation of the Artist and the Church—learning from him as well as giving to him and considering with his help our conception alike of the character of Christian worship and of the forms in which the Christian teaching may be proclaimed.’

The concluding sentence of the rationale that Canon Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester Cathedral, provided for Marc Chagall as a brief for his stained glass window at the Cathedral based on Psalm 150 read as follows:

‘… it has been the great enthusiasm of my life and work to commission for the Church the very best artists I could, in painting, in sculpture, in music and in literature.’

Between these two statements, both in terms of concept and commission, lie many of the works still to be seen in the cathedral. These include:
Paintings:

• 'The Baptism of Christ' by Hans Feibusch (1951)
• 'Noli me Tangere' by Graham Sutherland (1960)
• 'The Icon of Divine Light' by Cecil Collins (1973) 
• 'Baptism' by Patrick Procktor (1984). 

Tapestries:

• John Piper as a reredos to the high altar (1966)
• Ursula Benker-Schirmir in the retro-choir (1985). 

Stained glass:

• a window by Marc Chagall, based on the theme of Psalm 150 '...let everything that hath breath praise the Lord' (1978). 

Embroideries:

• a panel behind the bishop's throne designed by Joan Freeman (1993), and hassocks in the Presbytery designed by Sylvia Green (1995), were all were worked by members of the cathedral's Seffrid Guild. 

Cast aluminium:

• All by Geoffrey Clarke - candlesticks and communion rails in St Mary Magdelane's Chapel (1960-62); Pulpit (1966); Lectern (1972).

Stone:

• Font - polished polyphant stone and beaten copper by John Skelton (1983) 
• Altars - in the retro-choir, St Mary Magdalene's chapel and the high altar by Robert Potter. 

Sculptures:

• 'Virgin and Child' by John Skelton (1988)
• 'Christ in Judgement' by Philip Jackson (1998). 
• 'The Refugee' by Diana Brandenburger has been loaned to the Cathedral in memory of George Bell, as he was a "Champion of the oppressed."
• Outside the cathedral, a magnificent statue of St Richard by Philip Jackson, a gift from the Friends of the cathedral to mark the Jubilee. 

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Leonard Bernstein - Chichester Psalms.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The last film in The Hobbit trilogy is by far the best because it shares the elegiac mythic qualities of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. After watching the first film in the trilogy, I criticised Peter Jackson for his decision to tell the story of The Hobbit as a prelude to The Lord of the Rings rather than as a story in its own right. That decision gave an uncertain quality to the first film with the film makers unsure as to whether to emphasise the lighter nature of The Hobbit itself or to continue the mythic feel of The Lord of the Rings. In this final film, there is no such uncertainty and the elegiac nature of the film fits the content closely with its theme of the seductions of wealth and power.

As Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian:

'Peter Jackson has pulled it off. He has successfully concluded his outrageously steroidal inflation of Tolkien’s Hobbit into a triple-decker Middle Earth saga equivalent to the Rings trilogy, and made it something terrifically exciting and spectacular, genial and rousing, with all the cheerful spirit of Saturday morning pictures. And if poor, bemused little Bilbo Baggins now looks a bit lost on this newly enlarged action-fantasy canvas – well, he raises his game as well, leavening the mix with some unexpectedly engaging and likable drama. The Battle of the Five Armies is at least as weighty as The Return of the King. It packs a huge chain-mailed punch and lands a resounding mythic stonk. But it’s less conceited, more accessible and it makes do with just the one ending.'

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Billy Boyd - The Last Goodbye.

Fantasy vs Reality: Lewis and Tolkien vs Reed and Wain

'At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. But at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it.' (C. S. Lewis)

'The heart of a lyric for me has always been anchored in an experienced reality, whether it be Avedon's photo of Warhol's bullet-scarred chest or the sociopathic attitudes recorded in "Kicks" or "Street Hassle." So in answer to the question I am most often asked, "Are these incidents real?" Yes, he said, Yes Yes Yes' (Lou Reed)

I've been reflecting on the differences between so-called 'fantasy' and so-called 'reality' having watched The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug yesterday and while looking forward to the BBC4 tribute to Lou Reed tonight. Lou Reed, at his best, was trying to write the Great American Novel through music and, in line with above quote, might well have agreed with John Wain that the "writer's task ... was to lay bare the human heart." Reed achieved this end supremely with his desolatingly emotional song cycle Berlin.

Richard Purtill has an excellent discussion of this issue in the Introduction to his Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien:

'In his [Tolkien's] view, fantasy has three purposes: Recovery, Escape, and Consolation. By Recovery, he means a "regaining of a clear view . . . 'seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them'". Familiarity has dulled our sense of the wonder and mystery of things; fantasy restores it ...

