Heaven is union with God

God's ancient covenant with the Jewish people was, as Ezekiel wrote, that, “My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people" (Ezekiel 37: 26-27). At the end of Bible we find these words, “God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21: 3).

This covenant which God made with his people is fulfilled through Jesus. Jesus says that he dwells in God the Father and the Father dwells in him. In other words, he is united with God and lives out as a human being what God himself is like. When he says to his disciples that there are many dwelling places in his Father’s house, Jesus is letting his disciples know that it is not he alone who is to dwell with the Father but that there is room for all of them and many more (John 14. 1 - 7).

He then says to his disciples that he is about to leave them to prepare a dwelling place for them with God. He is speaking of his death, resurrection and ascension, as these enable his disciples to be united to him and, in him, with God, his Father. Heaven is experienced through our union with God. When we are united with God, we, like Jesus, dwell in God and God dwells in us. Through Jesus, we experience this unity with God in the here and now and it continues into our life with God after death.

Jesus is the way to unity with God. He is the way to God dwelling with us and our dwelling in God. 

Eugene Peterson has encapsulated Jesus’ point about being the way, truth and life by saying, “Only when we do the Jesus truth in the Jesus way do we get the Jesus life.” In many funeral services we pray for the wisdom and the grace to use aright the time that is left to us on earth. That wisdom and grace come to us as we ask ourselves, ‘Am I living the Jesus truth?’ ‘Am I living the Jesus way?’ ‘Am I living the Jesus life?’ We too can experience unity with God when we do the Jesus truth in the Jesus way to get the Jesus life.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Madness - Our House.

Windows on the world (288)

Barcelona, 2013

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Clark - Some Misunderstanding.

Easter Activity Stations

On Friday children from Downshall Primary School came to St John's Seven Kings to learn more about Easter. They took part in seven Easter Activity Stations (see above for one of these activities) which enabled them to learn about the Easter story and reflect on what the story says to them. This year's Easter Activity Stations involved, among other activities, tasting vinegar and chocolate, washing hands, placing rocks in water and making foil crosses. The Easter Activity Stations teach, among other stories, about the Last Supper, the trial of Jesus, carrying the cross, Jesus' death and resurrection.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gillian Welch - By The Mark.

Enterprise Club, Environmental Businesses and Paint Project

Here is the latest from Ros Southern regarding the Seven Kings & Newbury Park Sophia Hub:

"We are delighted to announce that we have set up a partnership with Forest Recycling Project (Waltham Forest) to support new enterprises in Redbridge using reclaimed materials.  Funded by Redbridge Council we have 7000 litres of free recycled paint for a business to distribute to community groups plus many more possibilities.

Please read about this offer here: http://sophiahubs7k.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/call-out-for-recycled-paint-users-and-distributor/. 

At the enterprise club on Tuesday - from 2 - 3.45pm we will be joined by Brian Kelly of Forest Recycling Project, Toni Dipple of Organic Ilford, Keith Young of Recycles (recycled bikes) and quite a few more environmental businesses and schemes.  This will be useful for all start -ups as we will be drawing out tips and learning from these businesses.  For more information click on this link: http://sophiahubs7k.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/enterprise-club-on-8th-april-exploring-green-enterprises/.

Please do help us by passing on this information and letting people know about our enterprise network and club.

For an update on the time bank click here: http://sophiahubs7k.wordpress.com/time-bank/.

I hope to see many of you on Tuesday.  Feel free to arrive anytime from 1.30 and stay to 4.30 and beyond.  Bring your laptops - we have wifi!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Nesmith - Life, The Unsuspecting Captive.

Gerry Judah: The triumph of hope and redemption in the face of conflict

"A major new memorial installation of two original sculptures by internationally acclaimed artist, Gerry Judah (b.1951), has been erected as part of St Paul’s Cathedral’s programme to commemorate the 2014 centenary of the beginning of the Great War (1914 - 1918).

The two white cruciform sculptures, each over six metres high, have been installed on the walls at the head of the Nave of the Cathedral and will meet visitors upon entry to St Paul’s for an eight month period from Palm Sunday onwards (13th April 2014). Bearing intricate models of contemporary and historical settlements decimated by conflict on the main shafts, the two crosses encourage reflection on the waste, pity and devastation of war, whilst also instilling a sense of hopefulness and a desire for peace in the viewer.

Reflecting on the project, Gerry Judah remarks: “It is a great honour to have been selected to create these two new works as part of the World War I commemorations at St Paul’s Cathedral, a building that has historically come to symbolise the triumph of hope and redemption in the face of conflict. These sculptures are intended to appeal to our feelings of pity and charity, as well as filling us with hope for the future, which, I feel, is one of the principal purposes of a great place of worship, contemplation and meditation such as St Paul’s.”

The Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, The Reverend Canon Mark Oakley, comments: “Gerry Judah’s striking sculptures confront us with the reality of a War that saw thousands and thousands of young people from around the world buried with white crosses and stones over their remains. They also provoke us into interrogating the present world and the landscapes we casually view on the news every day, as scarred and agonised by military hate as the hearts and minds of those who survive. Gerry’s work ruptures the symmetry of the Cathedral just as war breaks down human harmony. Placed where they are, we are invited to walk through them, and the failure and pain they represent, into a sacred space of hope where people in all our diversity are invited to come together to worship, to respect and to learn from each other. It is a work that starkly asks of us what it must now mean for us to be loyal to our shared future.”

I reviewed an exhibition by Gerry Judah in 2007 for Art and Christianity and said of his work then, "In Judah's work, shocking content - the ruins of human habitation devoid of human life - is combined with the sensuous interplay of light and shadow on the delicacy and detail of Judah's constructions of destruction."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Athlete - Black Swan.

Beyond Airbrushed from Art History: Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture

For some time I have been arguing on this blog that, as Daniel A. Siedell suggested in God in the Gallery, "an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art" is needed, "revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations." In my Airbrushed from Art History series of posts I have highlighted some of the artists and movements (together with the books that tell their stories) that should feature in that alternative history when it comes to be written.

Books such as The Image of Christ in Modern Art, Art, Modernity & Faith, Beyond Belief, Christian Art, God in the Gallery and On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, have all, to some extent, surveyed aspects of an alternative history of modern art revealing "that Christianity has always been present with modern art." However, the Second Edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture delivers a more comprehensive telling of this alternative history than any previous publication has managed.

The Reverend Tom Devonshire Jones, the editor of this Second Edition, has been aided by over a dozen expert contributors, fully updating the text for the 21st century. Areas that have been expanded upon include the artwork, artists, and innovations of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries (such as the relationship between Christianity and film). Coverage includes art from around the world, with new entries upon the Christian art of North America, Latin America, Australasia, and of the non-Western world, as well as Christian artistic interactions with other religions, including Judaism and Islam.

The story told primarily involves the influence of Christianity on the artworks produced (as with the influence of icons on the work of Kasimir Malevich), the commissioning of artists by the Church or the contribution to the development of modern art by artists who were Christians. The story is told here mainly on a country by country basis and tends to focus on individual artists but nevertheless does cover most of the major movements within which the influence of Christianity was felt - Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, Futurism, Abstraction and Abstract Expressionism. Also included are excellent descriptions of art from the non-Western world where the focus is rightly on individual artists rather than movements. These descriptions are accurate, comprehensive and concise with insights into the issues faced and the approaches used by those artists included. 

Despite this, there are occasional instances where artists and movements which could have been included are absent. Cubism, for example, is neglected because the work of Albert Gleizes is overlooked in the section on France, although his tutees Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone do feature in relation to the art of  Ireland. Expressionism gets a brief mention in the section on Germany but without mention of work by artists like Emil Nolde and Christian Rohlfs which contains significant engagement with Biblical topics. The decoration of churches in Switzerland (led by Alexandre Cingria) is also overlooked, except in relation to the work of Gino Severini. Folk or Outsider Art is also absent and this has significance because, in the North American context, Outsider Art represents an engagement with the visual arts by the Protestant traditions of the Church and also because in periods within the West where Christianity seems to have lost the intellectual imagination there remain in Folk Art signs that it has retained the Folk imagination. For me, perhaps the most glaring omission is in relation to Eastern Europe where, other than a significant entry on Russia, most modern Eastern European art is overlooked. The influence of the Nazarenes and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in Hungary and the sacrum period in Poland are both, I think, worthy of mention, while mention of artists like Kondor Béla, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Walter Navratil and Jerzy Nowosielski would have given a greater sense of the influence of Expressionism on modern Christian Art.    

To explore the Christian contribution to modern and contemporary art in the way which is undertaken in The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture is important because the story of modern and contemporary art is often told primarily as a secular story. To redress this imbalance has significance in: encouraging support for those who explore aspects of Christianity in and through the Arts; providing role models for emerging artists who are Christians; and enabling appreciation of the nourishment and haunting which can be had by acknowledging the contribution which Christianity has made to the Arts.  

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robert Plant and Band of Joy - Angel Dance.

Palm Sunday, Holy Week and Easter Day

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Delirious? - King Of Fools.