All new babies bring new possibilities into the world. That is because each of us is unique and will therefore have the possibility of doing things that no-one else will or can do. Some babies grow up to be great – to be Winston Churchill or Nelson Mandela - but at the point of birth we don’t know what a new baby will be like or what he or she will do. Anything is possible, the future is completely open.
But in this story from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2. 22-40) Simeon and Anna both knew that the six week old baby in Mary’s arms was God’s Messiah, the one who would bring salvation to all peoples. At that time all six week old babies had to be brought to the Temple in Jerusalem. How did Simeon and Anna know that baby Jesus was different from all the other babies that they had seen brought into the Temple?
It was the Holy Spirit that led Simeon into the Temple on that day so that he could encounter Jesus and it was the Holy Spirit that had assured him that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s promised Messiah. Simeon was waiting – looking out, praying for, expecting – Israel to be saved and so the Holy Spirit was with him and revealed the Messiah to him in a six week old baby boy.
Often God’s work in the world and in other people is not easy to spot. God works in and through the ordinary and everyday, through the people and things around us and we need to be looking out for signs of his activity and presence. We need to be listening for his Holy Spirit to prompt us to look at some ordinary thing or ordinary person in order to see God at work.
In the film American Beauty, Ricky shows Jane a video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind among autumn leaves. As they watch he explains that "this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. . . . And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever." "Sometimes,” he says, “there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” To encounter God as that incredibly benevolent force that wants us to know that there is no reason to ever feel afraid, we need to pay attention to the beauty of the ordinary, overlooked things in life, like a plastic bag being blown by the wind. As Saint Augustine said, “How many common things are trodden underfoot which, if examined carefully, awaken our astonishment.”
We assume because Simeon expects to die once he has seen the Messiah that he was an old man and we know that Anna was 84 years old when she saw Jesus. Many of us, after living a while and seeing a lot, become a bit bored, even jaded and, when that happens, we stop expecting much, resigning ourselves to life pretty much as it is. Simeon and Anna didn’t do that though. They retained a sense of expectation, a sense of wonder, a sense of the marvel of life and so they looked for the new thing that they were confident God would do.
Victoria Williams wrote a great song called Century Plant in which she tells the stories of older people who do something new in their old age – paint, travel, study, join the Peace Corp or ride the Grand Rapids. The Century Tree is a cactus plant which blooms once in a hundred years and you never know when it will bloom. Her point is that it is never too late to ask God to give us a sense of wonder and expectancy about the world.
Simeon and Anna saw with their own eyes the salvation that God had promised for all people. Many had served God faithfully before them but had not seen the salvation that God had promised. Hebrews 11 tells us about Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and many of other heroes of faith from the Old Testament stories but concludes, “these were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.” Simeon and Anna lived at that time when what God had promised began to be fulfilled. Imagine how they must have felt to see what so many heroes of the faith had not been able to see. Like them we have the great privilege of living in the time when God’s Messiah has been revealed. How do we respond to that privilege?
Many people at that time could not see what Simeon and Anna saw. John’s Gospel tells us that the world and his own people did not receive or recognise him but that to those who did receive him and believed in him, he gave the right to become God’s children. Simeon and Anna, although they were old and close to death, and Jesus was only a six week old baby became children, God’s children, because they believed that Jesus was God’s Messiah. The same possibility is there for each one of us. We may have become jaded and cynical because of what we have experienced in life, we may have become closed off to wonder, we may have rejected the possibility of God and the possibility of good. Jesus came as a new-born baby to reawaken all those possibilities in us and in our world, for us to truly be born again. That is what Simeon and Anna experienced and it is what we can experience to as we respond to this child that is God’s salvation for all peoples. It is never too late to recover a new sense of wonder, it is never too late to ask God for it because you never know when it will bloom.
Lord, keep us from an ‘I’ve been this way before’ or ‘I know this already’ attitude. Revive in us a new awareness that you are alive and awake in the world and therefore every day can be filled with good things, even surprises. Amen.
