Windows on the world (227)

Fréjus, 2012

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Kings X - Fade.

Living in the Christian story

At the Eucharist in St Margaret’s Barking for the Diocesan Day of Prayer for the Mission and Unity of God’s Church, Bishop Stephen told his favourite Christmas story. As it is his story, I won't repeat it here. Suffice to say for what follows that it involves a two year old called Miriam climbing into a crib scene.

What she did was essentially an acted parable to the congregation because she became part of the story. That is what happens – it is what we are doing – when we become Christians. In other words for many of us, it is what is going on when we are baptised.

Baptism is our immersion in the Christian story; a story which begins with God’s creation of the universe and life on earth. It continues with our rebellion as human beings. Our saying to God that we know who we are and what we need to do and, therefore, will go ahead and do our own thing. We all live with the consequences of that right now.

But in the story which the Bible tells God does not leave us simply to do our own thing. First, he chooses the people of Israel and through his special relationship with them seeks to call all people back to their true identity and purpose and then he sends his own Son, Jesus, to reach out in rescue and return us to him. He does this so that each one of us can find our identity and purpose in God and play our part in bringing the kingdom of God in full on earth as it is in heaven.

When Jesus was baptised he was saying that he would immerse himself in this story and play his special, unique part within it. As he made that commitment, God the Father affirmed him in his identity and purpose by saying, “You are my own dear Son. I am pleased with you.”

As we do what Miriam did and enter the story, then we are also affirmed by God in just the same way. St Paul writes in Romans 8. 14 – 17 that:

“Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children. For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry out to God, “Father! my Father!” God's Spirit joins himself to our spirits to declare that we are God's children. Since we are his children, we will possess the blessings he keeps for his people, and we will also possess with Christ what God has kept for him; for if we share Christ's suffering, we will also share his glory.”

What he is saying is that as we enter the story we are adopted by God as his children and become brothers and sisters of Jesus, co-heirs with him of all he possesses.

You may remember the wonderful words of Philippians 2. 6 – 11 which say that Jesus gave up the equality he had with God the Father in heaven in order to be born as a human being, living and dying as our servant in order to save us:

“For this reason God raised him to the highest place above
    and gave him the name that is greater than any other name.
And so, in honour of the name of Jesus
    all beings in heaven, on earth, and in the world below
    will fall on their knees,
and all will openly proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.”

That same glory, St Paul says, is shared with us as we enter the story, join the family of God and play our part with the story. The incredible message of Christianity is that our rightful identity as human beings is that of being God’s own dear children with whom he is greatly pleased.

How do we play our part? That all depends on our coming to know the story and what happens within it. The former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright has described Holy Scripture as being like a five act play containing the first four acts in full (i.e. 1. Creation, 2. Fall, 3. Israel, 4. Jesus).

“The writing of the New Testament,” he says, “would then form the first scene in the fifth act, and would simultaneously give hints (Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15, parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end ... The church would then live under the 'authority' of the extant story, being required to offer an improvisatory performance of the final act as it leads up to and anticipates the intended conclusion ... the task of Act 5 ... is to reflect on, draw out, and implement the significance of the first four Acts, more specifically, of Act 4 in the light of Acts 1-3 ... Faithful improvisation in the present time requires patient and careful puzzling over what has gone before, including the attempt to understand what the nature of the claims made in, and for, the fourth Act really amount to.”

So, we start by looking at what we know of the story to date – the things God has done in and through Israel, Jesus and the Church – and we also look at the hints we have about the way the story will end with the coming in full of the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven. Then we say to ourselves, ‘What is it that people do in this story? How do they act and behave? And then we start to do and say similar things as we have the opportunity. As Christians we are never given a script which has all our lines and actions printed on it. Instead, we have to improvise our part on the basis of what we know of the story so far, on the basis of the example provided by those who have lived in the story before, and on the basis of the opportunities provided in the places where we are and among the people that we know.

Living in the Christian story, therefore, is a challenge – something we should know anyway from looking at the life and death of Jesus – but it comes with the affirmation that we are part of God’s family; his dearly loved children, brothers and sisters of and co-heirs with Jesus himself. When we know this we can relax because whatever happens to us we are accepted, forgiven, loved and gifted by the God who created all things and who will bring all things to their rightful end.

