Open to the flow of the Spirit

Here's the reflection I shared in today's Choral Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Some years ago I read a book called ‘Written In My Soul’, a series of interviews with some of the most well-known singer-songwriters from the 1950s onward, and was struck by the extent to which these great artists – Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison and others - felt that their songs were given to them in moments of revelation, that their songs were already written and ‘came through them as though radio receivers – without much conscious effort or direction.’

As example, Neil Young said, ‘My best work just comes through me. A lot of times what comes through me is coming from somewhere else.’ Similarly, Dylan has spoken of songs coming through the writer and cited Van Morrison’s ‘Tupelo Honey’ as a song that had always existed and Morrison the vehicle through which it came. In his interview Morrison confirmed that that was the only way he wrote songs; the only way he could write.

This happens to artists too, not just to musicians. I recently reviewed the retrospective of sculptures by Isamu Noguchi which is currently at the Barbican and was fascinated to discover that Noguchi viewed spirituality as a flow and artists as those who ‘come with less obstruction’ to this flow. He viewed inspiration as something flowing from a spiritual source and thought that the way to create great art was to open oneself more and more fully to that flow.

To my mind, these are experiences of the Holy Spirit coming, although it is not always recognised as such. The Spirit comes and makes connections, bringing clarity, making sense. That is not just something for artists, or even for preachers, it is something that can happen for us all and not just in major life-changing moments of revelation but also in minor everyday epiphanies.

It is also an example of what Jesus spoke about in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 21. 12 -19) when he said that his disciples would be called to testify but should make up their minds not to prepare a defence in advance; for he would give words and a wisdom that no opponents would be able to withstand or contradict. Just as the musicians and artists mentioned experienced, we too can open our lives, hearts, minds and spirits to receive inspiration and ideas from the Holy Spirit.

How can we experience a similar openness to the flow of the Holy Spirit in our own lives? Jesus makes two suggestions in the block of teaching to his disciples of which today’s Gospel reading is an extract. First, he says be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life. The cares and trials of life can distract us from a focus on God and his coming kingdom. When they weigh us down by clouding our view, they prevent us from looking to God and receiving from God. Similarly, Isamu Noguchi wrote that to be open to flow, artists try to ‘overcome barriers’ such as ‘habit and convenience and fear and accommodation’ or ‘barriers of the self and what everyone thinks about art’.

It is not that Jesus wants us to ignore the trials and tribulations of life, however. In this block of teaching, he is clear that his disciples will encounter all sorts of troubles in the near future. What he wants for them, however, is that they look for signs of the coming kingdom of God and contemplate those prayerfully because, as they focus their hearts and minds and spirits on those things, they will become attuned to what the Spirit is saying to them in the midst of the troubles they face.

What Jesus was commending to his disciples in unprecedented times where there was no script or instruction manual that could be followed was improvisation. He knew that he was going to leave them (as happened at the Ascension) and that he would then send the Holy Spirit to them (as happened on the Day of Pentecost). The Spirit will teach them everything and remind them of all that Jesus had said to them and the result will be that they will do greater things than him.

To understand this more fully, it’s helpful to reflect further on the artistic practice of improvisation. When actors improvise, it is in the context of a wider story within which they create a new story that fits within the wider story. When jazz musicians improvise, they begin with a musical theme that they develop in new directions before returning to the original theme in order to conclude. In both examples, those improvising need to be immersed in the wider theme or story in order to be able to improvise in ways that make sense within that wider theme or story.

 
As Christians we have become part of the story of how God relates to human beings and his creation by bringing into being the kingdom of God, with the story of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension being the best expression of that wider story. It is as we immerse ourselves in that story through prayerful contemplation of it, that we allow it to begin shaping our thoughts, ideas, reactions and responses to life and in this way become open to the prompting, movement and flow of the Holy Spirit within.

This is what prayer, bible reading, and other spiritual disciplines are seeking to achieve in and through us. That we begin to inculcate in our lives the life of the kingdom by acting in ways that mirror the activity, attitudes and ethos of that kingdom. In this way we open ourselves to the spirit of that kingdom, the Holy Spirit which animates all those who seek to follow Jesus.

