Creative shaping and co-operation with God

Here's my sermon from today's Eucharist at St Catherine's Wickford: 

I wonder how many of you have watched 'The Great Pottery Throw Down', a reality TV, Bake-Off style competition between potters to see who can perform the best in as many different styles of pottery as possible.

The show has had some great presenters who have been amusing, engaged and empathetic, the judges – rather than being catty and critical – are affirming – with expert ceramicist Keith Brymer Jones famously crying with pleasure whenever one of the competitors exceeds expectations. The competitors, as well as being talented potters, are always fascinating people with interesting back stories, but the ultimate star of the show, and the thing that keeps viewers tuning in, is the clay and the amazing range of artefacts that can be fashioned from it.

Clay that has been dampened and kneaded is a malleable, flexible substance that can be formed into elegant tall shapes, expansive wide forms, or moulded, pinched, cut and patted to form detailed figures or structures. It is only once the work of shaping and moulding is complete that it is fired to become hard and set in its final, finished form. Up until that point, however far the formation process has gone, it can always be returned to a lump or ball of clay and the process begun again.

That is what Jeremiah saw happening when God told him to go and view the local potter at work (Jeremiah 18: 1-11). What he saw was an initial attempt to form a pot that was unsuccessful. As a result, the potter ended his first attempt, returned the clay to its initial form and began the process again, creating a different pot from the same lump of clay.

In Jeremiah’s prophecy, the people of Israel are the clay and God is the potter shaping the people into the people of God. The people, like the clay, don’t always form in the way the potter intends and so, God returns the people to the beginning of the formation process and starts again, shaping them differently as a result of the flaw that developed and the change that resulted. The implication is that God works in a similar way in our lives and wants to do the same with us as a church and team, not just as individuals.

There are two key reflections that emerge from this image for us. Firstly, it is always possible for God to begin again with us. Second, we need to be as supple and flexible as possible in order that God can work as effectively with us as possible.

Jeremiah saw the vessel that the potter was making being spoiled in the potter’s hand, and him reworking it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. This was God’s way of showing us that it is always possible to begin again. Within all of our lives, we can go down tracks or paths in life that aren’t helpful to us and that ultimately do us harm as well as perhaps to others. We can easily think we are stuck in those ways of acting and behaving. This image or vision is God’s way of showing us that that isn’t so. There is always the opportunity for a fresh start and a new beginning. That is what Jesus offers to us through his death on the cross because there he shows us that there are no depths to which God will not go to draw us back to him and give us a new beginning. That’s what forgiveness is all about, turning around and starting again. Jesus, through his death on the cross, shows us that that opportunity is always there for us.

Kneading or wedging involves the potter in throwing the clay down and rolling it into a tight spiral before working the clay into a uniform mixture by pressing, folding, and stretching. This makes the clay more pliable, ensures a uniform consistency, and removes air pockets as well as small hard spots in the clay before you use or reuse the clay. Air added to clay bodies, can cause cracks and breaks when pots are fired in the kiln. Kneading or wedging is used to remove air from clay before it is used in hand building or wheel throwing.

Jeremiah’s image of the potter and the clay can appear to be one in which God is active and we are entirely passive. However, that is not how Jeremiah ends his reflection. He ends by calling on Israel to turn back to God. He is, therefore, looking for active co-operation with God from us. We are not inert like the clay and God can only do his creative shaping work in us, if we co-operate with him.

Unlike the inert clay, we can actively co-operate with God to enhance our flexibility and malleability by being open to change and development. Change is often what worries churches most and can be something that is resisted. For many the Church is the one unchanging element in their world and, as a result, change is resisted in order to provide the sense of security that people think they need in an ever-changing world. Yet, the reality is that change is natural and something that is always occurring throughout our lives. The cells in our bodies - trillions of them - are not all the exact same cells that we had yesterday; our body's cells are constantly replicating, creating their own replacements.

If change is natural and if change is God’s plan, then, like the clay becoming pliable enough to be shaped and moulded, we also need to develop a similar pliability in order that God can achieve a process of change in us. We can do this by pro-actively seeking change or by co-operating with change, rather than resisting it.

In 2006, the artist Theaster Gates made his home in a former confectionery store on South Dorchester Avenue in the heart of Greater Grand Crossing, one of Chicago’s most deprived areas. In 2009 he purchased the neighbouring building, which became known as the Archive House, home to 14,000 books from the former Prairie Avenue Bookshop. Reconstructed using discarded resources from across the city, it fulfils his Rebuild Foundation’s remit of regeneration via “individual empowerment and community engagement.” His most ambitious projects are those which use abandoned buildings in Chicago as sites of community transformation and gathering in a bid to reverse the trends of social and economic fragmentation in the city.

Before developing these projects, Gates was first a potter. He says: “Clay made me and is forever the root of my artistic interest.” Clay feels to him like “a philosophy,” as potters “learn how to shape the world.” He has then gone on to apply that philosophy more widely recognising that all his starting points for inspiration - blackness, clay, immateriality, and space – “are all launch pads that encourage advanced practice, reflection, trial, and iteration” and, as a result, he is constantly “practising acts of creation.” As someone who, as a youth, joined the New Cedar Grove Missionary Baptist Church choir, Gates sees this philosophy as one that connects with the Bible. The first words in his film called ‘A Clay Sermon’ are: “In the beginning, there was clay. Clay was without form.” This echo of the Book of Genesis comes at the beginning of a film that combines music, images, and words to paint a picture of the limitless potential of clay and working with clay. 

