Harlow, 2012
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Maria McKee - Breathe.
Monday, 3 December 2012
Sunday, 2 December 2012
OPEN for music
OPEN is a fresh expression of church in Gants Hill (St George’s Barkingside). Today's OPEN session featured Tom and Simon on lead guitar and bass playing rock and blues, ably supplemented on a couple of tunes by our resident jazz pianist Keith. OPEN sessions regularly feature art, conversation, games, meditations (projected), music, poetry, photography and refreshments. They are generally as interactive as we can make them, although with the fine music Tom and Simon were making this session was more of an extended and intimate jam session.
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Advent: Beginning the journey
Advent marks the beginning of a journey that we undertake each year as we travel through the Christian Church Year. On this journey, we follow in the steps of Jesus as he is birthed in a stable, as he walks the dusty hillsides of Galilee , opens blind eyes and makes the lame to walk again, as he teaches the multitudes and the disciples, as he is crucified, and rises again. On this journey we also celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and reflect both on the mission of the Church and what it means to be a disciple of the Christ. By making this journey we remind ourselves who we are and whose we are.
We do so knowing that the Kingdom of God
Today we look forward to our journey this coming year, as we will express each week our faith in the transforming power of God at work in our world, and in our Church, and in our lives to restore all of creation to his purposes.
The royal colour of blue begins the Church Year in Advent, a word that means "coming". We pace this season of four Sundays hearing again the silence of the prophets, experiencing the breathless waiting of the Israelites hoping for a Messiah. We sing the song "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" with longing, not because we seek a Messiah yet to come to the world, but because the Christ has come and we long for him to come to us again. The quiet pace of Advent is in direct contrast to the bustling commercialism of the secular holidays. And so we begin our new year in Advent, reminding ourselves that in the midst of the worldliness of our lives we need to renew our relationship to this King who has come.
In the season of Christmas we change the sanctuary colours to white and gold, a celebration of the purity of the infant who was born in a manger, and yet a King with all the splendour of God come to dwell with his people. Christmas Day is both the culmination of the waiting of the Advent season, and the beginning of twelve days of celebration as we rejoice in the gift of our Saviour and the daily rebirth of grace in our own lives.
Epiphany means "to make known," and in the season of Epiphany we remember the ways and events through which God revealed himself through Jesus Christ. The colours of Epiphany are usually the colours of Christmas, White and gold, the colours of celebration, newness, and hope that mark the most sacred days of the church year.
As with most aspects of the Christian liturgical calendar, Epiphany has significance as a teaching tool in the church. The Wise Men or Magi who brought gifts to the infant Jesus were the first Gentiles to acknowledge Jesus as "King" and so were the first to "show" or "reveal" Jesus to a wider world as the incarnate Christ. This act of worship by the Magi, which corresponded to Simeon’s blessing that this child Jesus would be "a light for revelation to the Gentiles" (Luke 2:32), was one of the first indications that Jesus came for all people, of all nations, of all races, and that the work of God in the world would not be limited to only a few.
Epiphany is now observed as a time of focusing on the mission of the church in reaching others by "showing" Jesus as the Saviour of all people. It is also a time of focusing on Christian brotherhood and fellowship, especially in healing the divisions of prejudice and bigotry that we all too often create between God’s children.
With the ashes on our heads after the service of Ash Wednesday, the sanctuary colours for Lent turn to a sombre purple or violet and even to black at the end of the Passion Week. Throughout the six weeks of Lent we pace the length of Jesus’ three years of ministry. Throughout the weeks we relearn the faces and names of people who, like you and me, were sometimes faithful and sometimes selfish; people who heard the good news and responded and others who laughed and scorned; men, women, and children who heard Jesus’ words and watched his life and came hungry and were fulfilled, or who walked away because they could not use him for their own ends.
It is a long season, a season that calls us to stop and take a look at our life in the light of Christlikeness, and humble ourselves before our God who says to us gently, "Come, let us talk this over. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing to obey, you shall eat the good things of the earth." (Isaiah 1:18-19 NJB)
The season of Lent culminates in "Passion Week," from a Latin word that means "to suffer." Starting with Palm Sunday and the joyful entry of Israel’s Messiah-King in to Jerusalem, it ends with that very same crowd yelling "Crucify him, crucify him." In between these two days, the week’s events are remembered with various services that may pace the Passion Week: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Tenebrae, and the Holy Saturday Vigil.
