Quiet Day: Daily Divine

I'm at the Diocesan House of Retreat in Pleshey tomorrow leading a Quiet Day for a group from St Nicholas Great Wakering with St Mary's Church Foulness and All Saints Barling with St Mary's Little Wakering.

During this Quiet Day, which I have called 'Daily Divine', we will be exploring our experience of God in the events and emotions of the everyday or, as the poet George Herbert put it, ‘Heaven in ordinaire’. During the day thoughts will be shared on the idea and reality of having an ongoing conversation with God in which we pray through our emotions and our everyday encounters.

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George Herbert - 'The Collar'.

Review: Bridge to Wonder

My latest book review for the Journal of Theological Studies has recently been published online. The review is:

Bridge to Wonder: Art as a Gospel of Beauty. By CECILIA GONZALEZ-ANDRIEU. Jonathan Evens The Journal of Theological Studies 2013; doi: 10.1093/jts/flt004

Bridge to Wonder is described by its publisher as proposing "a method of theological aesthetics allowing readers to mine the depths of creative beauty to discover variegated theological truths that enable greater communion with each other and the One source of all that is beautiful."

Cecilia González-Andrieu is Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University and has been described as a promising young Catholic theologian.

My earlier book reviews for the Journal of Theological Studies can also be found by clicking here and here.

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Arlo Guthrie - Amazing Grace.

Ross Ashmore: Going Underground

Ross Ashmore is about to finally accomplish his three year mission to paint every station on the London Underground – of which there are 267.

‘SPACE art gallery’ are set to exhibit for the first time together, over 100 of these highly expressive impasto paintings.

As an urban landscape artist, Ross feels compelled to document the ‘beauty in our streets’ before the inevitable changes society forces upon them.

He endeavours to convey emotion in his paintings, revealed by his textural mark making in paint, creating energy – giving each painting a life of its own.

Speaking of his work, Ross said: “I love the physicality of painting…and it’s everyday life that I want to highlight in my work. What better subject could there be than the streets where we find these wonderful stations.”

The exhibition will take place at SPACE art gallery, 141 High St, Southgate N14 6BP and will run until Friday 5 April. The opening night is on Saturday 2nd March from 7.00 - 9.00pm.

For more urban landscapes see the following:

Caroline Nina Phillips is showing work in Start 13: The New Industrialists celebrating the full opening of London’s newest creative hub, The Bermondsey Project, which comprises Crisis Skylight Bermondsey, Bow Arts SE1 Studios, London Sculpture Workshop, London Community Furniture and the Outside Puppets Collective. The urban landscape has been a source of fascination, inspiration and a recurring theme throughout the work of Caroline Nina Phillips. Observational drawings and camera snapshots of the local urban environment are used as starting points for these layered, painterly works. Particularly favoured focal points are construction sites; building works; passageways and stairways. Noticeably, the chosen places are those which could be easily overlooked. It is through experiencing; looking; recording and reflecting upon such particular spaces, that Caroline Nina captures their existence and essence.

Part 2 of CiTiES: All Dimensions, an exhibition celebrating urban-living and virtual-architecture, will open shortly at the Tokarska Gallery:

• Thursday 7 March 2013 – Private view will be held at Tokarska Gallery, 6pm-8pm
• Saturday 9 March 2013 – Performance night: 6-9pm. Music provided by Mark Beazley
• Thur 7 March – Sun 17 March 2013 – Exhibition will be open to the public Thursday to Saturday 12 – 7pm

Cities, like people, have their stories. Loved or deserted, they never fail to provoke a reaction. Silent testaments to human endeavour and social intelligence they form a collective view, which we tend to interpret by focusing on a certain aspect of its being. It may even be acceptable to think that cityscape art is a reflection of oneself within the city-concept. Cities, like people, grow, age and develop. However their lifespan is unrivalled to that of their inhabitants. Driven by social tendencies their transition from generation to generation often perceived as seamless. This facade cannot be further from the truth though, as is explored in “Cities: All Dimensions”.

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The Jam - Going Underground.

Windows on the world (233)

Stratford, 2012

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The Blues Brothers - Everybody Needs Somebody To Love.

The Mother heart of God

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how many times I wanted to put my arms around all your people, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not let me!” (Luke 13. 34)

In this statement of his love for the people of Jerusalem, Jesus speaks of his concern and love for Jerusalem being typified by a mother hen gathering together all her chicks under her wing for safety and warmth. Lovingly, Jesus is saying he wants to be like the mother hen gathering God’s people to him where they will then experience safety and love. At the same time that he makes this specific statement to the people of Jerusalem, he is also paying a wonderful tribute to motherhood itself by equating the love which God shows towards us to the love that mothers show towards their offspring.