Theaster Gates is, therefore, a contemporary example of what God is calling us to be through Jeremiah’s prophecy, a people who are open to change, pro-active about change, and creatively enabling change to occur in ways that reflect God’s kingdom and its values. That is what God is calling us to be and do in the Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry, as that this the call that God is continually sharing with his people, just as was the case when he told Jeremiah to visit his local potter. We are more likely today to watch ‘The Great Pottery Throw Down’ that we are to visit a local potter. However, may we be inspired, as was Jeremiah, to see ourselves as a constantly evolving work of art and also to become those who initiate new projects that bring change within our communities, as Theaster Gates has done in his.

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Theaster Gates and the Black Monks of Mississippi.

Re-inhabiting and re-interpreting wrongs

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

‘The Singing Detective’ is a TV drama serial by Dennis Potter that was first shown in the 1980s. The story concerns Philip Marlow, a writer of detective novelettes in the style of Raymond Chandler including one also called ‘The Singing Detective’. At the beginning of the series Philip is confined to a hospital bed because of psoriasis, the skin and joint disease, which has affected every part of his body.

Philip’s childhood beliefs and commitments to God and to his parents have been betrayed through key incidents such as his seeing his mother’s adultery and his allowing another schoolboy, Mark, to be punished for something that Philip himself had done; a particularly unpleasant present left by him for their teacher and, for which, Mark is unjustly punished. His inability to face these betrayals led him into a lifestyle where he abuses and betrays those he loves and it is only as he is stripped by his illness that he can begin to face these memories, come to accept who he is and move beyond these abusive relationships. Potter’s drama shows us how this happens.

The story is about the way in which Philip faces up to the key events in his past. Essentially, he has to re-inhabit his past and re-live it in order that he comes to feel sorrow for the way in which he betrayed Mark. This begins as he lies in his hospital bed, his body incapacitated but his mind on over-drive. Memories from his past and scenes from his books are brought to mind and fuse with fevered imaginings of present events. In his confusion he seeks support from a psychiatrist who journeys with him through his memories and imaginings until he is at the point that he can re-live the experience of betraying Mark and feel sorrow for what he did.

The incapacity that he has experienced throughout the drama, despite the very real pain of psoriasis, is revealed to be psychosomatic and, as a result, by re-inhabiting his past he begins to know change in the present and is able to get up from his bed and walk once again. Philip’s needs – his experience of near-breakdown – are the seedbed for the healing and new life that he eventual experiences. As we watch this drama, we may be challenged to live Easter by allowing the Holy Spirit to take us back into those aspects of our lives that we have abandoned or covered over.

What Philip experiences in ‘The Singing Detective’ gives an insight into what Peter experiences in our Gospel reading (John 21. 12-19). Like Philip, Peter is haunted by his own act of betrayal. When Peter meets Jesus by Lake Tiberias, Jesus forces Peter to re-live that experience of denial. That is why Jesus asks Peter three times, ‘Do you love me?’ These three questions mirror Peter’s three denials and take him back into that experience. Like Philip, Peter has to re-inhabit his past in order to be forgiven and let it go. As Jesus questions Peter, his sense of remorse for what he had done must have been immense.

Peter denied Jesus three times. So Jesus asks Peter three times, ‘Do you love me?’ When they have finished re-living the experience of his denial, Peter finds that he has three affirmations that counter-balance his three denials. By taking him back into the experience of denial Jesus turns Peter’s denials into affirmations. He also turns Peter’s memory of the denial from a negative memory into a positive one. It’s as if Peter has been curled up in a ball of regret and guilt, and Jesus uncoils him and lets him walk again. The denial happened, Peter would never have forgotten that, but now his primary memory is of affirming his love for Jesus. By helping Peter re-inhabit his experience of denial, Jesus enables him to re-tell and re-interpret the experience transforming its meaning from a negative to a positive. The experience still happened but the significance of it is changed enabling him to live for Christ in the present.

Like Peter and like Philip, we, too, can carry around with us the memory of bad events that have happened to us – things that we did to others or things that others did to us. Easter is about facing up to such troubling events from the past that burden us in just the same way as Peter and Philip are burdened. The way of release from the harm and hurt of these memories can be, with the help of others, to go back into them. To re-live them in order to feel sorrow for the wrong that we did or that was done to us. Then to find positive ways in which we can show sorrow or repair hurt, whether done by us or to us.

A few weeks ago, a few of us involved in the Artists and Craftspersons’ group set up an exhibition, ‘Leaves for Healing,' in the foyer downstairs. We took our inspiration from Ezekiel 47:1-12, a vision of a transformed desert landscape, with the two halves of the exhibition reflecting the transition from wilderness to fertile land. As we reflected on the passage we saw that the temple, the place where God’s presence was very real, was seen as the source of new life with water flowing out and into the landscape, transforming the barren, empty desert into incredibly fertile land. Then the passage finished with a wonderful vision of the fruit from the trees that grow being food and the leaves used for healing. Some of our artists took the opportunity provided by this passage to begin the exhibition with an artwork that reflected wilderness and then transform that same artwork to reflect change, fertility and growth.