When we do that we are like Miriam climbing in under the altar to become part of the crib scene. When we do that we become part of God’s story which makes us his children and gives us identity, purpose and meaning.

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Evanescence - Going Under.

Mexico and Australia: Revolution and Land

I'm looking forward to two exhibitions at the Royal Academy in the Autumn. The first is Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910 – 1940, (The Sackler Wing of Galleries, 6 July – 29 September 2013) which "will examine the intense thirty year period of artistic creativity that took place in Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century. The turmoil of the revolution between 1910 and 1920 ushered in a period of profound political change in which the arts were placed centre stage. Often referred to as a cultural renaissance, artists were employed by the Ministry of Public Education on ambitious public arts projects designed to promote the principles of the revolution.

The exhibition will explore this period both in terms of national and international artists. Work by
significant Mexican artists, such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros,
will be placed alongside that of individuals who were affected by their experiences in Mexico. These
include Josef Albers, Edward Burra, Philip Guston, Marsden Hartley, Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-
Bresson, Henrietta Shore, Leon Underwood, Tina Modotti and Edward Weston. Mexico: A Revolution
in Art, 1910 – 1940 will reveal a dynamic and often turbulent cultural environment that included some
seminal figures of the twentieth century reflecting on their interaction with each other and their
differing responses to the same subject: Mexico."

The San Bernadino County Museum describes the Mexican Mural Movement as follows: "The Mexican Mural Movement began about 1913 when Mexican President Victoriano Huerta appointed Alfredo Martinez as director of the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas. Gerardo Murillo (who called himself Dr. Alt) of Guadalajara painted the first modern mural in Mexico, and pioneered the idea that Mexican art should reflect Mexican life. After the revolution, the new government commissioned works of public art that supported and affirmed the values of the revolution and the Mexican identity: a broader knowledge of revolutionary history and the Mexican people’s pre-Columbian past.

Three muralists—“los tres grandes,” José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—became the internationally-known leaders of the mural movement. All believed that art, the highest form of human expression, was a key force in social revolution. Together, they created the Labor Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors and devoted themselves to large-scale murals illustrating the history of Mexico, its people, its society, and the revolution. Their work was not always received positively. All spent some time in the United States creating works of art."

Rivera "did not represent religious images unless they were useful as social observations ... The most that he came close to portray religious messages was at the murals in Chapingo, where his images functioned as a catechism exhorting a new generation of Mexican farm workers and agricultural planners to uphold a modern nationally, constructive, self-respecting way of life, based on the credo "exploitation of the land, not of man."" Nevertheless, it has been noted that his Detroit Industry Murals "are rife with Christian themes and utopian symbolism."

Orozco "painted the theme, Cristo destruye su cruz, three times in his life, twice as murals — one of which still survives at Dartmouth College — and once on a 4’ x 3’ canvas." The image has been understood both as saying “It is finished!” to the violence that destroys and oppresses and as a denial of "the sacrificial destiny meant for him."

"Siqueiros painted some fifteen portraits of Christ ... on August 2, 1963, he inscribed the following quote from the most devout of Italian painters, Fra Angelico, in the back of his painting Cristo del Pueblo: "May only he who believes in Christ paint Christ." And in another occasion, during his imprisonment, he declared: "Was Jesus Christ not, like me, a victim of social dissolution, a persecuted man?" On August 9, 1963, from his cell at a crime prevention facility, Siqueiros inscribed the following words regarding the Via Crucis on the back of his painting, Mutilated Christ: "First, his enemies crucified him 2000 years ago. Then, they mutilated him from the Middle Ages on, and today, their new and true friends restore him under the political pressure of communism post-Ecumenical Council. This small work is dedicated to the latter."

The second exhibition is Australia (Main Galleries, 21 September – 8 December 2013), "the first survey of Australian art in the UK in over 50 years. The exhibition will reveal the development of Australian art through over 180 paintings, prints and drawings, watercolours, photographs and multimedia works, incorporating
settlers’ images of the land from the beginning of the nineteenth century to today, together with art by
Aboriginal Australians. The exhibition will consider the tensions both real and imagined between the
landscape as a source of production, enjoyment, relaxation and inspiration, and conversely as a
place loaded with mystery and danger.