We need to turn away from our natural human inclination to focus on ourselves and our issues and ills, in order to focus primarily on Jesus and the kingdom he brings. As we do so, not only do we increasingly allow the attitudes and actions of the kingdom of God to fill our heart, mind and spirit so that they begin to come readily to mind amongst the opportunities and challenges of daily life, but we also attune ourselves to hearing and responding to the promptings of God’s Spirit as it helps us improvise on the kingdom of God within our lives. In these ways, we too can experience what Jesus taught in today’s Gospel reading, what his disciples experienced in their lives and ministries following the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit first came to them, and what artists of all kinds also experience in terms of inspiration, through an often unconscious but nonetheless spiritual openness to what is beyond them.

Jesus calls us to prayerfully contemplate the signs of his kingdom that we might receive words and a wisdom that no opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Van Morrison - Haunts of Ancient Peace.

Annie & Bernard Walke

As a result of briefly scanning an exhibition catalogue while on holiday in Cornwall, I've discovered the following fascinating story of the artist Annie Walke and husband, the Anglo-Catholic clergyman, Bernard Walke.

Annie Walke was born in London and studied at Chelsea School of Art and at the London School of Art. She first came to Cornwall with her husband when he was curate in Polruan. Bernard, known to his friends as ‘Ber’, became Vicar of St Hilary near Marazion in 1912. He had previously worked in the East End of London and been curate of another parish in western Cornwall, an area where the Church of England had never really replaced the old Roman Catholic Church in the affections of Cornish-speaking people to whom English had come at the Reformation as an unfamiliar new language to supplant the church Latin they were used to. Thus those who had not later converted to Wesleyan Methodism tended to be Anglo-Catholic, and sympathetic to Bernard Walke’s strong feeling for ritual, drama and art.

Walke was happiest in the company of artists and ordinary working people. He persuaded such Newlyn artists as Harold Knight, Norman and Alethea Garstin, Gladys Hynes, Ernest and Dod Procter and others to decorate the church. Annie painted a picture of St Joan of Arc which formed the reredos to an Altar to St Joan. Pictures on the chancel stalls were painted by Knight, Hynes, the Procters and Annie Walke and depict scenes from the lives of Cornish Saints. The pictures on the priest's stalls represent, on the south St Hilery, and on the north the dedication of the church by the Abbot and monks of St Michael's Mount. The pictures on the pulpit are the work of Ernest Procter and represent legends connected with St Neot, St Kevin and St Mawes. The reredos in the Lady Chapel represents the house of the Visitation and the picture of the event was painted by Ernest Proctor. A large crucifix on the north wall is the work of Phyllis Yglesias, a memorial to Canon F. Rogers of Truro Cathedral who died in the parish in 1928. West of the crucifix is a reredos painted by Roger Fry. In the south west corner of the church is a reredos, painted by Ernest Procter, of an Altar of the Dead, built in memory of Gerard Collier who during world was one sought to find a way of peace for the world.

Walke studied the speech of the working people of the parish - farmers, tin-miners, fishermen, the postman - and wrote religious plays in local dialect for local people to perform in the church. St Hilary gained nation-wide fame when he wrote and directed a Christmas Play Bethlehem. Through his friendship with media man, Filson Young, broadcasts were made of this and others, in the tradition of medieval Mystery Plays, all written and devised by Walke and performed by the people of St Hilary. Bethlehem went on the air for the first time on 22 December 1926.

It was a milestone in regional broadcasting. Reith took the unusual step of telephoning the vicarage at St Hilary afterwards to say that he had been listening with Ramsay MacDonald (leader of the Labour party) and that both had been deeply moved. This was in the early days of broadcasting and Walke was able to put over a lot of Catholic teaching as listeners all over the country were charmed by these Cornish voices proclaiming Christ’s life. These became a feature of broadcasting in the 1920s and 30s, but unfortunately there had to be a tragic end.

