The Dance of Love: Living the prayer of Jesus

Here is the sermon that I preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields today:

If you knew you had roughly eighteen hours to live and could use that time to talk and pray with your nearest and dearest, I wonder what you would say and do? It is likely that whatever you did and said in that time it would all be to do with what was of central importance to your life and thought.

That was the situation in which Jesus found himself in the hours before his crucifixion and we know that he used that time to share acted parables and key messages with his disciples, as well as to pray. His prayer at that time, a part of which forms today’s Gospel reading (John 17. 20 - 26), was for the unity of his current and future disciples – that they might be one. So, why was unity of such central importance to Jesus’ thinking and praying at that most significant moment in his life - the time of his death? If we can answer that question, we can reach into the very heart of Jesus’ being and thinking.

When Jesus prayed that his followers might all be one, he prayed this on the basis that his followers might be in God as he is in the Father and the Father is in him. He was praying that we, who follow in his footsteps, would experience the same oneness with God and each other that he enjoys with God, his Father. In essence, his prayer is that we will experience unity, because unity is what is at the very heart of God.

The Greek Fathers called the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit perichoresis, which “means ‘to dance around one another in relationship’, … peri meaning around, and choreio to dance” (Touching the Sacred, Chris Thorpe and Jake Lever, Canterbury Press). Stephen Verney, a former Bishop of Repton, explored this idea in several of his books (e.g. The Dance of Love, Fount) writing about “the dance of love of the Trinity in which they give place to each other.” “This is the glory revealed in Jesus, as the Father and the Son give authority to each other in mutual interdependence, and as the creator and the creation interpenetrate each other.” Similarly, David Runcorn has described “the Holy Trinity as a dancing community of divine poverty. Each eternally, joyfully, dispossessing themselves; emptying, pouring themselves out to the favour and glory of the other. Nothing claimed, demanded or grasped. They live and know each other in the simple ecstasy of giving” (Choice, Desire and the Will of God, SPCK). At the heart of the Godhead is a relationship of love where love is constantly being shared and exchanged between Father, Son and Holy Spirit and this exchange or dance of love holds them together in unity.

Verney goes on to say that the eternal dance of the Trinity in heaven is reflected in creation and we are invited to join in because it was out of that relationship of love at the heart of the Godhead that Jesus came into our world to open up a way for us to participate in the eternal dance of love constantly shared between Father, Son and Spirit. We are familiar with the idea that God’s love for us is shown in Jesus’ sacrifice of himself for us by becoming human and then dying for us on the cross. We are, perhaps, less familiar with the idea that we can be part of the constant exchange of love in God of which we have been speaking and which Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice of himself enables us to experience. If we live in God, we live in love and love lives in us. We become included in the constant exchange of love which exists in the Godhead and are, therefore, constantly loved no matter what else is going on in our lives.

In the words of Paul Simon, we could respond to this by saying ‘So beautiful or so what’. It’s all very well picturing a beautiful dance at the heart of the Trinity but what difference does that make to us or anyone else?

Firstly, it says to us that we are 100% loved by God, surrounded by and filled by love, and that the more we experience of God, the more we can come to know love for ourselves. I wonder, do we allow the reality that we are accepted and loved by God to seep into the depths of our being where it can and will address our insecurities and anxieties? Do we know this for ourselves? Do we accept it for ourselves? Because ultimately our deepest need is to know with absolute confidence that we are loved and that is what is assured for us through the sacrifice of Jesus and the dance of love which is the Trinity.

Second, we see that love involves the continual giving and receiving of affirmation and authority. The dance of love is not a solo with the spotlight firmly fixed on an individual who garners all the glory for his or herself. It’s not even a picture of the kind of intuitive interaction which we see in ballroom dancing and which has been popularised on TV by ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. We are talking here of reciprocal love or giving which cannot be manipulated by ego, because the gift always moves beyond the reach of the one who first gives it. That is one of the reasons why it is so important that God is Trinity, three persons who are also one.

Lewis Hyde notes in his book called ‘The Gift’ that when giving is reciprocal: "The gift moves in a circle, and two people do not make much of a circle. Two points establish a line, but a circle lies in a plane and needs at least three points.” It is only “When the gift moves in a circle [that] its motion is beyond the control of the personal ego, and so each bearer must be a part of the group and each donation is an act of social faith.” That is what we see in the Trinity and what we are called to replicate in our own relationships. “The Dance of Love,” Verney writes, “is the glory in God’s heart, but it is also the pattern which is reflected in everything he has created.” The more we live according to God’s pattern for life, the more we know in our lives the love and unity of the Trinity itself.