Easter morning dawns and Mary Magdalene weeps at the tomb until she is told the good news "He is not dead! He has risen!" And that call echoes down through the centuries as Christians around the world joyfully cry out "Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed!" year after year on the highest and holiest day of the Christian calendar.
Easter lilies adorn the sanctuary, the colours change to the brightness of white and gold to portray the purity and kingliness of our Risen Savior. There is no joy compared to an Easter Sunday after the solemn pace of Lent. Three days before we buried our beloved Jesus; today He lives! We wept with Peter on the night he was crucified, and on Easter we are awed anew by the great news that He Lives!
And the fifty days of Easter ring jubilantly with the new life and new hope that the Risen Saviour brings to us, to our world, and to all peoples who open their hearts to him. We listen in on the conversations of the disciples as they struggle to wrap their human hearts and minds around this new revelation. We watch as those who previously had persecuted the people of God now fall on their knees in awe and wonder. We experience anew for ourselves in this season the freedom and joy and the power, strength, and life that is our heritage as the people of God.
The red of flames is the sanctuary colour of Pentecost as we remember the great rushing wind and the dancing flames like fire, and the words of Jesus, baptizing his disciples with the Holy Fire of the Spirit. The disciples and followers of Jesus were one moment huddled in fear in a small upper room. Then the Holy Spirit came in power and they rushed out of the building and into the streets, telling everyone about the good news in ways that all could understand. Today? Well, one day we are ordinary people, the next we are his evangelists, and pastors, and healers, and mercy-bringers, and the Body of Christ, redeemed by his blood, one in ministry to the entire world. Are you willing to be filled with the Spirit?
Ordinary time includes the counted Sundays between Pentecost and Advent. Since there are no Holy Days in this time it serves to remind us of the ordinary times of life. The book of Acts and the Epistles give us a clear picture of ordinary people, going about ordinary lives, but doing extraordinary things that built the Kingdom of God. The Church was growing by leaps and bounds, both the individuals within it and the worldwide Church. So we use the colour of Green to depict this growing time, and pray for the same thing within our ordinary lives. We hear again the Good News, we are instructed in the ways of the world and the Kingdom, and we are shown the vision of the Church and our responsibility within it. We hear afresh the voices of the gospel writers, the prophets, and Paul, Peter, James, each exhorting us to respond anew to the call of God to be his people in a world that is hungry for the grace, love, and peace we bring into every minute of life, if we are walking in the Light, if we are "abiding in the vine."
Ordinary? Yes, but through our lives God brings the living water to a thirsty world in our offerings of service and mercy that we offer to others on a daily basis. And this is the extraordinary way that God builds his Kingdom - through ordinary people like you and me.
At the end of the Church year on the Feast of Christ the King we are reminded that God is with us through all the seasons of life, as the writer of Ecclesiastes so poignantly reminds us. We are here because of Christ. We journey through the Church calendar because of him. We gather, "neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free", because we are one in Christ. It is Christ the Saviour-Shepherd-King who presides over his kingdom, his Church, our journey and the table where we share his supper – the Lord’s Supper, the Communion, the Eucharist. Here we can all come freely week by week to experience and to participate in the means of grace that visibly exhibits to us the heart and mind of our Creator, our Saviour, and our Sustainer.
(This sermon has been adapted from http://www.crivoice.org/christtheking.html).
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Enya - O Come, O Come Emmanuel.
Saturday, 1 December 2012
Tamil Carol Service
People came from across the South East to attend tonight's annual Tamil Carol Service organised by the Solomon family at St John's Seven Kings. This year's programme included the Singsations, Ipswich Indian Fellowship, Kent Gospel Band, and United for Christ Children's Choir. The performances included dance, songs and readings mixed with carols in English and Tamil. Following the service delicious food and fellowship was enjoyed by all.
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Aradhna - Holy River.
Christmas in London
I've just got a copy of the latest Step Outside Guide which is the seasonal Christmas in London - a family adventure day. The Step Outside Guides are little books that give you a BIG day out! With clear maps and instructions which let your kids lead the day out, they are guides to fantastic free-to see days exploring London which begin and end at tube stations!
In Christmas in London Jennie and Christopher Wren escort you on a detective trail, discovering elements from the story of the First Christmas, which you can stick on the stable scene. Which London Square is home to a shepherd and his sheep? Where can you find real gold, frankincense and myrrh? Let Jennie and Christopher show you!
As you travel, little wrens point out some of the beautiful golden ornaments on London’s buildings. They have stickers too, to decorate a Christmas tree in the book.
