Here are intercessions that I wrote for today's Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:
God of the visible and the invisible, God of the incarnate Christ and the ascended Christ, God of the Son who lived and died in 1st century Palestine and God of the Spirit that blows where it chooses in every time and culture, we come before you today acknowledging all your different guises and ways of being. We cannot fully understand you, we cannot constrain you, and yet we can know you, love you, and know your love and life in us. In awe and wonder at your diversity and variety, we ask that we might encounter you in as many ways as we can bear and, especially, within the challenges and changes brought by Covid-19. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
God of presence and absence, we ask that in this time of physical distancing we may learn from the insights of those that have sought isolation in order to pray allowing our cells to teach us everything, as the city truly becomes our monastery. We ask, too, that, although physically separate, we will not neglect to meet together but encourage one another, and all the more as we face together the challenges of this day and time. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
God of affirmation and negation, we ask that, in this time of loss, we will discover what is truly central to our lives and loves, praying for all who have lost loved ones that the memories of all that was shared will come to outweigh the sudden bleakness of loss. In our loss of liberty and movement, may we see afresh and affirm all that we had overlooked and ignored in the haste and hurry of our previous lives; the beauty of birdsong, the clearness of air and sky, the peace and rest encountered in the still and the slow. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
God of touch and distance, we pray that we may understand our social distancing as an act of love to protect others from danger and maintain this discipline until no longer necessary. We pray for those whose touching of others is essential for the saving of life – all medics, paramedics, care workers and all in other emergency services – praying that they might be given the PPE and testing needed for their own protection. We pray, too, for those who are the recipients of their care praying for many that care will enable recovery. We pray, too, that our physical distancing at this time may become a spur to acts of greater love, support and service towards others, in ways that, while virtual, are nevertheless full of care, concern and meaning. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
God of sight and insight, we pray for those we only see virtually giving thanks for the technology that enables us to see others without their being physically present and for those that invented, maintain and develop that technology. We give thanks too for all who have preceded us in using this technology well – often those who have been on the edge of society and church – praying that we will learn from their experiences and value all they have to share. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
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The Innocence Mission - St Francis And The Future.
Showing posts with label paradox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paradox. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 April 2020
Tuesday, 10 December 2013
Arthur Boyd: the kindly man and the ferocious artist
I've recently read Darleen Bungey's excellent biography of Arthur Boyd, which has been well described by Patrick McCaughey:
'Painting was an exorcism. When he [Boyd] found his voice in the expressionist paintings of the war years, the figures, often lovers or cripples, became "an amalgam of the helpless, the foetal, new born, geriatric and corpse-like" in Bungey's good and awkward formulation.
Much later, Peter Porter, the poet and collaborator with Boyd, saw "the celebration of both the fertile and terrifying aspects of sexuality" as his central, recurring themes. The great series of Boyd's mid career - from the Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste (the ‘Bride' paintings) and the Nude with Beast to the ‘Caged Artist' paintings of the early '70s, where the imprisoned painter excretes gold - are powered forth by thwarted and requited love, miscegenation and the beast in man.
Robert Hughes once observed (and is quoted approvingly by Bungey) that Boyd's images had "a strong air of reality ... one feels that Boyd believes in their magical efficacy as firmly as mediaeval Catholics believed in imps, succubi and familiars." Gentle and generous to a fault, many had trouble squaring the kindly man and the ferocious artist. The achievement of Darleen Bungey's biography is that we are shown both and taught to accept the paradox.'
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Moby - A Case For Shame.
'Painting was an exorcism. When he [Boyd] found his voice in the expressionist paintings of the war years, the figures, often lovers or cripples, became "an amalgam of the helpless, the foetal, new born, geriatric and corpse-like" in Bungey's good and awkward formulation.
Much later, Peter Porter, the poet and collaborator with Boyd, saw "the celebration of both the fertile and terrifying aspects of sexuality" as his central, recurring themes. The great series of Boyd's mid career - from the Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste (the ‘Bride' paintings) and the Nude with Beast to the ‘Caged Artist' paintings of the early '70s, where the imprisoned painter excretes gold - are powered forth by thwarted and requited love, miscegenation and the beast in man.
Robert Hughes once observed (and is quoted approvingly by Bungey) that Boyd's images had "a strong air of reality ... one feels that Boyd believes in their magical efficacy as firmly as mediaeval Catholics believed in imps, succubi and familiars." Gentle and generous to a fault, many had trouble squaring the kindly man and the ferocious artist. The achievement of Darleen Bungey's biography is that we are shown both and taught to accept the paradox.'
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Moby - A Case For Shame.