In his prayer Jesus makes a contrast between giving which can be controlled by personal ego or one pair of gift partners and giving which is genuinely reciprocal. He states that the world does not know his Righteous Father and, earlier in the prayer, that the world hates his disciples because they do not belong to the world, just as he does not belong to the world.

When Jesus uses this language of separation in John’s Gospel between his disciples and the world, Verney suggests that he is speaking about two different levels or orders to reality. What he means by this are different patterns of society, each with a different centre or ruling power. In the first, “the ruling principle is the dictator ME, my ego-centric ego, and the pattern of society is people competing with, manipulating and trying to control each other.” In the second, “the ruling principle is the Spirit of Love, and the pattern of society is one of compassion – people giving to each other what they really are, and accepting what others are, recognising their differences, and sharing their vulnerability.” Runcorn puts it like this, “the life of God is non-possessive, non-competitive, humbly attentive to the interests of the other, united in love and vision.” To be God-like, “is not to be grasping” and so “Jesus pours himself out ‘precisely because’ he is God from God.”

These two orders or patterns for society are at war with each other and we are caught up in the struggle that results. Choosing our side in this struggle is a key question for us as human beings, the question being “so urgent that our survival depends on finding the answer.” Verney writes that: “we can see in our world order the terrible consequences of our ego-centricity. We have projected it into our institutions, where it has swollen up into a positive force of evil. Human beings have set up prison camps where they torture each other for pleasure. We are all imprisoned together, in a system of competing nation states, on the edge of a catastrophe which could destroy all life on our planet.”

I was reminded of these words when reading a recent interview that Neil McGregor gave to The Observer. In this interview he made some typically insightful contributions to the current debate about the EU referendum based on research for his book ‘Germany: Memories of a Nation’. He said, for example, that: “German people see the whole purpose of a political leader is to make successful alliances. The proper use of sovereignty is all about pooling it to achieve your aims. The British idea that you should entirely do these things on your own and try to assume total control over your environment is unthinkable.”

Similarly, President Obama suggested, during his recent visit to Europe, that “the people of Europe … are more secure and more prosperous because we stood together for the ideals we share.” As a Guardian article commenting on this speech noted this message runs counter to Europe’s growing populism; “the self-glorification of national egos, the distrust towards outsiders, and the reflex of putting up walls or closing down borders.”

In the UK we are at the very heart of this discussion as the last few years have seen us engaging in considerable political debate about the benefits of collaboration versus independence. From 2010 – 2015 we had our most recent experience of coalition government and, for all the complications inherent in coalitions, many would see that period as preferable to the licence that a majority Conservative Government has had to pursue austerity cuts on those with the least influence and political power in our society. In 2014 Scots voted narrowly to remain part of the United Kingdom rather than choosing independence and this year we are asked vote on essentially the same issue but in relation to the European Union.

Jesus’ focus on unity at the time of his death and the dance of love within the Trinity which is the basis for that focus, would suggest that, as his followers, we should favour collaboration, coalition, alliances and unions over independence, in the way that Neil suggests the German people have come to do. Yet we know, too, that a focus on unity at all costs also can silence voices of dissent and conscience and that power can accrue in unhelpful or unaccountable ways the larger or all-embracing an organisation or union may be.

Here at St Martin’s we know how difficult and complex it can be to create and sustain a community that is both unified and inclusive. We also know how valuable it is to make the attempt and to grapple with the complexities. I know that I have been both impressed and impacted by the way in which St Martin’s grapples with these issues and realise that I need to make changes in my thinking and practice as a result. These issues and complexities are, of course, magnified when it comes to working them through in the context of a union of nations, as we can by being part of the EU.

Nevertheless, the dance of love at the heart of the Trinity and our participation in that dance, as God’s children, compels us, I think, to make that attempt within the communities, organisations and networks of which we are part; whether that is family, church, local community, nation or union of nations. In doing so, we come to know ourselves firstly as surrounded by and filled by the love which overflows from the Trinity, then understand that such love involves the continual giving and receiving of affirmation and authority as we seek to live in and through the dance of love in the complexities of human relationships, alliances, coalitions, collaborations and unions. Like the Holy Trinity, we strive to be a dancing community of divine poverty. Each eternally, joyfully, dispossessing themselves; emptying, pouring themselves out to the favour and glory of the other. Nothing claimed, demanded or grasped; living and knowing each other in the simple ecstasy of giving, which is the unity for which Jesus prayed.