One piece that does so is by Lois Bentley. Lois started by creating photographic collages on triangular pieces of sheet steel. Then, for the first half of the exhibition, she decided to hang them as three triangular steel sheets strung out in a line alongside each other with the points of each triangle facing down. In this configuration they remind us of the three crosses on Calvary, the central triangle showing imagery related to its title, ‘Bruised’. For the second part of the exhibition Lois chose to re-shape and re-organise the piece. It is now called ‘Re-United’ and the principal change is that she has hung the middle triangle point upwards to indicate that Jesus’ work on the cross is finished and the Trinity are restored to their coherent whole. She says that she was inspired to do this by Jesus asking Peter for the third time - do you love me?

In this piece, Lois demonstrates how the incarnation and crucifixion come together for our salvation. The incarnation tells us that the fundamental issues of human existence cannot be resolved or addressed from the outside; instead God has to be become one with humanity in order to open up to possibility of change on a continuing basis. In Jesus, God plunges headlong into the mess of betrayal, denial and scapegoating that causes violence and torture in our world and emerges on the other side to re-interpret those experiences and bring new meaning and direction.

Philip and Peter were perhaps surprised to find that salvation involved facing their betrayals not running from them. Jesus’ death does not eradicate or remove the original wrongs in human experience but, by experiencing wrong and the pain it involves, Jesus re-shapes and re-orders our experience of it in order to create a new story with new meaning and direction. So, instead of being overwhelmed by the world’s wrongs and our own, as Philip and Peter were initially, we can now follow the path first walked by Jesus of inhabiting and experiencing the world’s wrongs in order to re-shape and re-interpret our experience and understanding. The new story with new meaning that we inhabit is that of the Resurrection.

A further example from the ‘Leaves for Healing’ exhibition is of the two pieces shown by Ruth Hutchison. The first was called ‘Grieving for my Garden’ and reflected the sense of loss Ruth felt at no longer having ‘a beautiful garden with lots of everything including barbeques, family gatherings and places just to sit quietly, listen to trees blowing in the wind while the blackbird sings.’ Her garden had been the context for her creativity. Now art has become the outlet for her creativity. She combines this with her passion for recycling using art materials recycled from skips, charity shops and friends to create her second piece called ‘The Barbeque.’ This expresses in a different form the pleasure that she once found in the barbeques held in her garden. Her art enables her to express grief at her loss and also to express past pleasures in new forms.

That is the journey undertaken by Philip and Peter. It is the journey depicted for us by Lois and Ruth. It is the journey first walked by Jesus. It is incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection. It is Lent and Eastertide. Easter challenges us to face troubling events from the past that burden us in just the same way as Peter and Philip were burdened. Easter challenges us to inhabit and experience the world’s wrongs in order to live a new story with new meaning; that of resurrection.

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Max Harris & His Novelty Trio - Peg O' My Heart.

Discover & explore - St Peter

Today's Discover & explore service at St Stephen Walbrook was the last in the current series. I reflected on the life and thought of St Peter using a poem by Malcolm Guite and a meditation by Alan Stewart. The service featured the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields singing:

• Introit - Duruflé, Tu es Petrus
• Anthem - Britten, A Hymn of St Peter
• Anthem - Bairstow, The King of Love my Shepherd is
• Closing - Palestrina, Agnus Dei (I & II) from Missa ‘Tu es Petrus’

In my reflection I said:

The Singing Detective is a TV drama serial by Dennis Potter that was first shown in the 1980s. The story is about Philip Marlow, a writer of detective novelettes in the style of Raymond Chandler including one called ‘The Singing Detective’. At the beginning of the series Marlow is confined to a hospital bed because of the psoriasis which has affected every part of his body.

Marlow’s situation is that his childhood beliefs and commitments to God and to his parents have been betrayed through key incidents such as his seeing his mother’s adultery and his allowing another schoolboy, Mark Binney, to be punished for something that Marlow himself had done. His inability to face these betrayals has led him into a lifestyle where he abused and betrayed those he loved and it is only as he is stripped by his illness that he can begin to face these memories, come to accept who he is and move beyond these abusive relationships and The Singing Detective shows us how this happens.

The story is about the way in which Marlow faces up to the key events in his past. He has to re-inhabit his past, almost re-live it, in order that he comes to feel sorrow for the way in which he betrayed Mark Binney. It is only at the point that he re-lives that experience and feels sorrow for what he did that he is able to get up from his bed and walk again.

I mention this, because what Marlow experiences in The Singing Detective is very similar to what Peter experiences in our Bible reading (John 21. 12 - 19). Peter betrayed Jesus by denying him three times. Since the crucifixion Peter would have been in agony in his conscience over the way in which he failed Jesus at Jesus’ moment of need. The agonies that Philip Marlow experiences in The Singing Detective help us to flesh out this story as it is told in the Bible and to understand a little more of what Peter would have felt at the time.

When Peter meets Jesus by Lake Tiberias, Jesus forces Peter to re-live that experience of betrayal. That is why Jesus asks Peter three times, ‘Do you love me?’ These three questions mirror Peter’s three denials and take him back into that experience. Like Marlow, Peter has to re-inhabit his past in order to move on from it. As Jesus questions Peter, his sense of remorse for what he had done would have been immense.

Peter denied Jesus three times and so Jesus asks Peter three times, ‘Do you love me?’ When they have finished re-living the experience of his denial, Peter finds that he has three affirmations that counter-balance his three denials. By taking him back into the experience of denial Jesus turns Peter’s denials into affirmations and he turns Peter’s memory of the denial from a negative memory into a positive one. The denial happened, Peter would never have forgotten that but then he was given the opportunity to turn it into a positive affirmation of his love for Jesus and that would have been the memory that he carried forward with him.