The fame of St Hilary drew a nasty reaction. Various people with a grudge were determined to destroy this beautiful little shrine to Catholic devotion in Cornwall, where his wife and their artistic friends had painted murals and altarpieces and pictures. Complaints were made, court action taken, and finally the Protestant element broke into the church with axes, crowbars and hammers, smashing and defiling everything they could lay their hands on. Walke was only just able to retrieve the Blessed Sacrament and take it to his home to prevent the ultimate sacrilege. This was in 1932 and he was absolutely shattered.

Walke described these events in his memoir, Twenty Years at St Hilary, published originally in 1935. It is a tribute to its value that it now has a third re-issue, putting it in the category of a classic. Michael Farrer, President of the Anglo-Catholic History Society, writes that "it is the autobiographical memoir of a remarkable and fascinating priest, who began as a curate at Polruan near Fowey and moved to St Hilary, Marazion, near Penzance in 1912. He wrote this memoir while in a sanatorium, being treated for tuberculosis. He shows no real bitterness in his book, and through all his struggles, he comes over as a happy man. One is left with the sense of a character it would have been a delight to have known."

The Royal Cornwall Museum's collection includes work by Cornish artists and artists living in Cornwall, particularly from the Newlyn and St Ives Schools. These include large works by Annie Walke.

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Jack Clemo - The Broadening Spring.

Pentecost - making sense

Have you had a time in your life when you had a moment of revelation; a time when something that was confusing you suddenly became clear or when something that you didn’t understand suddenly made sense or when things that had seemed disconnected suddenly came together or, more mystical still, when you had a sense of the interconnectedness of the world around you and you within it?

The disciples spent three years not understanding what Jesus was saying and doing before running away, deserting and denying him at the crucifixion. Then the Day of Pentecost happened and the coming of the Holy Spirit was the moment when it all came together for them, when they finally understood and both knew their part in God’s plan and could begin to play it.

When the Spirit came they could speak in languages they had never learned and were understood, they could explain the scriptures although they were uneducated and their explanations made sense, they could proclaim Jesus as Lord and Christ and people responded to their challenge, and they knew how to structure and organise the new community that grew around them in response to their message.

All that Jesus had said to them and done with them suddenly made sense and useful to them because the Spirit had come and brought clarity and revelation. That is what Jesus had promised them would happen. That is the work which the Holy Spirit comes to do in our lives. Jesus told the disciples that when the Spirit came he would lead them into all truth. In other they would have that experience of revelation, of clarity, of things making sense, coming together and connecting.

It is an experience that is common to artists. Some years ago I read a book called Written In My Soul, a series of interviews with some of the most well-known singer-songwriters from the 1950s onward, and was struck by the extent to which these great artists – Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison and others - felt that their songs were given to them in moments of revelation, that their songs were already written and “came through them as though radio receivers – without much conscious effort or direction.”

To my mind, this is an experience of the Spirit coming although it is often not recognised as such. Certainly that has been my experience both in creating and preaching. I will often reflect on or meditate on an experience, a song, an image, a Bible passage, by putting it in my mind, carrying it around in my mind over several days or weeks, reminding myself of it from time to time and just generally living with it for a period of time and when I do that then I find that at some unexpected moment a new thought or idea or image will come to me that makes sense or takes foward the experience or song or image or passage that I had been reflecting on.

To my mind that is the Spirit coming and making connections, bringing clarity, making sense. But it is not just something for artists or even for preachers, it is something that can happen for us all and not just in major life-changing moments of revelation but also in a series of minor everyday epiphanies.

Think about your own experience of coming to faith and growing in faith for a moment. What have been the moments when you remember growing into a deeper understanding of God and of your faith? Have there been moments when something from the Bible stood out as being a word specifically for you? Or something that was said in a sermon or by a friend or colleague? Have there been moments when you have had, like Mother Julian of Norwich, the sense that everything will be alright or that you will get through the difficulties or complications you were facing? Again, that was the Spirit coming and bringing revelation.