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K.D. Lang - Jericho.

The Dance of Love

Here is my sermon from St Stephen Walbrook today:

Explaining the idea of the Trinity - three persons, one God - has always been a challenge to priests and preachers. The shamrock is one favourite illustration - three leaves, one stem - as is water - two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen forming one entity which can be a liquid, a solid and a gas.

My favourite image, though, is not of the form of the Trinity but of its dynamism and dynamic. That image is of a dance as the Greek word for the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit - perichoresis - means ‘to dance around one another in relationship’ ('peri meaning around, and choreio to dance' - Touching the Sacred, Chris Thorpe and Jake Lever, Canterbury Press). As those who have danced with others regularly will know, dance partners interact “within a rhythm which remains the same but in a continuous variety of movements.” At its best, you have people totally in tune with one another for the period of that dance.

This is what the united relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is thought to be in the Christian faith and it means that at the very heart of God is a dynamic relationship in which a constant exchange of love is underway. It has been called it the dance of love.

At several points in John’s Gospel we hear Jesus speaking about his relationship with God the Father and with God the Holy Spirit. When he speaks in this way it is as though Jesus is pulling back the veil which prevents us from seeing God and giving us, thereby, a glimpse of God as Trinity. He says in John 16: 5-15 that God the Spirit takes what belongs to God the Son and declares it to us. All that belongs to God the Son, he says, also belongs to God the Father. So, all that Jesus has belongs equally to the Spirit and the Father. Therefore, we have a picture of God the Father giving to God the Son who gives to God the Holy Spirit who gives to us. What is being pictured is an exchange of love.

Stephen Verney, a former Bishop of Repton, has explored this idea in several of his books (The Dance of Love, Stephen Verney, Fount): “The Son can do nothing of himself”, he says, “but only what he sees the Father doing” (5. 19). That is one side of the equation (of this so-called equality) – the emptiness of the Son. He looks, and what he sees his Father doing, that he does; he listens, and what he hears his Father saying, that he says. The other side of the equation – of the choreography – is the generosity of the Father. “The Father loves the Son, and reveals to him everything which he is doing” (5. 20), and furthermore, he gives him authority to do “out of himself” all that the Father does, and can never cease to do because it flows “out of himself”. In that dance of love between them, says Jesus, “I and the Father are one.” The Son cries, “Abba! Father!” and the Father cries “my beloved Son”, and the love which leaps between them is Holy Spirit – the Spirit of God, God himself, for God is Spirit and God is Love.”

This is a relationship of love at the heart of the Godhead where love is constantly being shared and exchanged between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is out of this relationship of love that Jesus comes into our world to open up a way for us to participate in the relationship of love that is constantly being shared between Father, Son and Spirit.

That is the incredible truth that Jesus’ words reveal to us. The Spirit takes what belongs to Father, Son and Spirit and gives it to us. We are invited in to the relationship of love which exists in the Godhead. Verney says that the eternal dance of the Trinity in heaven is reflected in the creation and we are invited to join in. Our relationship with God means that we are always being invited to be drawn further into this constant, eternal exchange or dance of love. Jesus describes this when he says that he is in the Father and the Father in him. He then extends that same relationship to others too - I am in you and you are in me. To really know love, Christianity suggests, we must be drawn into the dance of love which Father, Son and Holy Spirit share and which is at the very heart of God.

We are familiar with the idea that God’s love for us is shown in Jesus’ sacrifice of himself for us by becoming human and then dying for us on the cross. We are less familiar with the idea that we can be part of the constant exchange of love in God of which we have been speaking and which Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice enables us to experience. If we live in God, we live in love and love lives in us. We become included in the constant exchange of love which exists in the Godhead and are, therefore, constantly loved no matter what else is going on in our lives. The dance of love is the glory in God’s heart, the pattern by which we are loved and the pattern by which we are called to live.

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Madeleine Peyroux - Dance Me To The End Of Love.

'Beauty will save the world' - or will it?