Like Peter and like Philip Marlow we can carry around with us the memory of bad events that have happened to us – things that we did to others or things that others did to us. If we are not careful the memory of these events from the past will twist and harm our life now, in the present. The way to be released from the harm and hurt of these memories is, with the help of others, to go back into those memories, to re-live them, feeling sorrow what the wrong that we did and finding positive ways in which we can show that sorrow and repair the hurt that we have done or which has been done to us.

If that is your situation then put yourself in Peter’s place now as you read a meditation written by Revd. Alan Stewart based on this passage:

I am the one who ran away when I said I never would
I didn’t believe you when you said
‘the sheep will scatter’

I am the one who sat in the shadows avoiding eyes
I never believed I’d disown you like this
Not once, but three times

I am the one who wasn’t there while you died that death
I couldn’t believe that this was how
The story ends

‘do you love me?’ he later asked
‘I love you’ I replied
‘feed my lambs’

I am the one who hid in an upstairs room
I wanted to run but there was no longer
anywhere to go

I am the one who could find no solace nowhere
I wanted to open my eyes and see him there
Laughing

I am the one who wept my heart raw with regret
I wanted to tell him ‘I’m sorry…
I do love you.’

‘do you love me?’ he asked again
‘I do love you’ I replied
‘take care of my sheep’

I am the one who woke to the sound of women’s voices
I longed to believe they’d seen you, but hope
Was still on its knees

I am the one who ran to where they lay your body down
I longed to destroy the rumours
Before they destroyed me

I am the one who saw you arrive like a ghost
I longed to reach out and touch you, but I couldn’t
even look at you

‘do you love me?’ he asked for a third time
looking into my eyes
and my heart tore within me

‘you know that I love you’ I replied
‘then feed my sheep’

(Revd. Alan Stewart)

The next series of Discover & explore services will explore themes of stewardship & finance:

• Monday 3rd October: Time 
• Monday 10th October: Talents 
• Monday 17th October: Treasure/Gold 
• Monday 24th October: Guidance 
• Monday 31st October: Promises (All Souls Day) 
• Monday 7th November: Safety 
• Monday 14th November: Money 
• Monday 21st November: Security

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Maurice Duruflé - Tu Est Petrus.

Harvest Festival

The Harvest Festival at St John's Seven Kings had the theme of 'reduce, recycle and reuse' and included our children and young people performing a poem and song as well as making a green heart sculpture using junk items. Our music group led the singing of contemporary and traditional Harvest songs in a service that also featured The Lord's Prayer being read in old English. We collected Harvest goods for the Redbridge foodbank and were thrilled with the genorosity of those who came. We explored our theme with projected information on green initiatives as well as thinking through Bible passages about reducing the yield from the harvest in order to leave grain for others (Leviticus 23. 22), recycling by remaking failed pots (Jeremiah 18. 1 - 6), and minimising waste by reusing leftover food (John 6. 12).
Reduce, re-use and re-cycle isn’t a message that is very obviously found in the Bible – certainly not as a punchy slogan! However, we’ve found three examples to share with you briefly today of those three things as found in different parts of the Bible.

Leviticus 23 v 22

We don’t often read Leviticus, as it is a book filled with rules and regulations for the People of Israel rather than stories about them. However, this passage is actually well known to because of a story found in another book of the Bible; the book of Ruth. When Ruth and Naomi return to Israel they are very poor and a local farmer, Boaz, takes pity on Ruth and allows her to do what is described in this passage; to leave the grain at the edges of the fields so that poor people like Ruth can harvest it and make food to survive. Boaz could harvest the whole of his fields and keep all the grain for himself but doesn’t. Instead he deliberately reduces what he harvests for himself in order to ensure that there is something left over for those less well off than himself. In doing so, he is following a specific instruction from God, which is not directly applicable to us today because we are not farmers harvesting fields, but can still apply if we reduce what we have for ourselves in order that we share something of what we have with others less well off than ourselves.

Jeremiah 18. 1 – 6

This is a well known passage to do with God shaping and moulding our lives. It is a passage that we often sing in church through songs like ‘Spirit of the Living God’ and ‘Jesus, you are changing me’. In the passage, God as the potter recycles the clay. When it does turn out well on the wheel, he doesn’t simply throw away the clay with which the mistake was made. Instead he reworks and recycles it turns it into something new. The green heart which our children have made today is intended to symbolise the same thing. Often things which we ordinarily throw away can be recycled, whether through the Council’s recycling service or because we turn junk into something useful. Monica Abdala, who some of you will know as heading up Redbridge Street Pastors, is currently setting up a social enterprise to make new products from old pieces of material in order to raise funds to help street girls leave the streets. By doing that, she is putting into practice what this passage teaches.

John 6. 12

One of the interesting points about the feeding of the 5,000 which we often overlook is that the disciples cleared up after the people and kept, presumably to reuse, all the leftover food – 12 baskets full. We live in a culture which is incredibly wasteful. Last year a report called ‘Waste Not, Want Not’ estimated that as much as half of all the food produced in the world – equivalent to 2bn tonnes – ends up as waste every year. Tim Fox, head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers who produced the report, said: "The amount of food wasted and lost around the world is staggering. This is food that could be used to feed the world's growing population – as well as those in hunger today. It is also an unnecessary waste of the land, water and energy resources that were used in the production, processing and distribution of this food." What has to change, they said, are people's mindsets on waste in order to discourage wasteful practices by farmers, food producers, supermarkets and consumers. In this passage, we see Jesus and his disciples modelling that kind of change.