We tend to think most readily of God as a father but there are several places in scripture where God’s love is described as being like that of mother for her children.

Hannah Whitall Smith wrote “My children have been the joy of my life. I cannot imagine more exquisite bliss than comes to one sometimes in the possession and companionship of a child. To me there have been moments, when my arms have been around my children, that have seemed more like what the bliss of heaven must be than any other thing I can conceive of; and I think this feeling has taught me more of what  God’s feelings towards his children are than anything else in the universe. If I, a human being with limited capacity, can find such joy in my children, what must God, with his infinite heart of love, feel towards his; In fact most of my ideas of the love and goodness of God have come from my own experience as a mother, because I could not conceive that God would create me with a greater capacity for unselfishness and self-sacrifice than He possessed Himself; and since this discovery of the mother heart of God I have always been able to answer every doubt that may have arisen in my mind, as to the extent and quality of the love of God, by simply looking at my own feelings as a mother.”

Hannah Whitall Smith lived in the United States in the 1850’s. She was born into a Quaker family but later became a Wesleyan preacher and was one of the inspirations behind the Keswick Convention. She wrote those words about the mother heart of God after reading Isaiah 66. 12 – 13, another passage of scripture in which God’s love for all people is described as being like a mother’s love for her children:  "The Lord says, “You will be like a child that is nursed by its mother, carried in her arms, and treated with love. I will comfort you in Jerusalem, as a mother comforts her child.”

Jesus’ focus was on the safety that mothers’ seek to provide for their children out of love. Here, the focus is on the sense of comfort that the child receives from the love of its mother, particularly as it is nursed and fed. Isaiah also used motherly imagery in reference to God in Chapter 49. 15 where the focus is on the faithfulness of a mother’s love:

“The Lord answers,

“Can a woman forget her own baby
    and not love the child she bore?
Even if a mother should forget her child,
    I will never forget you.”

Nancy Hicks picks up on imagery around nursing the child when she writes about Psalm 131:

“Nursing was one of the most intimate acts I have ever been allowed to participate in, and what joy to be utterly depended upon! But a nursing baby is a demanding baby, “Pick me up NOW! Feed me NOW!” And when she fell asleep in my arms I felt needed, but not really appreciated for anything other than my capacity to satisfy hunger.

Then she was weaned. Now, when she crawled into my lap it was for relationship and comfort and intimacy. I understood God’s delight at the psalmist’s words, “Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child rests against his mother, my soul is like a weaned child within me.”

In Psalm 131, the Psalmist pictures himself having the kind of intimacy with God that a weaned child has as it cuddles up on its mother’s lap. That intimacy comes after the child has been fed and has moved on from milk to solid food.

So, the picture that we gain from all these descriptions is of God’s love as the love of a mother for her child is that of God wanting to bring us into a place where we feel safe alongside her, where we know the comfort of being fed and therefore grow from the basics of the faith (the milk) to the depths of the faith (the solid food).

Do you experience the love of God in these ways? Have you thought, like Hannah Whitall Smith, that if we can find deep joy in our children, what must God, with his infinite heart of love, feel towards us? God loves you like a mother loves her child. As we pray and study the scriptures during Lent, God wants to take us into a deeper relationship with him and at the heart of that relationship is his infinite heart of love beating with the kind of love which mother’s commonly show towards their children. May we open up our lives and hearts to receive that love and enter in to that depth of relationship!

There are two final points it is worth us noting. As we have already said, we commonly speak about God as male and yet the scriptures do use, as we have seen, female imagery of God. Interestingly, not just in terms of the mother heart of God, but wisdom and Spirit in particular are often feminine terms. This is of real significance in understanding that women and men are valued equally by God and were created by God to be equal.

Secondly, all talk about God as male and female, Father or Mother, is ultimately only descriptive language. God is always more than any label or image we use to help us understand him. Ultimately, God is Spirit and neither exclusively male or female. It is great to think of God as a loving Father or a loving Mother because those images help us understand and grasp something of the reality and significance of his love but God’s love is always greater and deeper than the love that we have experienced even from the most loving of parents.