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The Innocence Mission - I Never Knew You From The Sun.
Sunday, 3 February 2008
Saturday, 2 February 2008
Good letters
Image magazine’s updated website includes 'Good Letters', a daily blog that will focus on the intersection of faith and contemporary art. A dozen or so of Image's favourite writers have been handpicked to post on literature, art, music, film, theatre, and more from a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints. Their intention is that these bloggers will be producing meditations rather than polemics and that their blog will be marked by reflective prose rather than political pronouncements.
Today's blog is on Auden, God and Art and highlights both Auden's view of prayer as the paying of atention and his passion for proper names:
"To pray is to pay attention or, shall we say, ‘to listen’ to someone or something other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention — be it on a landscape, or a poem or a geometrical problem or an idol or the True God — that he completely forgets his own ego and desires in listening to what the other has to say to him, he is praying ...
“Auden’s passion for proper names in his poetry had a moral and theological point: like prayer, it was a form of attention. A proper name was a sign of personal uniqueness, and Auden used the word ‘miracle’ to refer to anyone’s sense of the unique value of their own unpredictable individuality. ‘To give someone or something a Proper Name,’ he wrote, ‘is to acknowledge it as having a real and valuable existence, independent of its use to oneself, in other words, to acknowledge it as a neighbor.’… When human beings imagine a beholder who finds such value everywhere, they think in terms of God, or as Auden wrote in another late poem [the 1965 ‘Epithalamium’], ‘the One…/ Who numbers each particle/ by its Proper Name’ — a deity who knows the personal name of every electron in the universe, rather than thinking about them in statistical terms.”
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Love - My Little Red Book.
Today's blog is on Auden, God and Art and highlights both Auden's view of prayer as the paying of atention and his passion for proper names:
"To pray is to pay attention or, shall we say, ‘to listen’ to someone or something other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention — be it on a landscape, or a poem or a geometrical problem or an idol or the True God — that he completely forgets his own ego and desires in listening to what the other has to say to him, he is praying ...
“Auden’s passion for proper names in his poetry had a moral and theological point: like prayer, it was a form of attention. A proper name was a sign of personal uniqueness, and Auden used the word ‘miracle’ to refer to anyone’s sense of the unique value of their own unpredictable individuality. ‘To give someone or something a Proper Name,’ he wrote, ‘is to acknowledge it as having a real and valuable existence, independent of its use to oneself, in other words, to acknowledge it as a neighbor.’… When human beings imagine a beholder who finds such value everywhere, they think in terms of God, or as Auden wrote in another late poem [the 1965 ‘Epithalamium’], ‘the One…/ Who numbers each particle/ by its Proper Name’ — a deity who knows the personal name of every electron in the universe, rather than thinking about them in statistical terms.”
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Love - My Little Red Book.
Friday, 1 February 2008
Azlan Creations
Al Gray is another of the artists participating in Hertford stns contributing Station 8: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. Al says that involvement in the project is "an opportunity to produce some art work directly related to my faith and I think that was what sold me on it."
Al is a freelance illustrator and has been drawing since before he can remember. His art is inspired by comic strips and the beautiful in the everyday. He has a degree in illustration and over the last nine years he has compiled a long list of clients, including: Esquire; Guinness; GQ (USA); Metropolitan Police; Loaded; Men’s Health; The Telegraph; Scripture Union; Ministry of Sound; DJ Magazine; Lo Down; Fatboss; and Youth Work. Al's portfolio can be found at Azlan Creations.
For more information on Hertford stns go to the website for Hertford & District Churches Together and click on 'Events'.
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Lou Reed - Berlin.
Al is a freelance illustrator and has been drawing since before he can remember. His art is inspired by comic strips and the beautiful in the everyday. He has a degree in illustration and over the last nine years he has compiled a long list of clients, including: Esquire; Guinness; GQ (USA); Metropolitan Police; Loaded; Men’s Health; The Telegraph; Scripture Union; Ministry of Sound; DJ Magazine; Lo Down; Fatboss; and Youth Work. Al's portfolio can be found at Azlan Creations.