The phrase "beauty will save the world" is at the heart of a current and fascinating online debate:

‘Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn borrowed it from Fyodor Dostoevsky to set the theme of his Nobel Lecture in 1970. British conservative writer Roger Scruton has written extensively about how aesthetics—and beauty in particular—enlarges our vision of humanity, helps us find meaning in our lives, and provides knowledge of our world’s intrinsic values. And Gregory Wolfe used the phrase for the title of his recent book, Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Human in an Ideological Age, the theme of which is the importance of an aesthetic understanding for sustaining a civilized culture.’

Wolfe writes that:

‘Whereas I once believed that the decadence of the West could only be turned around through politics and intellectual dialectics, I am now convinced that authentic renewal can only emerge out of the imaginative visions of the artist and the mystic. This does not mean that I have withdrawn into some anti-intellectual Palace of Art. Rather, it involves the conviction that politics and rhetoric are not autonomous forces, but are shaped by the pre-political roots of culture: myth, metaphor, and spiritual experience as recorded by the artist and the saint.

My own vocation, as I have come to understand it, is to explore the relationship between religion, art, and culture in order to discover how the imagination may "redeem the time."’

Yet the proverb 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' suggests a problem with our understandings of not only beauty but also of the other two transcendentals i.e. that our understanding of them is entirely subjective. This is perhaps most obvious in terms of perceptions of truth, where different cultures, political movements, religions and scientific theories clash over their differing ideas of truth. In terms of beauty, clearly collective ideas of beauty can be formed, yet these can also be iniquitous, as with ’size zero’ in the fashion industry and the way in which that perception of beauty pressurises people into anorexia and bulimia.

Many theologians and philosophers of art have used their idea of beauty in order to critique modern or contemporary art. Cecilia González-Andrieu in Bridge to Wonder: Art as a Gospel of Beauty is:

'critical of much contemporary art, seeing it as undertaking tasks inimical to that of revelatory symbolism, generally as supplementing the artist’s ego or bank balance. This direction of her thinking leads her to make some judgements which would seem to be contradicted by other evidence, such as her suggestion that the modern idea of art is unproductively narrow. This seems strange given that, since Marcel Duchamp’s use of ready-mades, the modern idea of art has been uniquely diverse with artworks being made of any and every material and taking any form.'

Similarly, Adrienne Chaplin in It was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God begins her essay with some art historical reflections in order to argue that the concept of beauty has been absent from and even inimical to modern art. Beauty has been associated with the sentimental and shallow while the purpose of modern art was to subvert and to shock. She quotes Barnett Newman as saying, "The impulse of modern art is the desire to destroy beauty."

Nevertheless González-Andrieu and Chaplin do highlight the confusion which exists regarding definitions of beauty. Chaplin states that entering this debate means entering "a complex interdisciplinary web of theories and views" while González-Andrieu notes that beauty is indefinable. W. David O. Taylor has posted 9.5 Theses about beauty which derive from conversations with friends over a series of texts - ranging from Aquinas to Milbank while taking in a lot of Von Balthasar along the way - that focused their attention on questions surrounding art, aesthetics and beauty. His provisional conclusion was that the centuries-long discussion about art and beauty, specifically about art's relationship to beauty, is a dizzying mess.

My sense too is that unarticulated assumptions about beauty often drive critiques of contemporary art from a Christian perspective and this without sufficient acknowledgement of the indefinable nature of beauty and its consistent capacity to be seen in the most unlikely of forms. On this basis, how can beauty - or the other transcendentals, for that matter - save the world!

One of the fascinating things about modern and contemporary art is the way in which it often finds beauty in the throw-away, the ready-made, the hidden or disregarded e.g. Martin Creed’s Work No. 88 - a crumpled ball of paper - or João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva’s Fried Egg - a film where three superimposed slow motion images of an egg frying in a pan coalesce gradually into one combined image. In a culture of detritus, American Beauty screenwriter Alan Ball uncovers heartbreaking beauty in garbage with a scene in which a crummy old plastic bag floats in the wind above a dirty sidewalk.

My friend, Alan Stewart, in his ‘Icons or Eyesores’ presentation on spirituality in contemporary art shows people a photo of a sepia-tinged crucifix. Most people quite like it until they are told that it is ‘Piss Christ’ by Andres Serrano and that the crucifix is submerged in the artist’s urine. Serrano has said that the image is about the commercialisation of religious iconography (a critique of Christian kitsch!) but Alan sees it as a depiction of the incarnation, with God coming into the detritus and waste of human life, and that, it seems to me, is profoundly beautiful.