The exhibition will include works by Aboriginal artists such as Albert Namatjira, Rover Thomas, Emily
Kame Kngwarreye and Fiona Foley. Nineteenth century European immigrants such as John Glover
and Eugene von Guerard will also feature, as well as the Australian Impressionists whose paintings
relied heavily on the mythology of the Australian bush: Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts (a student of
the Royal Academy Schools), Charles Conder and Frederick McCubbin. Early Modernists such as
Margaret Preston, Grace Cossington Smith and Roy de Maistre will hang alongside the leading
twentieth century painters: Arthur Boyd, Rosalie Gascoigne, Fred Williams, Brett Whiteley and
Sidney Nolan RA, with the exhibition ending in the twenty-first century with internationally recognised
artists such as Shaun Gladwell, Bill Henson and Tracey Moffatt."

Margaret M. Manion has written that "for a surprisingly large number of gifted Australian artists, the relationship between art and religion has continued to provide a creative challenge." Robert Hughes suggested in The Art of Australia that Justin O'Brien "was the first Australian painter to concentrate on religious imagery" but that religious painting in Australia was "quickened" by Eric Smith and Leonard French. Rosemary Crumlin writes in Images of Religion in Australian Art that with "the founding of the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 1950, many artists turned to the Scriptures for subject matter in their paintings, some of them for the first time":

"Roy de Maistre, reconverted to Catholicism in London, worked often from the Bible and became associated with the Sacred Art Renewal Movement in England. In Melbourne, Russian immigrant Danila Vassilieff used religious subjects, often ironically, sometimes humourously and with zest. In Melbourne also, the Boyd family, always deeply religious, provided its younger generation, including Arthur Boyd and his brother-in-law John Perceval, with an easy familiarity with the Scriptures as texts of faith and guidance for living."

In The Blake Book: Art, religion and spirituality in Australia, Crumlin continues the story providing "a fascinating visual social history of Australia and an astute, well-documented history of The Blake Prize from 1951 - 2011. The book traces many significant changes in art and art movements, both within and beyond Australia. Through their work and words, the artists have room to speak of what has influenced them and found expression in their Blake entries. The influences they name range widely. Choices often surprise.
Among the winning artists presented in the book are Donald Friend, John Coburn, Stanislaus Rapotec, Roger Kemp, Ken Whisson, Maryanne Coutts, George Gittoes and Euan Macleod. Space is given to indigenous art and the many exhibited artists other than the winners."

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Midnight Oil - My Country.

Christian Art – fallacy or fusion?

The Lent & Eastertide Schools are a collection of education, training and skills events across the Diocese of Chelmsford during Lent and Eastertide each year. A series of short courses running across the diocese between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost with a wide variety of themes and costing £15 per course.

This year, as part of the Eastertide School, I will be running 'Christian Art – fallacy or fusion?' which aims to explore approaches to and understanding of the relationship between art and faith. In this course participants will explore approaches to engaging with and looking attentively at art in addition to exploring the history of art and faith plus definitions of Christian Art. As we do so, we will also look at contemporary art exhibitions, public art and church commissions.

The course will take place on five Tuesday evenings beginning 9th April, then from 23rd April - 14th May at St John's Seven Kings (St Johns Road, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex IG2 7BB). For brochures and booking forms please contact: Liz Watson. Diocesan Office, 53 New Street, Chelmsford, Essex. CM1 1AT. Tel: 01245 294449, email: lwatson@chelmsford.anglican.org.

I have been thinking about books to suggest to participants for further reading as, while many books have been written on the arts and faith, a relative paucity exists of books giving reasonably accurate, comprehensive and unbiased summaries or surveys of the modern period. The resources I am likely to commend include:

Rosemary Crumlin's Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination, the catalogue from a 1998 exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. While not being "a survey of religious and spiritual images of the century," the works included and the accompanying essays do nevertheless span the twentieth century. The earliest, Maurice Denis' The Catholic Mystery and James Ensor's Christ calming the storm "hover at the edges of a century of revolutions, wars and new beginnings" while "at the other end of the century, and of the exhibition, are Francesco Clemente's meditations on his journey up Mount Abu in India and Audrey Flack's huge head of the goddess Daphne, with fruit and branches for hair and, on her forehead, a skull, a reminder and warning of the destruction of war."