For more information on Hertford stns go to the website for Hertford & District Churches Together and click on 'Events'.
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Lou Reed - Berlin.
Faiths in London's Economy
Faiths in London ’s Economy (FiLE) is a practitioner group hosted by MiLE and supported by Faith Regen Foundation which aims to co-ordinate faith community responses to the issues facing London ’s economy.
FiLE’s initial programme of work includes:
- website information – a FiLE page is to be developed to provide employers with a one-stop list of faith-based resources. This page will be hosted on MiLE’s website with links provided to each organisation involved and links from their websites to the FiLE page;
- seminar series – a series of seminars are to be organised on the following themes: faith perspectives on finance; approaches to climate change; values/moral leadership; and business ethics vs ethics in business. FRF and MiLE are able to provide venues and ideas for speakers will be sought from each organisation involved;
- publications – the publication of materials resulting from the seminar series will be explored.
By means of the above we intend to: raise awareness of faith-based approaches to work in London ’s economy; remove misconceptions about such faith-based initiatives; build relationships; identify good practice; and produce publications.
Our response form enables you to tell us how you would like to be involved in taking this programme of work forward. I hope you and your organisation find this information of value and invite you to register interest in involvement in these new developments by completing and returning the response form.
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The Clash - Working for the Clampdown.
Biblical Art: An International A-Z - Part 1
Art histories rarely focus on modern sacred or religious art, giving the impression that the visual arts in the twentieth century were predominantly secular. This represents a Western view of art history which can itself be challenged and which completely overlooks the significant development of Biblical Art in Asia and Africa throughout this period and on into the contemporary scene. The following A-Z attempts to provide a brief sample of some of the artists and organisations that create and support Biblical Art in Asia and Africa:
Asian Christian Art Association (ACAA): Founded in 1978 to encourage the visual arts in Asian churches. ACAA has raised the profile of Asian Christian Art through conferences, exhibitions, publications, a magazine (Image) and a website. Christian Art in Asia, The Bible through Asian eyes and Christ for all people are each showcases for the art and artists that ACAA support.
The Blake Prize for Religious Art: an Australian art prize, named after William Blake, established in 1949 as an incentive to raise the standard of contemporary religious art. Justin O’Brien was the first winner, Eric Smith has been a seven times winner and other multiple winners include: John Coburn; Leonard French; George Gittoes; Roger Kemp; Rodney Milgate; Desiderius Orban and David Voigt.
Antoine Camilleri (1922 – 2005): an innovative Maltese artist who worked in a wide variety of media. He said that, “to succeed in painting one must always experiment and create new methods and designs.” In several works, such as Christ conquered the cross and his stained glass at the Augustinian Church at Tarxien, he succeeded in combining the significance of the crucifixion with that of the resurrection.
Ivo Dulčić (1916 – 1975): Croatian colourist whose paintings, murals and stained glass feature in Croatia’s churches, monasteries and museums. Dulčić was part of a trio of painters (with Đuro Pulitika and Antun Masle) in his native Dubrovnik.
Each with his own brush: Written in 1938 by Revd. Daniel Johnson Fleming, this book was the first extensive attempt to bring together examples of Christian Art from Asia and Africa. Among the artists featured are Luke Ch’en, Lu Hung Nien, and Alfred D. Thomas. Fleming wrote two other books on similar themes; Heritage of Beauty and Christian Symbols in a World Community.
Furen: A Chinese Christian school of painting which arose in Beijing between the two world wars at the Catholic University, but which lasted only until 1949. The Chinese Ministry of Education recognized it under the name Furen, a phrase found in the Analects of Confucius which can be translated as "promotion of righteousness." Luke Ch’en, a professor in the Art Department of the University, was the main proponent of this style. Ch’en educated and trained a group of Christian artists including Lu Hung Nien and Wang Su Da.