One of Corinne Bailey Rae's favourite songs on 'The Sea' is the jazz-flavoured lament 'I Would Like To Call It Beauty'. She loves playing it live, loves the almost telepathic interplay she and her drummer enjoy. "I guess that song is about my experiences of late. It's about grief and what it does and the things it makes you aware of."

The title comes from a late-night conversation she had with her late husband Jason Rae's younger brother comparing their views of the world. Corinne was speaking about God and Jason's brother said he believed in a force that binds everything, holds everything. He said, "I would like to call it... beauty". She was flabbergasted. "What a thing to say! Really we were talking about the same thing..." So powerful was the sentiment that she took it for the song title, and duly credits her late husband's brother as its co-writer.

"I have experienced a lot of beauty in the loss," is her remarkable admission, "in the way that I've been able to survive. The way I feel like I'm being held - held up. I guess the song is about the amount of beauty that is in grief because of the way that people hold you up, and forces and nature, how they hold you up."

The incarnation then is particularly relevant to this debate because, while in no sense a conventionally beautiful act (see Philippians 2. 6-8), it is the ultimate affirmative act based on the understanding that nothing is lost and everything can be redeemed. For this reason, I think that affirmation is a more helpful concept to us than beauty as, rather than separating out the beautiful from the ugly as in conceptions of beauty, affirmation seeks to see the image of God in all things.

This is the approach of Charles Williams who, in The Descent of the Dove, writes this:

"... the Incarnation ... produces a phrase which is the very maxim of the Affirmative Way: "Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh but by taking of the manhood into God." And not only of the particular religious Way, but of all progress of all affirmations: it is the actual manhood which is to be carried on, and not the height which is to be brought down. All images are, in their degree to be carried on; mind is never to put off matter; all experience is to be gathered in."

Christine Mary Hearn notes that the Way of Affirmation holds that "God is manifest in many things and can be known through these things" as in Psalm 19. 1: 'the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament his handiwork.' She notes too that it is the way of poets as was the case with Anne Ridler whose "devoted Anglicanism" was inspired by this philosophy found in her friend Charles Williams and the 17th-century poet Thomas Traherne.  The Way of Affirmation should have particular resonance for Anglicans as the Genius of Anglicanism (greatly under strain in its present divisions) is its affirmation of both Catholicism and Protestantism.

Philippians 4.8 - "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things" - encourages us to follow the Affirmative Way. No criteria is outlined for these categories, leaving us to interpret them for ourselves, but the assumption is made that if we seek such things we will find them.

Simone Weil set out a methodology for the Affirmative Way when she wrote that in order "to receive in its naked truth" the object which is to penetrate our mind, "our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything" and that such "absolute unmixed attention is prayer."

Simon Small in 'From the Bottom of the Pond' writes:

'Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is.

To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.

Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed. We live in a dream; contemplation is waking up.

There are many forms of contemplative prayer ['Repeating a word or phrase in the mind, slowly and rhythmically; holding a visualization of an image; watching the breath; or bringing awareness to different parts of the body are some of the methods used'], but they all involve bringing the mind into the present moment. It is the only goal, but not the only fruit. In the practice of contemplative prayer we wait attentively for the Now to express itself. The form this takes will always be unique and sometimes hidden. The moment when the depths of now are revealed is when contemplative prayer becomes contemplation.'

This is what Jean Pierre de Caussade called 'The Sacrament of the Present Moment' by which he meant, as Elizabeth Ruth Obbard explains in Life in God's NOW:

‘God's coming to us at each moment, as really and truly as God is present in the Sacraments of the Church ... In other words, in each moment of our lives God is present under the signs of what is ordinary and mundane. Only those who are spiritually aware and alert discover God's presence in what can seem like nothing at all. This keeps us from thinking and behaving as if only grand deeds and high flown sentiments are 'Godly'. Rather, God is equally present in the small things of life as in the great. God is there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers ... There is nothing that happens to us in which God cannot be found. What we need are the eyes of faith to discern God as God comes at each moment - truly present, truly living, truly attentive to the needs of each one.’

This is also what George Herbert memorably termed, ‘heaven in ordinarie’ and such a way of praying underpins much of the contemporary spirituality which draws on perceptions of Celtic Christianity. David Adam, for example, writes in Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work that:

"Much of Celtic prayer spoke naturally to God in the working place of life. There was no false division into sacred and secular. God pervaded all and was to be met in their daily work and travels. If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary."