Then as darkness falls, you arrive at Trafalgar Square and enjoy the tree, the crib scene and a very special painting, before taking a sparkly bus ride along some of London’s most beautiful Christmas streets.
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The Pogues - Lullaby Of London.
Friday, 30 November 2012
Artists valued by theologians
I've recently been reading and re-reading several theologians who write about theological aesthetics. It's interesting to note those artists that they view as having synergies with their own work. I've posted previously about Paul Tillich and Expressionism and John Dillenberger and Abstract Expressionism but these theologians - Hans Urs von Balthasar, Calvin Seerveld and Cecilia González-Andrieu - are rather more eclectic, often valuing the work of artists without significant mainstream reputations.
Aidan Nichols writes that "Balthasar's beau idéal of a Church artist was the Swiss Hans Stocker" who he claimed "as representative of a 'new Catholic art in German Switzerland'." For Balthasar, "Stocker represented a pleasing contrast to the many artists claiming to serve the Church yet producing 'kitsch' ... Stocker would do full justice to the Kingdom of the Son in its redemptive economy; to the communion of saints; to the Church, her sacraments, her functions. Balthasar sees as paradigmatic Stocker's Sankt Gallen fresco of the open Heart of Christ with, arranged around it, scenes of the Old and New Covenants, the Angels, and the 'weeping Key-bearer, Peter'. This extended image testifies to an experience of the Heilskosmos, the 'world of salvation', that is central, not peripheral, and the will and capacity to represent it in an original way."
Calvin Seerveld has said of Gerald Folkerts that he "has the wisdom to let his Christian faith subtly percolate in the spirit of his painterly art by showing compassion for the problematic figures he treats": "Self-portrait shows Folkerts himself startled by the viewer's gaze, pounding a nail into the wrist of Christ on the cross lying on the ground. Curled lip, furtive eyes, aggressive hammer, tensed body, all under churning nest of vipers - it is a well-drawn almost melodramatic drawing of the guilt that lodges in the best of us."
"The engravings and paintings of Georges Rouault reinvest the Byzantine tradition with a sombre, stained-glass seriousness that is definitely biblical in its horror of modern dehumanising atrocities, and is truly compassionate in composition, colour, and gritty style that bespeaks Christian art, whether the topic be kings, prostitutes, or Jesus Christ's passion. The Nobel Prize winner for poetry in 1945, Gabriela Mistral of Chile, updates a Franciscan holiness and gives it a poignant, singing voice that casts haloes of comfort around girlish hopes, forgotten prisoners, and even the nest of birds. Canadian painter William Kurelek weds a love for the Bruegel world of low life with a Roman Catholic slant on the poverty of success gained without the presence of the cross; his mark of pristine folk happiness is normally touched by an existential sense of nuclear war apocalypse, so the careful observer can never rest easy. Significant about such varied Christian art born out of Catholic sensitivities today is its unchurchy, world-wide, sorrow-sensitive aura.
A more hidden, 'autonomous', or even tangential expression of biblical faith in art of the twentieth century deserves mention: the sculpture of German Ernst Barlach articulates with rough austerity a forceful cry in wood and metal for reconciliation with God and neighbour that so incurred the anger of the Nazi government it destroyed much of the work. The New York Jew Abraham Rattner not only conceived an enormous stained-glass wall of apocalyptic emblems for a major Chicago synagogue but also grappled time and again in painting with the crucifixion of Christ, trying to exorcise both Golgotha and Auschwitz, as it were, from Jewish experience. Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia, 1982 Nobel prize winner for fiction, exposes small-town political corruption in South America with fantastic horizons that juxtapose real angels, supernatural forces, and the comic foibles of weak people.
The black spiritual song of American Civil War days takes on new evangelical fervour in the melodies and lyrics of Mahalia Jackson, whose simple Baptist roots act prophetically through the cascades of rhythmic beat and glorious sound. The paintings, prints and constructions of Henk Krijger body forth reminiscences of both Bauhaus and German expressionism muted and melded into strong, restfully honed shapes and expertly chosen colours that reveal artistry integrated by the Reformation perspective that ordinary life is a vocation to be lived directly before God and to be redeemed while sharing sadness, humour, and hope." (In The Fields of the Lord)
In Bridge to Wonder Cecilia González-Andrieu holds up as exemplars of the approaches she articulates the founder of modern Chicano theatre and film Luiz Valdés, the poet-playwright Federico García Lorca and the artists John August Swanson and Sergio Gomez.