It is that depth of love into which God wishes to draw us. So I say again, As we pray and study the scriptures during Lent, God wants to take us into that deeper relationship and at the heart of that relationship is an infinite heart of love beating with the kind of love which mother’s commonly show towards their children. May we open up our lives and hearts to receive that love and enter in to that depth of relationship!

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Larry Norman - Strong Love, Strange Peace.

Airbrushed from Art History: Henk Krijger

Henk Krijger was part of two significant art networks:

"Krijger was not alone in his criticisms of the Reformed tradition. During the summer of 1935 he met the christian poet Hein de Bruin. This man, too, felt a burden on his heart for the christian community of which he was a member. This community choked the life out its artistic members with theological debate and with demands for dogmatic orthodoxy. These two men were not alone as christian artists. They in turn were part of a larger group, a group of christian writers, W.G. van der Hulst, Anne de Vries, and Jan H. de Groot. Since the early nineteen hundreds there had been a christian writers association. Within this group there was much debate about the nature of christian art, the possibility of a christian artistic style, and the relationship between the christian artist, the church, and the world. Those who maintained the antithesis [that Christians were to cultivate a lifestyle of their own] said there should be a christian style and, of course, those who disagreed claimed otherwise ...

Following the war Krijger joined the christian writers association. As member of the association he wrote short stories, reviews of art exhibitions and essays for their journal, Ontmoeting. He also published a novel entitled De Witte Duiven. in the visual arts he worked freelance and as a bookdesigner. As bookdesigner he won several prizes for his outstanding work."

"September 1969 the Institute for Christian Art opened in Chicago, Illinois not as an art school but as an organisation that brought trained or accomplished artists together under a master-artist to work christianly in the arts. This arrangement was modelled along the lines of a medieval guild. It was thought that a workshop would facilitate a communal effort in the arts which was considered vital if a christian artistic presence was to be attained in a predominantly secular culture ...

When Henk Krijger was approached by Calvin Seerveld and Mary Steenland, he ... wanted to do 'free art,' unencumbered by patrons and the limits of commissions. The Institute of Christian Art offered [this] opportunity ...

Speaking out of his Dutch Calvinist upbringing, Henk Krijger believed that art was done in the service of God and His Kingdom, but he was not dogmatic about its content. It certainly was not limited to scenes from the Bible nor was it to be primarily dogmatically correct. It was to be good art; art that was informed by the formal elements and principles that govern the production of art. Therefore, according to Krijger, the christian artist was to be a competent craftsman; a craftsman who did not just copy the natural world (for that was plagiarizing God's work) but who created works of imagination."

"In the summer 1971 the Institute of Christian Art moved ... to downtown Toronto, Canada. A core of young artists moved with Henk to studios set up in a basement on Richmond Street, and with the indefatigable efforts of Willem Hart they became Patmos Workshop and Gallery ... [Krijger] followed up the major painting of The Annunciation (1971) with other works truly worthy of the name "Patmos" - visionary, troubled, complicatedly in the world but not of it."

"Krijger's art making demonstrates specific directives helpful for developing young artists. First, as a pre-war modern man, Krijger understood and worked within his location in history. His choice of a modern expressionistic form provided the format for his visual discussion of creation. Second, a play of the imagination permeates Krijger's artistry. His emphasis upon the intuitive and the emotive allowed his imagination to inventively conceive imagery as we observe, for example, in the works That night the moon was completely different (1970) and the Apocalyptic fluteplayer (1971). And third, he understood well the struggle of the Christian who saw his calling to be that of artist. He served God in his art making. Tragically, he enjoyed neither the strong support of his christian community nor the support of those in his contemporary artistic environment."

(Jan De Bree, Calvin Seervald and Mary Leigh Morbey in Hommage á Senggih: A Retrospective of Henk Krijger in North America)

Artists exhibiting at the Patmos Gallery have included: Larry Ackerman, David Alexander, Nancy de Boni, Anne Boyle, Klaas Hart, Willem Hart, Janis Pozzi-Johnson, Edward Kellogg, Edward Knippers, Jake Mol, Chris Stoffel Overvoorde, Wayne Peterson, Theodore Prescott, Jack S. Vander Wal.

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Bill Fay - Be Not So Fearful.

A quest for spiritual freedom

My latest exhibition review will be in tomorrow's Church Times:

"Our arts coverage features a Polish painter, Maciej Hoffman, engaged in a quest for spiritual freedom, having experienced the ups and downs of communism and capitalism and found them wanting."

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Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?