Other examples of similar styles of prayer include, Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Gaelic prayers and poems collected in the late 19th century, which "abounds with prayers invoking God’s blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and preparing for bed." Many of George Herbert’s poems use everyday imagery (mainly church-based as he was also a priest) and are based on the idea that God is found everywhere within his world. Ray Simpson and Ruth Burgess have provided series of contemporary blessings for everyday life covering computers, exams, parties, pets, cars, meetings, lunchtimes, days off and all sorts of life situations from leaving school and a girl’s first period to divorce, redundancy and mid-life crises.

Martin Wallace sums up this sense of paying prayerful attention to the everyday in order to affirm God's presence in the everyday when he writes in City Prayers: "Just as God walked with Adam in the garden of Eden, so he now walks with us in the streets of the city chatting about the events of the day and the images we see" He encourage us to "chat with God in the city, bouncing ideas together with him, between the truths of the Bible and the truths of urban life" and, "as you walk down your street, wait for the lift, or fumble for change at the cash-till … to construct your own prayers of urban imagery."

Viewed in this way, Work No. 88, Fried Egg and the plastic bag scene from American Beauty are examples of the kind of prayerful attention which characterises the Way of Affirmation and this thinking is fundamental to much contemporary as Eamonn McCabe explains, in Photography: a Guardian masterclass:

'Rather than travel the world in search of perfection and prettiness, simply step out of your front door and start looking. Some days are diamonds and you'll come across something special – something that also resonates with other people.'

'The photographer Raymond Moore knew all about this ... Moore used to wander around Britain and Ireland, leaning over people's fences and photographing the most mundane things, from caravans to telephone lines. He once published a book called Every So Often, because every so often you turn a corner and find something beautiful.

No matter where you are, there's something to photograph if you work at it. People sometimes tell me,: "Oh, I live in Croydon (or wherever) – there's nothing around here." But even in Croydon you can go round the old factories, the football pitches, or the tram lines and find an odd sort of beauty.'

To underpin the Way of Affirmation from a Christian perspective requires a different approach to understanding and applying transcendentals from that with which we have traditionally worked i.e. beauty, goodness and truth.

In The One, the Three and the Many Colin Gunton used his theology of creation to identify three concepts that he called (drawing on the thinking of Samuel Taylor Coleridge) ‘open transcendentals’. That is, "possibilities for thought which are universal in scope yet open in their application." Gunton’s three open transcendentals are: relationality ("all things are what they are by being particulars constituted by many and various forms of relation"); perichoresis ("all things are what they are in relations of mutual constitutiveness with all other things"); and substantiality (all things are "substantial beings, having their own distinct and particular existence, by virtue of and not in the face of their relationality to the other").

Gunton argues that the transcendentals "qualify people and things, too, in a way appropriate to what they are." In sum, he suggests, "the transcendentals are functions of the finitely free relations of persons and of the contingent relations of things." These are, therefore, notions which are "predicated of all being by virtue of the fact that God is creator and the world is creation." As such "they dynamically open up new possibilities for thought" enabling Christian theology to make "a genuine contribution ... to the understanding and shaping of the modern world." If this is so, then art criticism would be one arena in which the concept of open transcendentals could be explored.

Exploring the substantiality of an artwork would involve describing and assessing its distinct and particular existence; what it is as, for example, pure paint and a flat picture plane. We could talk, for example, in terms of ‘truth to materials’, a phrase that emerged from the Arts and Crafts Movement  through its rejection of design work (often Victorian) which disguised by ornamentation the natural properties of the materials used. The phrase has been associated particularly with sculptors and architects, as both are able to reveal, in their way of working and in the finished article, the quality and personality of their materials; wood showing its grain, metal its tensile strength, and stone its texture.

Henry Moore, for example, wrote in Unit One that, "each material has its own individual qualities … Stone, for example, is hard and concentrated and should not be falsified to look like soft flesh … It should keep its hard tense stoniness." Juginder Lamba is one example of a contemporary sculptor for whom ‘truth to materials’ is significant. Many of his works began with the artist searching through piles of joists and rafters looking for salvaged timber that would speak to him of its creative potentialities. His sculptures retain the personality and characteristics of the salvaged wood even at the same time as they are transformed into characters and forms of myth and metaphor.

Exploring the substantiality of an artwork is to recognise that an artwork is an object in its own right once created and, as such, has a life beyond that which its maker consciously intended. Artists sometimes express this sense themselves when they talk about seeing more in the work as they live with it than they were aware of intending during its creation. For some, this is an indication of some sort of spiritual dimension or dynamic at play in the work.