La Pastorela, which González-Andrieu describes in the book, is performed biannually by El Teatro Campesino during the Christmas holidays, alternating with La Virgen del Tepeyac, in the historic Mission of San Juan Bautista, established in 1797. Pastorelas, or Shepherds Plays, originated in medieval Europe as religious dramas and were later brought to the new world and Alta California by the Spanish missionaries. La Pastorela recreates the long trek of those first pastores to the holy site of the Nativity.
González-Andrieu argues in Bridge to Wonder that the: "possibility of a religious reading of Mariana Pineda has been generally disallowed by Lorca scholars precisely because of political ideologies bent on bifurcating her self-sacrifice from her religious faith. Such an evasion of the complexity of Lorca's work continues even in the face of the playwright's own emphasis of the heroine's Christian identity."
"Even though his works are part of art collections from the Vatican to the Smithsonian, John August Swanson (American, b. 1938) routinely admits to feeling like an amateur, even after four decades as an artist. In one of his early works, the beautifully rendered visual story Inventor, he summarizes the work of the artist and the humility he feels every time he works. The eight panels present an artist, as the newspaper headline announces, who claims to have invented a machine that transforms junk into beauty. Juxtaposed between this claim and the last panel, Swanson presents the young inventor working and draws the beauty that emerges as swirling colors, spheres, concentric circles, and stars. The last panel reports, this time through an old radio, that “an amateur is someone who doesn’t know something can’t be done, so he does it.” ... In Inventor ... Swanson calls into question the image of artists as geniuses and of art as an elite pursuit." (Bridge to Wonder)
González-Andrieu has written that "Gomez's works also act like modern icons opening windows and doors into the depths of Spirit, where death never has the last word and the sacred beckons. In his passionate and passion-making art Sergio Gomez tells a community's story, raises a cry of pain, mediates a vision of hope, and points with care and reverence toward that eternal Other whose love the very beauty of these works brings into relationship with a thankful world."
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Mahalia Jackson - How I Got Over.
Aidan Nichols writes that "Balthasar's beau idéal of a Church artist was the Swiss Hans Stocker" who he claimed "as representative of a 'new Catholic art in German Switzerland'." For Balthasar, "Stocker represented a pleasing contrast to the many artists claiming to serve the Church yet producing 'kitsch' ... Stocker would do full justice to the Kingdom of the Son in its redemptive economy; to the communion of saints; to the Church, her sacraments, her functions. Balthasar sees as paradigmatic Stocker's Sankt Gallen fresco of the open Heart of Christ with, arranged around it, scenes of the Old and New Covenants, the Angels, and the 'weeping Key-bearer, Peter'. This extended image testifies to an experience of the Heilskosmos, the 'world of salvation', that is central, not peripheral, and the will and capacity to represent it in an original way."
Calvin Seerveld has said of Gerald Folkerts that he "has the wisdom to let his Christian faith subtly percolate in the spirit of his painterly art by showing compassion for the problematic figures he treats": "Self-portrait shows Folkerts himself startled by the viewer's gaze, pounding a nail into the wrist of Christ on the cross lying on the ground. Curled lip, furtive eyes, aggressive hammer, tensed body, all under churning nest of vipers - it is a well-drawn almost melodramatic drawing of the guilt that lodges in the best of us."
"The engravings and paintings of Georges Rouault reinvest the Byzantine tradition with a sombre, stained-glass seriousness that is definitely biblical in its horror of modern dehumanising atrocities, and is truly compassionate in composition, colour, and gritty style that bespeaks Christian art, whether the topic be kings, prostitutes, or Jesus Christ's passion. The Nobel Prize winner for poetry in 1945, Gabriela Mistral of Chile, updates a Franciscan holiness and gives it a poignant, singing voice that casts haloes of comfort around girlish hopes, forgotten prisoners, and even the nest of birds. Canadian painter William Kurelek weds a love for the Bruegel world of low life with a Roman Catholic slant on the poverty of success gained without the presence of the cross; his mark of pristine folk happiness is normally touched by an existential sense of nuclear war apocalypse, so the careful observer can never rest easy. Significant about such varied Christian art born out of Catholic sensitivities today is its unchurchy, world-wide, sorrow-sensitive aura.