Gota Rochisuma Associates: a group of sculptors who work from Silviera House, a Catholic educational centre outside of Harare, Zimbabwe. Andrew Mabanji explains that the group "use as our theme the explosion of negative silence, the voice of the voiceless. As members of the Shona tribe we want to release from the stone the hidden strengths of indigenous Shona culture."
Ralph Hotere (b. 1931): a Maori artist of great originality whose origins in a small Maori Catholic community provided him with a magnificent resource from which he has continued to draw inspiration. The Stations of the Cross, the Sacred Heart and the Requiem all occur within the imagery he uses with ingenuity and emotion.
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Paul Simon, Ladysmith Black Mambazo et al - Township Jive.
Asian Christian Art Association (ACAA): Founded in 1978 to encourage the visual arts in Asian churches. ACAA has raised the profile of Asian Christian Art through conferences, exhibitions, publications, a magazine (Image) and a website. Christian Art in Asia, The Bible through Asian eyes and Christ for all people are each showcases for the art and artists that ACAA support.
The Blake Prize for Religious Art: an Australian art prize, named after William Blake, established in 1949 as an incentive to raise the standard of contemporary religious art. Justin O’Brien was the first winner, Eric Smith has been a seven times winner and other multiple winners include: John Coburn; Leonard French; George Gittoes; Roger Kemp; Rodney Milgate; Desiderius Orban and David Voigt.
Antoine Camilleri (1922 – 2005): an innovative Maltese artist who worked in a wide variety of media. He said that, “to succeed in painting one must always experiment and create new methods and designs.” In several works, such as Christ conquered the cross and his stained glass at the Augustinian Church at Tarxien, he succeeded in combining the significance of the crucifixion with that of the resurrection.
Ivo Dulčić (1916 – 1975): Croatian colourist whose paintings, murals and stained glass feature in Croatia’s churches, monasteries and museums. Dulčić was part of a trio of painters (with Đuro Pulitika and Antun Masle) in his native Dubrovnik.
Each with his own brush: Written in 1938 by Revd. Daniel Johnson Fleming, this book was the first extensive attempt to bring together examples of Christian Art from Asia and Africa. Among the artists featured are Luke Ch’en, Lu Hung Nien, and Alfred D. Thomas. Fleming wrote two other books on similar themes; Heritage of Beauty and Christian Symbols in a World Community.
Furen: A Chinese Christian school of painting which arose in Beijing between the two world wars at the Catholic University, but which lasted only until 1949. The Chinese Ministry of Education recognized it under the name Furen, a phrase found in the Analects of Confucius which can be translated as "promotion of righteousness." Luke Ch’en, a professor in the Art Department of the University, was the main proponent of this style. Ch’en educated and trained a group of Christian artists including Lu Hung Nien and Wang Su Da.
Gota Rochisuma Associates: a group of sculptors who work from Silviera House, a Catholic educational centre outside of Harare, Zimbabwe. Andrew Mabanji explains that the group "use as our theme the explosion of negative silence, the voice of the voiceless. As members of the Shona tribe we want to release from the stone the hidden strengths of indigenous Shona culture."
Ralph Hotere (b. 1931): a Maori artist of great originality whose origins in a small Maori Catholic community provided him with a magnificent resource from which he has continued to draw inspiration. The Stations of the Cross, the Sacred Heart and the Requiem all occur within the imagery he uses with ingenuity and emotion.
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Paul Simon, Ladysmith Black Mambazo et al - Township Jive.
Grief
Several of us at St John’s have lost loved ones over the Christmas period and that means that all of us at St John’s have been dealing with grief as we have tried to express our support for those who are grieving.
In Romans 8. 18 St Paul makes this very bold statement: “I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.”
When we are in the midst of grief a statement like that can easily sound like the false optimism of those who would tell us to snap out of it and get on with the rest of our lives. The loss of a loved one leaves a hole in our lives and among our family or friends that is never completed filled and which cannot be fully understood by others who are not experiencing the grief that we feel.
And yet, the Christian hope is that we and our world will be transformed, that we will participate in the death and resurrection of Christ and live resurrected lives together with Christ in the kingdom of God which is heaven come to earth where there will be no more death, grief, crying or pain because God will wipe all tears from our eyes and the old things will be no more.