By Escape, Tolkien means nothing especially original. We must define Escape as the turning of our thoughts and affections away from what is around us to something else--the past, the future, a secondary world. Tolkien's originality lies in defending Escape when so many have deprecated it. His reasons are several. First, the modern world is preeminently something desirable to escape from ...

A deeper reason for Escape, however, is the human longing to flee from our limitations. First is the hardness of life even at its best; but beyond this is our isolation from each other and from the living world around us. Finally, the great limit, Death, is something that men have tried to escape from in many fashions.

Here Tolkien's discussion of Escape merges into a discussion of the third use of fantasy. Consolation is secondarily the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires, such as the desire really to communicate with species other than our own. But primarily it centers on the happy ending, the "eucata-strophe", the "sudden joyous 'turn'". This Consolation arises from the denial of "universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of joy, joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief".'  

Does The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug enable us to experience these three purposes of fantasy? Probably not. Its focus is mainly on escape. Peter Bradshaw, in his Guardian review, describes the film as 'a cheerfully exhilarating adventure tale, a supercharged Saturday morning picture ... something to set alongside the Indiana Jones films.' That it works in this way is, in part, because Peter Jackson focuses primarily on telling the story of The Hobbit rather than, as was the case with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, also giving equal time to telling the story of The Hobbit as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings. It is in the whole arc of the story (and in the story's significance as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings), however, that we come closest to Tolkien's understanding of the purposes of fantasy. As an enjoyable and gripping film in its own right, though, The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug works because it sticks with the 'huge propulsive energy' of its humorous and exciting source story and whooshes 'the heroes onwards towards their great goal' rather than engaging more widely in the significance of fantasy and the setting of The Hobbit in Tolkien's wider canon.

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Lou Reed - Berlin.

The Hobbit: An Unnecessary Inflation

In The Lord of the Rings films, there is a fine balance struck between the seriousness (within the context of the fictional world created) of the unfolding narrative and the particular responses and stories (often incorporating humour) of the main characters. The main focus is on a state-of-the-universe narrative but the potential portentousness of this big story is leavened and humanised by the humour and humility of the central characters and the parts they play within this meta-narrative.  

The Hobbit was originally written by J.R.R. Tolkien as a children's story complete in it's own right and it only later became a prelude to The Lord of the Rings. Having reached The Hobbit by the opposite route seems to have meant that Peter Jackson is unable to tell the earlier story in its own right and for what it is in and of itself. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first of a three part series which can only tell this the slighter of Tolkien's originally published tales of Middle Earth at this length because of the decision to also tell the story as an explicit prelude to The Lord of the Rings.

This has two implications. First, that The Hobbit films will only make sense to those who already know The Lord of the Rings films as the additional material doesn't progress the story which is actually told in The Hobbit but does fit that story into the bigger story of The Lord of the Rings. Second, the balance between seriousness and humour/humanity found in The Lord of the Rings films is lost here because of the decision to tell both the story of The Hobbit and the story of The Hobbit as a prelude to The Lord of the Rings. The story told in The Hobbit is a lighter, slighter tale which is well told in this film with humour (except when Radagast's distraction of a hunting party of Orcs is turned into the equivalent of a Benny Hill-style sketch) but this is then set against the seriousness of the storyline which explains how the events of The Hobbit fit into the state-of-this-universe narrative that is The Lord of the Rings. Instead of the leavening of seriousness with humour and humanity that is found in The Lord of the Rings films here we get a jarring shuttling back and forth between these two separated styles and stories.

This results, I think, from a lack of trust on the part of the makers in the ability of the story of The Hobbit to communicate in its own right and its own form. Jackson, essentially, does not trust that the seriousness of the tale and its links to The Lord of the Rings would emerge simply by dramatising the tale as told by Tolkien. In the story, as told by Tolkien, these aspects emerges from the lighter, humourous form of the story. It is the reverse of what is achieved in The Lord of the Rings films and it is ironic that Jackson having found for himself a balance between seriousness and humour for The Lord of the Rings films (as this balance is not in the book as written by Tolkien) has then been unable to trust the reverse balance which is naturally found in the original tale as told by Tolkien.

There is much to enjoy in the film and I'll be there with the many who will see all three over the next 18 months and then will watch all three all over again on DVD but, on a first viewing at least, my view is that the story would have been better told by reflecting and respecting the lighter, slighter nature of its form instead of this attempt to inflate it with the expansiveness and seriousness of The Lord of the Rings.

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Howard Shore - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.