Reduce, re-use and re-cycle isn’t a slogan that is found in the Bible but it is a message that these passages from the Bible endorse and commend.

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We Plough The Fields And Scatter.

Spirituality, creativity and the Arts (2)

Last Saturday I was involved in '... hearts and hands and voices...’, this year’s Exploring Spirituality Day in the Diocese of St Albans.

Revd. Nicholas Cranfield, Vicar of All Saints' Blackheath and Arts Correspondent for the Church Times, was the keynote speaker. He spoke about the significance of shaping sacred space in churches, as much for those who are secular but visit churches, as for those who do share the Christian tradition. Symbols, in particular, mark out sacred space; as with the Christ in Majesty seen at St Andrew's Bedford, where we were meeting. He noted the various extremes within the Church in relation to this issue from the Iconostasis' of Orthodox Churches to the boarded up stained glass of Anglican churches in the Diocese of Sydney but outlined a Biblical basis for the Christian visual tradition beginning with Bezalel and his fellow workers who were filled with the Spirit for their artistic design work through to Christ as the visible image of the invisible God.

In the workshop which I led, we explored connections between the Psalms and popular song. Statements on different aspects of the Psalms made by Dennis Potter, Nick Cave and Bono were illustrated with songs from Stacie Orrico, Evanescence and the Black Eyed Peas. Discussion of these statements and songs led on to workshop participants beginning to write their own contemporary psalms.        

This was my second year of leading workshops at the Exploring Spirituality Day and on both occasions those attending have been particularly enthusiastic and engaged.

Alan Stewart, Vicar of St Andrew's Hertford, who is one of the Exploring Spirituality Day organisers has an exhibition at St Mary's Hertingfordbury on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th November. The exhibition will feature striking charcoals and vibrant oils.

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Black Eyed Peas - Where Is The Love?

Remembering Alan Plater

Am currently watching The Last of the Blonde Bombshells which precedes an Alan Plater tribute on BBC Four. In it the Judi Dench character asks, "What is the best way of honouring the dead?" to which her grand-daughter replies, "That's easy, to go on living."

The Guardian's obituary summed up Plater's significance and character succinctly:

"Alan Plater, who has died of cancer aged 75, was one of a handful of writers, including Jack Rosenthal, Dennis Potter and Simon Gray, who truly made a difference on British television in the golden age of comedy, drama series and the single play. Like the other two Alans – Bennett and Bleasdale – his name guaranteed a quality of humour, heart and humanity, usually matched by high standards of acting and production values. And like them, he was definitely "northern"."

BBC Four say:

"Spanning four decades, writer Alan Plater's work has been described as a meeting of Coronation Street and Chekhov. With his spare dialogue and irreverent attitude, Plater helped introduce an entirely new voice to the world of television drama.

He is perhaps best known for the Beiderbecke Trilogy but has written in all forms and is especially known for his radio, stage and television work and also for his passion for jazz. The principles of jazz are at the very heart of the man and his writing."

Home Cinema has an excellent review of Plater's "gentle, whimsical and very British" classic comedy series The Beiderbecke Trilogy, which is where I first encountered Plater. The dialogue - "Are you eating, boy? You should know by now that eating is forbidden. That's why we supply school dinners"  - is particularly sharp in a comedy thriller where there are a couple of brisk walks and a car chase, at slightly less than the speed limit, around a roundabout several times.


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Bix Beiderbecke - I'm Wondering Who.

Re-inhabiting the past

The Singing Detective is a TV drama serial by Dennis Potter that was first shown in the 1980s. The story is about Philip Marlow, a writer of detective novelettes in the style of Raymond Chandler including one called ‘The Singing Detective’. At the beginning of the series Marlow is confined to a hospital bed because of the psoriasis which has affected every part of his body.

Marlow’s situation is that his childhood beliefs and commitments to God and to his parents have been betrayed through key incidents such as his seeing his mother’s adultery and his allowing another schoolboy, Mark Binney, to be punished for something that Marlow himself had done. His inability to face these betrayals has led him into a lifestyle where he abused and betrayed those he loved and it is only as he is stripped by his illness that he can begin to face these memories, come to accept who he is and move beyond these abusive relationships and The Singing Detective shows us how this happens.

The story is about the way in which Marlow faces up to the key events in his past. He has to re-inhabit his past, almost re-live it, in order that he comes to feel sorrow for the way in which he betrayed Mark Binney. It is only at the point that he re-lives that experience and feels sorrow for what he did that he is able to get up from his bed and walk again.

I mention this, because what Marlow experiences in The Singing Detective is very similar to what Peter experiences in our Gospel reading. Peter betrayed Jesus by denying him three times. Since the crucifixion Peter would have been in agony in his conscience over the way in which he failed Jesus at Jesus’ moment of need. The agonies that Philip Marlow experiences in The Singing Detective help us to flesh out this story in the Bible and to understand a little of what Peter would have felt.