Exploring the relationality of an artwork would involve describing and assessing the many and various forms of relation by which the work was constituted. Among these could be the relationship of the artwork to: the artist who created it; other artworks formed of similar materials or with similar content; the space in which it is being exhibited (both the physical and social space); and those who come to view it.

Artists have their own intentions when creating and are aware of and use (play with) the associations and emotions evoked by the materials and images used in the making. These associations and emotions are as much a part of the work of art as the materials and images (this is particularly so in conceptual and symbolist art, as both begin with the idea or concept) and are present whether the viewer or critic responds to them or not; in the same way that Biblical allusions exist in Shakespeare's plays whether contemporary students recognise them or not. Just as Andrew Motion  has argued regarding Shakespeare that our understanding and appreciation of the plays is reduced if we don't recognise the allusions, so our understanding of visual art that uses or plays with associations, emotions and ideas is diminished if we fail to respond.

The reality of the art work as an object in its own right once created and, as such, with a life beyond that which its maker consciously intended also hands a creative role to those who view it.

Accordingly, Alan Stewart has written:

"An artist will of course set out to say something particular, but once their work becomes public, it assumes its own life. Therefore each fresh encounter will produce a new conversation between the art and the viewer, resulting in a whole host of possible interpretations, none less valid than the other. Appropriating our own personal meaning from another person’s work doesn’t diminish it, if anything it enlarges it. We might even want to say that in re-imagining and re-investing something with new meaning, we may in fact in some cases redeem it or re-birth it."

Interpretation, to have validity however, has to fit with and follow the shape, texture, feel, colour, images, content, associations and emotions of the work itself. Richard Davey has a marvellous phrase for the network of relationships which form around any artwork; "respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."

Exploring the perichoresis of an artwork is to recognise what the artwork is in its relations of mutual constitutiveness with all other things. Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics is particularly helpful here in suggesting that "Art is a state of encounter" and that the role of artworks is that we learn "to inhabit the world in a better way" through participating in "arenas of encounter", created by the artworks themselves, in which momentary micro-communities are formed:

"Today’s art, and I’m thinking of [artists such as Gonzalez-Torres, ... Angela Bulloch, Carsten Höller, Gabriel Orozco and Pierre Huyghe] as well as Lincoln Tobier, Ben Kinmont, and Andrea Zittel, to name just three more, encompasses in the working process the presence of the micro-community which will accommodate it. A work thus creates, within its method of production and then at the moment of its exhibition, a momentary grouping of participating viewers."

What such artists produce, Bourriaud argues, "are relational space-time elements, inter-human experiences ... of the places where alternative forms of sociability, critical models and moments of constructed conviviality are worked out." In other words, such artworks create "relations outside the field of art": "relations between individuals and groups, between the artist and the world, and, by way of transitivity, between the beholder and the world."

In this way substantiality, relationality and perichoresis form a distinctively Trinitarian underpinning to the Way of Affirmation which can, as Wolfe puts it, "redeem the time."

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Corinne Bailey Rae - I Would Like To Call It Beauty.

Spiritual Life: To dance around one another in relationship

Here is my Spiritual Life column for the current edition of the Ilford Recorder:

Explaining the idea of the Trinity - three persons, one God - has always been a challenge to priests and preachers. The shamrock is one favourite illustration - three leaves, one stem - as is water - two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen forming one entity which can be a liquid, a solid and a gas.

My favourite image, though, is not of the form of the Trinity but of its dynamism and dynamic. That image is of a dance as the Greek word for the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit - perichoresis - means ‘to dance around one another in relationship.’ Dance partners interact “within a rhythm which remains the same but in a continuous variety of movements.” At its best, you have people totally in tune with one another for the period of that dance.

This is what the united relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is thought to be in the Christian faith and it means that at the very heart of God is a dynamic relationship in which a constant exchange of love is underway. We could call it the dance of love. Being in relationship with God means, for the Christian, being drawn into that constant, eternal exchange or dance of love. Jesus describes this when he says that he is in the Father and the Father in him. He then extends that same relationship to others too - I am in you and you are in me.

To really know love, Christianity suggests, we must be drawn into the dance of love which Father, Son and Holy Spirit share and which is at the very heart of God.

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Leonard Cohen - Dance Me To The End Of Love.