The foreword by Timothy Potts contains a particularly focussed summary of religious and spiritual influences on twentieth century art: "The pervasiveness of broadly religious and spiritual themes in twentieth-century Western art may at first seem to stand in contradiction to the secularization of so many aspects of life and culture during our times. The religious underpinnings of so much Western art before this century - from its subject matter to its sources of patronage and its devotional purposes - are obvious and uncontentious. With the art of our own century, however, the religious dimension is altogether more subtle, often more abstract and inevitably more personal. From images created with a clear message and usage in mind, we move into a world of individual spiritual discovery, personal visual languages and images which seek to explore and evoke rather than to define and prescribe. Some artists employ familiar religious iconography as convenient signifiers of an earlier culture and mind set - artefacts to be used in a quintessentially modern image-making of juxtaposition, anomaly and incongruity. Others eschew icons altogether to explore more mystical spiritual concerns in images of diffuse abstraction. The visual languages, the spiritual purposes and the artistic results are infinitely varied, but all are united by an absorption in the confrontation between art and religious experience. In this exhibition, these pervasive currents of religious experience and thinking can be traced running through the work of many of the twentieth-century's most important artists and schools."

Art, Modernity and Faith: Restoring the Image by George Pattison provides a survey of modern theological approaches to understanding the relationship between Christianity and the visual arts (Forsyth, Maritain, Gilson, Ruskin, Tillich, Wolterstorff etc.) together with a critique of these approaches leading to his own proposals for a theology of Art. While not fully comprehensive, as there is, for example, no discussion of the significant work of Hans Urs von Balthasar or Calvin Seerveld, Pattison is nevertheless asking many of the right questions - "What sort of theology of art, then, will work best for our time? What will enable theologians to bring to their engagement with the visual arts the great (yet ceaselessly debated) resources of the Christian tradition - but in such a way that the artist is recognised and affirmed in his or her autonomy of working?" He emphasises that the "dialogue between art and religion is to be just that: a dialogue, with each partner seeking to appreciate the specific contribution of the other."   

Rowena Loverance’s Christian Art is both an accessible introduction to Christian Art and a stimulating exploration of the way in which art from the Christian tradition can speak to our condition today. To achieve both within the pages of one book is a considerable achievement. Loverance’s scope is broad, covering Christian Art from its inception to the contemporary in a way that is genuinely global and which takes in the decorative as well as the fine arts. She begins with a brief chronological survey in which she notes the way in which different aspects of Christian Art emerge from the different periods and cultures of Church history. The majority of the book, however, explores Christian Art thematically, noting the way in which the visual arts have engaged with the themes and imagery of Christian scripture and tradition. While necessarily concise through covering a lot of ground, Loverance writes with the sensitivity to art that one should expect of an art historian and with a similar appreciation of theology that comes from one writing, as a Quaker, out of her own faith tradition. Loverance has written an engaging, accessible survey of the diversity of Christian Art in which she clearly identifies the relevance of such art to our contemporary condition and identifies fruitful new avenues in the Christian tradition for possible exploration by contemporary artists. Well illustrated and designed, this is a book to inspire both the creation of new Christian art and appreciation of the wonderful heritage that we already possess.

Finally, I am also likely to commend the series of lectures given by The Rt Revd Lord Harries at the Museum of London on Christian Faith and Modern Art. The last century saw changes in artistic style that were both rapid and radical. This presented a particular problem to artists who wished to express Christian themes and these illustrated lectures looked at how different artists responded to this challenge whilst retaining their artistic integrity. The lectures in the series are: The Explosion of Modernism; Distinctive Individual Visions; Catholic Elegance and Joy; Post World War II Optimism; Searching for new ways; and Contemporary Christian Art.

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James MacMillan - Credo.

Diocesan Day of Prayer for the Mission and Unity of God's Church

For our two hours of prayer over lunchtime at St John's Seven Kings, as part of the Diocesan Day of Prayer for the Mission and Unity of God's Church, we had prayer stations, projected meditations, and short liturgies for mission and unity:

Lord God
Renew your Church
and begin with me,
Heal our land
tend our wounds
And make us one,
And use us in your service;
For Jesus Christ’s sake
Lord of the Church
Make us the Church of the Lord. Amen.
(Diocese of Natal: Southern Africa)

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
our only Saviour, the Prince of Peace:
give us grace seriously to lay to heart
the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions.
Take away all hatred and prejudice,
and whatever else may hinder us
from godly union and concord;
that, as there is but one body and one Spirit,
one hope of our calling,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of us all,
so we may henceforth be all of one heart and of one soul,
united in one holy bond of peace, of faith and charity,
and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

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Karen Peris - Song For A New Day.