When Peter meets Jesus by Lake Tiberias, Jesus forces Peter to re-live that experience of betrayal. That is why Jesus asks Peter three times, ‘Do you love me?’ These three questions mirror Peter’s three denials and take him back into that experience. Like Marlow, Peter has to re-inhabit his past in order to move on from it. As Jesus questions Peter, his sense of remorse for what he had done would have been immense.

Peter denied Jesus three times and so Jesus asks Peter three times, ‘Do you love me?’ When they have finished re-living the experience of his denial, Peter finds that he has three affirmations that counter-balance his three denials. By taking him back into the experience of denial Jesus turns Peter’s denials into affirmations and he turns Peter’s memory of the denial from a negative memory into a positive one. The denial happened, Peter would never have forgotten that but then he was given the opportunity to turn it into a positive affirmation of his love for Jesus and that would have been the memory that he carried forward with him.

Like Peter and like Philip Marlow we can carry around with us the memory of bad events that have happened to us – things that we did to others or things that others did to us. If we are not careful the memory of these events from the past will twist and harm our life now, in the present. The way to be released from the harm and hurt of these memories is, with the help of others, to go back into those memories, to re-live them, feeling sorrow what the wrong that we did and finding positive ways in which we can show that sorrow and repair the hurt that we have done or which has been done to us.

If that is your situation then put yourself in Peter’s place now as you read a meditation written by Revd. Alan Stewart based on this passage:

I am the one who ran away when I said I never would
I didn’t believe you when you said
‘the sheep will scatter’

I am the one who sat in the shadows avoiding eyes
I never believed I’d disown you like this
Not once, but three times

I am the one who wasn’t there while you died that death
I couldn’t believe that this was how
The story ends

‘do you love me?’ he later asked

‘I love you’ I replied
‘feed my lambs’

I am the one who hid in an upstairs room
I wanted to run but there was no longer
anywhere to go

I am the one who could find no solace nowhere
I wanted to open my eyes and see him there
Laughing

I am the one who wept my heart raw with regret
I wanted to tell him ‘I’m sorry…
I do love you..’

‘do you love me?’ he asked again

‘I do love you’ I replied
‘take care of my sheep’

I am the one who woke to the sound of women’s voices
I longed to believe they’d seen you, but hope
Was still on its knees

I am the one who ran to where they lay your body down
I longed to destroy the rumours
Before they destroyed me

I am the one who saw you arrive like a ghost
I longed to reach out and touch you, but I couldn’t
even look at you

‘do you love me?’ he asked for a third time
looking into my eyes
and my heart tore within me

‘you know that I love you’ I replied
‘then feed my sheep’

(Revd. Alan Stewart)

Let us pray,

Gracious God, how can I begin to forgive myself? Your promise is to forgive all who truly repent. I regret what has happened and confess my part in it, yet every day, I wake remembering – and my guilt is a heavy weight. Others may forgive me, and assure me that you forgive me too, but the dark cloud of my guilt blocks out the light of your love. How can I begin to forgive myself? When Jesus came face to face with Peter at the lakeside, he asked, ‘Do you love me?’ I long to hear that question and to answer ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,’ but my guilt is a barrier between us. Help me to hear the voice of the risen Lord, to accept your forgiveness and to forgive myself. Amen.

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Gordon Gano and The Ryans - Gone To Pray.

Art & Christianity meme

Instead of simply responding to memes I've decided to start one. The instructions for this meme are:

To list an artwork, drama, piece of music, novel, and poem that you think each express something of the essence of Christianity and for each one explain why. Then tag five other people.

• Artwork: White Crucifixion by Marc Chagall - the violence of the world is visited on the scapegoated Christ whose sacrifice becomes the centre around which history revolves.


• Drama: The Singing Detective by Dennis Potter - multi-layered clues in fiction, fantasy and autobiography combine enabling betrayal to be reinhabited which in turn releases the central character from the prison of his own distress and self-loathing.


• Music: Credo by Arvo Pärt - an arc of emotion beginning in the confidence of belief and moving through an agony of doubt before emerging chastened but still trusting. The arc of faith expressed through sound.


• Novel: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky - a rigorous and dramatic exploration of what it means to genuinely live out the Christian faith in the world.


• Poem: The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot - the world viewed in the light of Christ is fragmented, tormented and desolated but in the act of holding the fragments together the presence of Christ - the third who walks always beside you - is glimpsed.

I tag Banksy, Paul, Philip, Sam, and Tim.

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T-Bone Burnett - River of Love.

Glimpes of Clarity

"Sometimes we find ourselves on the edge, falling uncontrollably through life, punctured by a cannonball sized hole of despair, overwhelmed by emotion, facing the perhaps impossible task of trying to pick up the pieces and put ourselves back together from a pile of shattered fragments."

Glimpses of Clarity was a recent exhibition by George Triggs at the Art Academy which features in the current edition of art of england. Broken is the piece that provide the cover photo for this edition of the magazine and about which the above quote pertains.

Triggs has written of this work:

“Broken goes about examining the fragility, isolation and silent determination of our existence. It captures the seemingly impossible task of picking up the pieces and putting ourselves back together after a complete emotional implosion. This life-size figure is in fractured pieces slumped on a stool. It is trying to rebuild itself, examining the deterioration of its own existence, examining what it means to be broken, questioning whether it can return to life anew, questioning whether the cracks and experiences stay below the surface and whether some pieces of itself are gone forever. Broken was created in solid clay, then cast as a hollow shell, which I then literally shattered into pieces and reassembled. Looking at all the pieces, it seemed like an impossible task, which made it both more exciting, exhausting and inspiring. The process was a huge emotional and thought-provoking journey for me which I feel transfers to the work.”