A more hidden, 'autonomous', or even tangential expression of biblical faith in art of the twentieth century deserves mention: the sculpture of German Ernst Barlach articulates with rough austerity a forceful cry in wood and metal for reconciliation with God and neighbour that so incurred the anger of the Nazi government it destroyed much of the work. The New York Jew Abraham Rattner not only conceived an enormous stained-glass wall of apocalyptic emblems for a major Chicago synagogue but also grappled time and again in painting with the crucifixion of Christ, trying to exorcise both Golgotha and Auschwitz, as it were, from Jewish experience. Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia, 1982 Nobel prize winner for fiction, exposes small-town political corruption in South America with fantastic horizons that juxtapose real angels, supernatural forces, and the comic foibles of weak people.
The black spiritual song of American Civil War days takes on new evangelical fervour in the melodies and lyrics of Mahalia Jackson, whose simple Baptist roots act prophetically through the cascades of rhythmic beat and glorious sound. The paintings, prints and constructions of Henk Krijger body forth reminiscences of both Bauhaus and German expressionism muted and melded into strong, restfully honed shapes and expertly chosen colours that reveal artistry integrated by the Reformation perspective that ordinary life is a vocation to be lived directly before God and to be redeemed while sharing sadness, humour, and hope." (In The Fields of the Lord)
In Bridge to Wonder Cecilia González-Andrieu holds up as exemplars of the approaches she articulates the founder of modern Chicano theatre and film Luiz Valdés, the poet-playwright Federico García Lorca and the artists John August Swanson and Sergio Gomez.
La Pastorela, which González-Andrieu describes in the book, is performed biannually by El Teatro Campesino during the Christmas holidays, alternating with La Virgen del Tepeyac, in the historic Mission of San Juan Bautista, established in 1797. Pastorelas, or Shepherds Plays, originated in medieval Europe as religious dramas and were later brought to the new world and Alta California by the Spanish missionaries. La Pastorela recreates the long trek of those first pastores to the holy site of the Nativity.
González-Andrieu argues in Bridge to Wonder that the: "possibility of a religious reading of Mariana Pineda has been generally disallowed by Lorca scholars precisely because of political ideologies bent on bifurcating her self-sacrifice from her religious faith. Such an evasion of the complexity of Lorca's work continues even in the face of the playwright's own emphasis of the heroine's Christian identity."
"Even though his works are part of art collections from the Vatican to the Smithsonian, John August Swanson (American, b. 1938) routinely admits to feeling like an amateur, even after four decades as an artist. In one of his early works, the beautifully rendered visual story Inventor, he summarizes the work of the artist and the humility he feels every time he works. The eight panels present an artist, as the newspaper headline announces, who claims to have invented a machine that transforms junk into beauty. Juxtaposed between this claim and the last panel, Swanson presents the young inventor working and draws the beauty that emerges as swirling colors, spheres, concentric circles, and stars. The last panel reports, this time through an old radio, that “an amateur is someone who doesn’t know something can’t be done, so he does it.” ... In Inventor ... Swanson calls into question the image of artists as geniuses and of art as an elite pursuit." (Bridge to Wonder)
González-Andrieu has written that "Gomez's works also act like modern icons opening windows and doors into the depths of Spirit, where death never has the last word and the sacred beckons. In his passionate and passion-making art Sergio Gomez tells a community's story, raises a cry of pain, mediates a vision of hope, and points with care and reverence toward that eternal Other whose love the very beauty of these works brings into relationship with a thankful world."
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Mahalia Jackson - How I Got Over.
Olivier Messiaen: Favourite pieces of 20th-century music
Works by Olivier Messiaen feature twice in a 'What's your favourite piece of 20th-century music?' article in today's Guardian. Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy chose the Quartet for the End of Time but describes the piece solely in terms of science:
"Our concept of time and space were totally disrupted by Einstein's breakthroughs at the beginning of the 20th century. No longer was there a single timeline, or a fixed frame of reference. Time could go at different speeds. Space could contract. For me, the Quartet for the End of Time captures some of the spirit of that scientific revolution. The story of its composition reflects one of the major historical events of the century: the second world war. But it is the music that resonates with this new view of the universe. The opening movement exploits the mathematics of two prime numbers to create a sense of destabilised time. The piano part plays a 17-note rhythmic sequence against a 29-note harmonic sequence. The two different primes create a sense of two different timeframes that never quite get in sync."While this captures an important aspect of the piece, it completely overlooks the Christian belief which infuses the piece and without which the Quartet for the End of Time could not have been written.
By contrast Rufus Wainwright, who chose Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise, although stating clearly that he is not a religious person, responds to the "incredible spirituality at its base which gives it a timeless quality" and says that he can "certainly appreciate it when music strives for the heavens."
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Olivier Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time.
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