When we are grieving or when we are simply living out our lives, that transformation can seem to be no more than a pleasant dream or a piece of wish fulfilment. Yet, like Paul, I believe that we can know it in part now and will experience it in full in future.
The gap between our suffering and the glory that is to be revealed is not as minimal as Paul seems to make it in his bold statement. In between suffering and glory there is the pain and groaning of which he writes in Romans 8. 22-27 but the amazing thing of which he writes is that God’s Spirit groans with us in ways that our words cannot express. God knows grief and shares our grief enabling us to express our grief and through this to achieve the vision of transformation and rebirth into which he longs for us to come.
After my brother Nick died I talked with members of the Tear Fund team who had worked with Nick rebuilding homes in Kosovo. They told me about the effect that Nick had had on the Kosovan people with whom he had worked and also on other members of the team as they had valued his friendship, support and advice. As they talked, the tears flowed; theirs and ours and, I believe, God’s as he was with us at the time enabling us to express our grief. But, as they talked, I also had a growing sense that Nick had gone into God’s presence and had been welcomed with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” In that moment I glimpsed something of the glory into which Nick had entered and that glimpse continues to sustain and strengthen me in my loss.
My experience of grief suggests that it is as we cry out in our grief that God meets with us. He is alongside us through his Spirit and will speak for us in groans that words cannot express. We should not be afraid of tears, of memories, of stories, they are an expression of the love we feel. But as we share our grief with others we can also catch a glimpse of the glory that waits to be revealed to us and into which our loved ones have entered and that glimpse will sustain us as we deal with grief in our everyday lives.
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Ilse de Lange - I Still Cry.
In Romans 8. 18 St Paul makes this very bold statement: “I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.”
When we are in the midst of grief a statement like that can easily sound like the false optimism of those who would tell us to snap out of it and get on with the rest of our lives. The loss of a loved one leaves a hole in our lives and among our family or friends that is never completed filled and which cannot be fully understood by others who are not experiencing the grief that we feel.
And yet, the Christian hope is that we and our world will be transformed, that we will participate in the death and resurrection of Christ and live resurrected lives together with Christ in the kingdom of God which is heaven come to earth where there will be no more death, grief, crying or pain because God will wipe all tears from our eyes and the old things will be no more.
When we are grieving or when we are simply living out our lives, that transformation can seem to be no more than a pleasant dream or a piece of wish fulfilment. Yet, like Paul, I believe that we can know it in part now and will experience it in full in future.
The gap between our suffering and the glory that is to be revealed is not as minimal as Paul seems to make it in his bold statement. In between suffering and glory there is the pain and groaning of which he writes in Romans 8. 22-27 but the amazing thing of which he writes is that God’s Spirit groans with us in ways that our words cannot express. God knows grief and shares our grief enabling us to express our grief and through this to achieve the vision of transformation and rebirth into which he longs for us to come.
After my brother Nick died I talked with members of the Tear Fund team who had worked with Nick rebuilding homes in Kosovo. They told me about the effect that Nick had had on the Kosovan people with whom he had worked and also on other members of the team as they had valued his friendship, support and advice. As they talked, the tears flowed; theirs and ours and, I believe, God’s as he was with us at the time enabling us to express our grief. But, as they talked, I also had a growing sense that Nick had gone into God’s presence and had been welcomed with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” In that moment I glimpsed something of the glory into which Nick had entered and that glimpse continues to sustain and strengthen me in my loss.
My experience of grief suggests that it is as we cry out in our grief that God meets with us. He is alongside us through his Spirit and will speak for us in groans that words cannot express. We should not be afraid of tears, of memories, of stories, they are an expression of the love we feel. But as we share our grief with others we can also catch a glimpse of the glory that waits to be revealed to us and into which our loved ones have entered and that glimpse will sustain us as we deal with grief in our everyday lives.
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Ilse de Lange - I Still Cry.
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