Photos of the work can be found here and here.

T.S. Eliot writes, at the end of The Waste Land, of shoring fragments against his ruin and that equates to Triggs' sculpture but both, I think, also capture a sense of the inspiration and revelation which comes as this shoring of fragments against our ruin takes place. Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective presents a similar vision and one that I have linked to Jesus' restoration of Peter following his denial (John 21. 15-19).

Leonard Cohen in Anthem highlights the sense in which we all are cracked and broken within our lives and that, it is actually through our cracked natures that light comes into our lives and the world:

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

This echoes 2 Corinthians 4: 6-12 in which Paul writes of our lives as being like cracked clay pots with the light of Christ shining through the cracks or fractures in our lives. I have reflected on this insight in the meditation below:

unregarded

Birthplace,
least among the clans of Judea.
Home town,
a place from which no good was known to come.
In appearance,
without beauty or majesty, undesired.
In life,
despised and rejected, unrecognised and unesteemed.
In death,
made nothing.
His followers,
not wise, not influential, not noble – fools!

The light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the bodies and form of human beings.
Light shining
through the gaps and cracks of clay pots.
Light shining
in the unexpected places, despised faces, hidden spaces.
Light shining
in the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry.
Light shining
in the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers.
Light shining
in the persecuted, the insulted, the falsely accused.
Light shining
in the lowly, the despised, the nonentities.
Light shining
in weakness and fear and trembling.
Light shining
in the foolish followers of the King of Fools.

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Leonard Cohen - Anthem.

The Black Rain (2)

The meaning and mystery of Tom Davies' vision of the Black Rain is, he writes, that:

"The modern media has become the mother and father of all terrorism everywhere. It was also clear to me that a media in love with violence was responsible for most major crimes in our modern world from the assassinations of our leading figures, particularly in America, to the alarming spread of violence on our housing estates and soccer hooliganism in our stadiums."

Additionally, "The vision of the black rain says very clearly, to me at least, that we live in a world where most of our artists, writers and communicators are obsessed with perversion, crime and violence and this obsession is, in itself, leading the world into a growing disorder."

A media obsessed with perversion, crime and violence grows copycat violence in those who participate in its obsessions which in turn creates new images on which the media can feed.

The strength of this vision can be seen in the quantity and frequency of violent images that can be found in all forms of media. We are immersed in violent imagery whenever we watch TV, read a newspaper or play a computer game. It is commonly accepted in advertising that images can become surrogate objects of desire or other emotions but in other media this same association becomes contested. Davies is arguing for a direct link between the flood of violent imagery in the media and copycat actions in those who become obsessed with such imagery.

The weakness of the vision is in its lack of discrimination between those portrayals of violence that critique or explore the sources of violence and those portrayals that glorify violence or use it gratuitously. For example, in a Caradoc article he sees the television dramatist Dennis Potter as characterising this Romantic Mind that he identifies as a tide of evil. Potter was stereotyped in the tabloid press as Dirty Den, a sex-obsessed Mr Filth of television, but, as I wrote in an early post, he was also the TV dramatist with the most pronounced religious vision.

Davies' vision, therefore, seems to take no account of either authorial/editorial intent or the narrative of the pieces he criticises. His focus seems solely on the portrayal of violent, criminal or perverse imagery when he writes about his visions and not on the way in which these are used within the work itself. Interestingly, when it comes to his own novels we do not find an absence of violence, crime or perversion. Instead, these things are set within the moral framework of his visions and are then presumably justified by this intent and narrative. The central dilemma of Davies' writings and visions, it seems to me, is that his visions are actually expressed in the same romantic and violent imagery that they seek to critique.

At the same time as reading Davies' Testament I was also reading and reviewing Daniel A. Siedell's God in the Gallery. Siedell has a much more positive vision of contemporary culture claiming that “remarkably beautiful, compelling, and powerful” ‘altars to the unknown god’ are “strewn about the historical landscape of modern and contemporary art.” Such altars are artworks whose insights point to, but do not name, Christ. Siedell argues that such cultural artifacts and the insights they reveal and illuminate should be examined and celebrated by Christians and ultimately bent toward the gospel, making them work “as a means of apologetic grace.”

The two approaches are clearly opposed, at least when neither are nuanced. So, which is right or is there some way to hold both together? Siedell's argument if taken to its logical conclusion, which Siedell does not do, would mean that all art could be bent toward the gospel. I accept enough of Davies' argument to think that, although "beautiful, compelling and powerful altars to the unknown god" can be found in many surprising places, some artworks embody values, narratives or images whic are simply opposed to the values, narratives and images of Christianity. Juliette and Grand Theft Auto would seem to be two disparate examples.

The Christian critic then should not simply celebrate, à la Siedell, or condemn, à la Davies, but do what all good critics do by celebrating the positive and critiquing the inadequate and having some underlying methodological basis for making such judgements. However, there is a further and more post-modern means of combining aspects of the two and that is for the Christian artist or critic to re-tell or re-present narratives or images of violence in terms of their victims. This is an approach that I will explore through fiction in the final post in this series.

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Bruce Springsteen - Chimes Of Freedom.