Windows on the world (226)

 

Monte Carlo, 2012

 

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Michael McDermott - Ever After.

The importance of how we travel

Think about this question. What is the most important part of a journey? The beginning, middle or end? Why we travel, where we travel or how we travel?

At Epiphany we focus on the journey made by the Magi in order to be able to kneel and worship the baby king Jesus. In the ancient world, Jupiter was the ‘king star’, and at the time of the birth of Jesus, Jupiter appeared in the night sky very close to Saturn, which represented Israel. If you were reading the sky you’d see ‘new king in Israel’.

That was the starting point for their journey but it didn’t give them exact directions. They didn’t know exactly where they were going on their journey. They knew they were going to find the new king in Israel but they had to trust as they travelled that they would be guided and led to find him. They clearly travelled a great distance and, obviously, didn’t have cars, trains or planes, so they would have probably travelled on camels. But the distance and effort didn’t stop them because meeting the child was so important.

When they arrived, they gave extravagantly to welcome Jesus with gifts, time, effort, the risk of danger, and humility. But their gifts pale next to Jesus coming to earth to show God’s love for us; Jesus came from heaven, eternity and majesty to earth, time and humanity. He went on an even more incredible journey to show us God’s love. After they had found Jesus the journey of the Magi began again as they were guided by God to return home by another route and, as T. S. Eliot makes clear at the end of his great poem about their journey, their lives were forever changed by the experience.

So, their starting point was important but it didn’t tell them how to find their way and when they did finally arrive, their arrival actually meant the beginning of a new journey. All of which means that how we travel may be as important as why or where we travel. That at least is what our Text for 2013 at St John's Seven Kings, taken from Matthew 6. 34, seems to say:
 

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

Simon Small writes in ‘From the Bottom of the Pond’ that: “Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed.”

But, he says, “Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is”: “To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.”

This is very much what Jesus seems to be saying to us in Matthew 6. 34 and in his teaching on worry and anxiety found in Matthew 6. 24 – 34. 

When we are preoccupied with what might happen in the future, we are not living fully in the present and may well misunderstand or misinterpret what is actually going on. Jesus encourages us to live fully in the present because, as Simon Small says, that is where we encounter God.

When we genuinely encounter God in the here and now we know that his love and forgiveness surround us and that his Spirit fills us. As Jesus prayed in John 17, he is in us and we are in him. When we know this in our hearts in the here and now, we can relax because whatever happens to us we are accepted, forgiven, loved and gifted by the God who created all things and who will bring all things to their rightful end. We are held in the palm of his hands and, as Julian of Norwich put it, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”.

Even in the difficult times, we can still know that this is true because, as our Text for 2013 puts it, God will help us deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Jesus is saying that the more we live in the present and the more we encounter God’s love in the here and now, the less we will be anxious or worried. Prayer is able to help us do both things and therefore helps us to reduce our sense of anxiety or worry. Not because we have listed all our worries to God and believe that he will solve them all for us, but instead because, through prayer, we have encountered more of God’s love and, as a result, trust that he will be with us whatever comes our way. 

 

This is important because so much of our sense of dissatisfaction with our lives and the complaining we do about other people stems from our own worries and anxieties rather than what may or may not have happened or what others may or may not have done. Instead of focusing on other people and what we think they should or should not do or have done, we need to begin with ourselves and our relationship with God by giving our entire attention to what God is doing right now, and not getting worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. Then God is able to help us deal with whatever comes up, whether hard things or blessings, when the time comes.

We don’t know what 2013 will bring. Some predict an upturn in the economy, others a worsening. We can’t be sure and, of course, the future will be different for each of us. But, as Brian Davison reminds us in the current edition of the ‘Ilford Recorder’, “if the prospect of what lies ahead seems dark or threatening, remember the words with which King George VI reflected on the closing year in his 1939 Christmas broadcast. “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” (Minnie Louise Haskins).

Like the Magi, we can only travel in hope that we will be guided by God. So, “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

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Julie Miller - By Way Of Sorrow.