On Ascension Day, I posted that the disciples had to let go of Jesus in order that the Spirit was able to come. It is in letting go and letting God that the Spirit comes with revelation and clarity and truth. Through the Ascension Jesus seems to be saying to the disciples, “Don’t cling on to me. Let go of me as you know me because, when you do, you will gain a greater experience, less limited experience of me. Don’t cling on to me. Let me go, because then the Spirit will come.”
To let go of what is safe and familiar and secure in order to be open to encounter what is beyond is both scary and exhilarating. But it is what Jesus calls us to and it is the way in which we encounter the Spirit in our lives.

The title of a Madness song, ‘One Step Beyond,’ has been a catchphrase that has developed real spiritual meaning for some of us at St John's Seven Kings over the last few months by challenging us to go further in living out our Christian faith, to go one step beyond where we are now in the way that we live as Christians. The Ascension seems to challenge us to go at least one step beyond where we are now in our understanding of God. We must always move beyond the place, space, people and understanding that we have now because that is how the Spirit comes!

And when the Spirit comes then we experience that sense of clarity, of understanding, of coming together, of rightness, and things making sense that we have been speaking of this morning. That doesn’t mean that everything works out and life becomes easy – the disciples were equipped by the Spirit to take the message of Jesus to the whole world and as a result they faced riots, shipwrecks, imprisonment, beatings, and martyrdom. A Spirit-filled Christian life is always a challenge but when the Spirit comes that’s when we experience a sense of meaning and purpose that transforms the difficulties of the present because we know that God is with us in it all.

While the disciples waited between Ascension and Pentecost they gathered frequently to pray together and, if we wish to experience the Spirit in a new measure, then that is also what we must be about. In Ephesians Paul writes go on being filled with the Holy Spirit and that should be our prayer. Whatever measure of the Spirit we think we have received so far, we can pray to go one step beyond and pray to experience more of the Holy Spirit’s power, presence, filling and equipping.

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The Arcade Fire - Wake Up.

SKFC Lent Courses 2009

These three … Faith, Hope and Love is the title of this year’s Lent Course chosen by the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches. The course is based on the three great qualities celebrated in 1 Corinthians 13. This famous passage begins and ends in majestic prose but the middle passage is practical and demanding. St Paul’s thirteen verses take us to the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

The five sessions of this course take us through: Believing and Trusting; The Peace of God; Faith into Love; The Greatest of these; and All shall be well. As we reflect on these topics we will be guided by the participants on the course CD who, this year, are Bishop Tom Wright, Anne Atkins, and Christopher Jamison, the Abbot of Worth Abbey. Dr. David Hope introduces the course and Professor Frances Young provides the Closing Reflections.

There are plenty of opportunities to study this course with others in the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches as there are four different course venues (at which all are welcome):

• St Teresa’s Newbury Park – Mondays 10.00am (2, 9, 16, 23, 30 March)
• St Peter’s Aldborough Hatch – Wednesdays 10.45am & 8.00pm (4, 11, 18, 25 March & 1 April)
• St John’s Seven Kings – Wednesdays 10.45am (4, 11, 18, 25 March & 1 April)
• St John's Seven Kings – Wednesdays 8.00pm (4, 11, 18, 25 March & 1 April)

The Church Times review of this course said: “This course is very good indeed. Written by John Young, it is the latest in the excellent series of York Courses designed for groups and individuals.”

This year there is also an alternative to the Lent course which may suit film buffs. There will be a series of Lent Film evenings at St John’s Vicarage (2 Regent Gardens IG3 8UL) on Tuesdays at 7.30pm. On these evenings we will watch four controversial portrayals of Jesus’ life and death - ‘The Gospel According to Matthew’ (U) on 3/3; ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ (15) 10/3; ‘Jesus of Montreal’, (18) 17/3; ‘The Passion of the Christ’ (18) 24/3 - before discussing all four films on 31/3.

Film is a very powerful medium for telling the Jesus story and as we reflect on the differing ways in which these films tell that story we are guaranteed to be moved, challenged and uplifted. Whether you choose to watch these Lent films or study the Lent course I pray that that will be your experience as we prepare during Lent to relive and celebrate Jesus’ passion and resurrection at Easter.

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Groove Armada Feat. Candi Staton - Love Sweet Sound.