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Seeing and being seen
The traditional image for our Patron Saint at St John's Seven Kings, St John the Evangelist, is the eagle and that is, of course, why images of eagles can be seen in different parts of our church. This image for John and the writings we traditionally attribute to him wasn’t chosen at random but was selected because it expresses something of what John’s writing do for us.
Richard Burridge, in his important book Four Gospels, One Jesus? tells us that the eagle was used to represent the Evangelist because he gives us the high-flying, far-seeing perspective of the eagle when he writes about Jesus. These writings give us the big picture about Jesus and his significance.
We can see this in our readings today. In 1 John 1, we read that Jesus, the Word of life, has existed from the very beginning and in John’s Gospel we read of Jesus speaking of his coming again at the end of time. This is the big picture into which John sets the stories and theology that John gives us about Jesus. When John writes about Jesus, he is not simply saying that these are interesting stories about a great human being. Instead he is saying that this is God himself, the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, walking, talking and acting in the flesh.
In 1 John 1 there are two key features of God that John wants us to grasp in order to understand the significance of the big picture. The first is that God is someone that we can see and the second that God is someone who enables us to see.
John uses the image of the Word made visible to tell us that God is someone that we can see. The heart of the Christian faith, he is saying, is the incarnation; the reality that God, in Jesus, became a human being and lived in a particular culture and time. John was able to say of this Word; “we have heard it, and we have seen it with our eyes; yes, we have seen it and our hands have touched it.” God is no longer detached from us and unknowable to us, instead he has chosen to come close to us, to move into our neighbourhood, to become one of us.
The incarnation is at the heart of Christianity because it is a sign of the love that God has for us. God loves us so much that he is prepared to become one of us, even though this means huge constraints and ultimately leads to his death. As a result, he understands us and understands human life. Now whatever we go through, God has been there before because he has experienced life in all its wonder and heartache.
However, God is not simply someone who can be seen by us. He is also the one by whom we can see. John gives us the image of God as light to help us grasp this facet of God’s being. Light is not something we can see directly but something that enables us to see ourselves and our world. This is what Jesus does for us through the incarnation; he shows what humanity was originally intended to become. For the very first time in the history of the world a human being lives a fully human life.
As a result when we see ourselves and our world in the light of the life of Jesus, what we see are our failure and inability to be the people that we were created to become. In the light of the way that Jesus lived his life, we see our lack of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. As this letter says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. But when we live in the light, seeing ourselves as we really are, then we become honest with ourselves and with God. By coming into that honesty we confess our sins and are purified of them.
Both these understandings of Jesus are necessary for us to become fully human. If God was just light that exposed our failures then we would be condemned by God. If God was just alongside us as the Word made flesh then there would be no prospect of change for us. But because God, in Jesus, is both the light revealing our failings and the Word made flesh understanding our failings, we can receive forgiveness and change to become more fully human.
To repeat, it is only because God, in Jesus, is both the light revealing our failings and the Word made flesh understanding our failings that we can receive forgiveness and change to become more fully human. So this Patronal Festival, let us be thankful for the big picture that John paints for us and thank God for the salvation that comes to us because he is Word and flesh; flesh and light; message and image; human and divine.
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The Proclaimers - The Light.
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
New forms of interconnectivity?
Great to see that, through The Tanks and the next Turbine Hall installation, Tate Modern is to feature more relational art, much of it also being art which critiques commercialisation. So, Charlotte Higgins writes in the guardian:
'The desire for live encounters, by both artists and audiences, was partly a reaction to the economic and political climate, said Dercon. Artists and audiences were expressing a disillusion with the impersonal systems that dominate modern life, and reaching for the human encounter.
"I'm not going to talk about politicians and banks, but we are completely surrounded by systems that do things to us and at us. Performance proposes a new form of interconnectivity."
The desire to focus work without physical form, that cannot straightforwardly be bought and sold, may also express a wider dissatisfaction among the art world for the vagaries of the art market and the extreme commercialisation of art before the financial crash of 2008.
According to Catherine Wood, Tate's curator of contemporary art and performance, "there is a desire for community among artists, and a desire to get away from the dominant news story about art, which is 'Damien Hirst sells for £50m'".
Serota added: "At a time of austerity, people are rethinking their values and looking at art that doesn't straightforwardly have a market … Artists want to make work that engages directly with audiences and is not so susceptible to commercial development."
Tino Sehgal, whose Turbine Hall commission will be unveiled next week, says in his guardian interview:
"Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects," he says. "I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years – that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding. I'm not against material things – I just don't work with them."
Objects, he suggests, offer false promises of stability and security ..."