The Black Rain (1)

Over Christmas I have read two books by Tom Davies; his biography Testament and his most recent novel The Tyranny of Ghosts. Not having read any of his work for some years it was fascinating to revisit the uncomfortable issues about faith and popular culture that his writings raise. The following is a synopsis of his career that I wrote several years ago:

Tom Davies is a seer. As a travel writer and semi-professional pilgrim, his descriptions both evoke and enliven the ordinary sights and people that he passes by, pausing just long enough to perceive significance. As a prophetic visionary, he uncovers the apocalyptic battle-drop against which ordinary life is played out. His best works involve journeys in which observation mingles with vision and where he runs the gamut of emotions from despair through boredom to wonder.

Trained as a journalist with the Western Mail, he later wrote for the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and Observer before biting the hand that had fed him by castigating the media in the books (travel, theology and novels) that he wrote subsequent to his conversion. His career came full circle with a column in the Western Mail under a pseudonym and published as The Visions of Caradoc.

His work is a tracking of the bloody footprints of Romanticism through literary, social and media history. Davies defines the Romantic Mind as emphasising the imagination and emotion over and above reason and intellect. It cultivates sensation and emotion for their own sake and has a persistent attraction to the morbid, the supernatural, the cruel, the perverted and the violent. He believes that: this Mind is predominant in Western media and culture; has been the gasoline in the bottle igniting a blazing orgy of violence that is speading uncontrolled through the world; is to be identified with the Biblical Man of Lawlessness, a tide of evil which engulfs the world as a necessary precondition to the return of Christ. In a Caradoc article he sees the television dramatist, Dennis Potter, as characterising this Romantic Mind.

By contrast, as Caradoc, he argues that the Christian artist should "generally seek to affirm that which is pure, good and lovely. He would always be seeking to mediate the beauty of the ordinary world to us; he would be looking for new insights into reality and, in this way, celebrate the fantastic wonder of creation.

The Christian artist would never bother with a pervert, preferring to study a normal man at work or play; he would never gaze at a scene of horror when he could find as it floats, like a falling leaf, through the real world. The art of the Christian is the most difficult art of them all."

This sermon is delivered to Idris the Pointless, a Van Gogh in safety pins, who promptly informs Caradoc that his latest project is paint "portraits of the homes of all the convicted murderers in the Valleys". Davies' self-deprecating humour and confessions of personal weakness leaven the fire and brimstone of his prophetic vision and allow us both to absorb his warnings and follow his evocations of wonder. He has said of the Biblical prophets that "With their wild veerings and ravaged visions they all had a questionable sanity". He would count it a compliment if we admitted him to that same company.

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Sam Phillips - Baby I Can't Please You.

The Ways of Affirmation & Rejection

I've been musing on the ways of affirmation and rejection since being at Greenbelt. This has been prompted by the The Garden's installation/performance Possibility of the Impossible and Pete Rollins' discussion of Bonhoeffer's 'religionless Christianity'.

The sense of their being two ways by which we can approach God was clarified for me in the writings of Charles Williams. Williams' views on these two ways have been summarised as follows:

"The Way of Affirmation consists in recognizing the immanence of God in all things, and says that appreciation of whom and what God has made may lead us to appreciation of Himself. The Way of Rejection concentrates on the transcendence of God, the recognition that God is never fully contained in His creation; it says that we must renounce all lesser images if we would apprehend His. These two Ways have been expressed by the paradox "This also is Thou; neither is this Thou," and tend generally to illustrate, respectively, Catholic or Protestant thought in their attitudes toward the use of images.

While Williams insists that a complement of both these Ways is necessary to the life of every Christian, and that none of us can walk the Kingdom's narrow road by only affirming or only rejecting ... yet he contends that Christians are usually called primarily to one Way or the other. Williams himself was a practitioner of the Way of Affirmation. Explains C. S. Lewis:

'[Williams was] a romantic theologian in the technical sense which he himself invented for those words ... The belief that the most serious and ecstatic experiences either of human love or of imaginative literature have such theological implications, and that they can be healthy and fruitful only if the implications are diligently thought out and severely lived, is the root principle of all his work.'"

As an artist and priest, i.e. someone dealing on a daily basis, with signs, images, metaphors and symbols, it seems to me that I cannot do other than primarily follow the Way of Affirmation. My Greenbelt posts finished with the dilemma that, ultimately, both ways seem to exclude the other.

However, Williams holds out some possibility for these two ways been complementary aspects of the life of a Christian but I am unclear, other than shuttling back and forth beteen the two, how this might work in practice. On this front, though, it is interesting that both Rollins and The Garden are making extensive use of the Arts and of imagery in order to discuss what is essentially apophatic theology (the Way of Rejection). In doing so, they are either not fully appropriating apophatic theology or have seen ways of appropriating Williams' suggestion of a complementarity between affirmation and rejection in ways that I have yet to understand.

In thinking about the theology of betrayal, as Rollins' does in this latest book, it would be useful to introduce the ideas of W. H. Vanstone in The Stature of Waiting into the debate. This book is based on a search for a different understanding of the betrayal of Judas from the understanding that has been traditional in the Church and which throws light on the exprience of waiting and dependence as signs and consequences of the image of God in us. Also of relevance would be the theme of betrayal in the plays of Dennis Potter with his masterpiece The Singing Detective being a stunning example both of the effect of betrayal and the way in which re-living and re-shaping the experience of betrayal can lead to recovery.

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John Train and Peter Case - Two Angels.