Higgins explains that:
"Sehgal did not train as an artist: instead he studied dance and political economy, in tandem, in Berlin and Essen. A peculiar combination, you might think, but for him each unlocks the other. The paradox of economics, he believes, is that "we derive income from transforming the earth into goods, but you can't keep on transforming the earth. I felt I wanted to study that." And dance? "Dance for me was a solution. In the sense that I could solve this paradox at least for myself. It was about how I can derive an income from something that does not involve this material transformation. At the same time, I'm not against the economy or the idea of the product. Art is essentially something that is produced. What I think is overestimated is the power and potential of things. My work is a product, though – not a thing."
Still, Sehgal belongs in the art world rather than in the world of the performing arts: museums rather than theatres provide the best environment for tackling the kinds of questions that interest him. "The museum is a place where we think about how to produce material things. That is my question – not the question of choreography, which is 'How can a body move?', but 'What can we do instead of producing objects?'"
The paradox which doesn't seem to be fully addressed, however, is that it is commercial activity (galleries and sponsors) which funds much of the art which critiques commercialisation. Sehgal may dispense with contracts when he sells his works (that is, the right to perform them) to museums but they sell nevertheless for five-figure sums, something that, as Higgins notes, has prompted his critics to cry emperor's new clothes. Similarly, Tate director Nicholas Serota has praised non-doms who donated money to the Tanks at Tate Modern - saying: 'It's a very visible answer to the criticisms that have come from government and others about non-dom taxpayers not making a contribution to the cultural life of the country' - while using the money they provide to show art which critiques the commercialisation from which, in the main, their money derives. There are unresolved or unacknowledged issues here - having your cake and eating it - particularly where art which has become accepted by the cultural and critical establishment is presented as though it remains defiantly avant-garde.
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Mumford and Sons - Whispers in the Dark.
'The desire for live encounters, by both artists and audiences, was partly a reaction to the economic and political climate, said Dercon. Artists and audiences were expressing a disillusion with the impersonal systems that dominate modern life, and reaching for the human encounter.
"I'm not going to talk about politicians and banks, but we are completely surrounded by systems that do things to us and at us. Performance proposes a new form of interconnectivity."
The desire to focus work without physical form, that cannot straightforwardly be bought and sold, may also express a wider dissatisfaction among the art world for the vagaries of the art market and the extreme commercialisation of art before the financial crash of 2008.
According to Catherine Wood, Tate's curator of contemporary art and performance, "there is a desire for community among artists, and a desire to get away from the dominant news story about art, which is 'Damien Hirst sells for £50m'".
Serota added: "At a time of austerity, people are rethinking their values and looking at art that doesn't straightforwardly have a market … Artists want to make work that engages directly with audiences and is not so susceptible to commercial development."
Tino Sehgal, whose Turbine Hall commission will be unveiled next week, says in his guardian interview:
"Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects," he says. "I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years – that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding. I'm not against material things – I just don't work with them."
Objects, he suggests, offer false promises of stability and security ..."
Higgins explains that:
"Sehgal did not train as an artist: instead he studied dance and political economy, in tandem, in Berlin and Essen. A peculiar combination, you might think, but for him each unlocks the other. The paradox of economics, he believes, is that "we derive income from transforming the earth into goods, but you can't keep on transforming the earth. I felt I wanted to study that." And dance? "Dance for me was a solution. In the sense that I could solve this paradox at least for myself. It was about how I can derive an income from something that does not involve this material transformation. At the same time, I'm not against the economy or the idea of the product. Art is essentially something that is produced. What I think is overestimated is the power and potential of things. My work is a product, though – not a thing."
Still, Sehgal belongs in the art world rather than in the world of the performing arts: museums rather than theatres provide the best environment for tackling the kinds of questions that interest him. "The museum is a place where we think about how to produce material things. That is my question – not the question of choreography, which is 'How can a body move?', but 'What can we do instead of producing objects?'"
The paradox which doesn't seem to be fully addressed, however, is that it is commercial activity (galleries and sponsors) which funds much of the art which critiques commercialisation. Sehgal may dispense with contracts when he sells his works (that is, the right to perform them) to museums but they sell nevertheless for five-figure sums, something that, as Higgins notes, has prompted his critics to cry emperor's new clothes. Similarly, Tate director Nicholas Serota has praised non-doms who donated money to the Tanks at Tate Modern - saying: 'It's a very visible answer to the criticisms that have come from government and others about non-dom taxpayers not making a contribution to the cultural life of the country' - while using the money they provide to show art which critiques the commercialisation from which, in the main, their money derives. There are unresolved or unacknowledged issues here - having your cake and eating it - particularly where art which has become accepted by the cultural and critical establishment is presented as though it remains defiantly avant-garde.
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Mumford and Sons - Whispers in the Dark.
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