tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80136693813913046352024-03-05T22:55:30.144+00:00Heaven in ordinarieA religion and culture blog; exploring the numinous in everyday life.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-15854788937953310382014-05-06T21:20:00.001+01:002014-05-06T21:29:26.873+01:00Three Voices: Anna, Mary, Mary<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anna</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I waited. How I waited. But he seemed to grow more distant,
and there were so many things in the way … in my way.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Every day I pushed my way through the market place, through
all that noise … of animals and birds, the cries of exchange rates and deals to
be done, through the haggling and the arguments. Under the eyes of the
soldiers; watching … always watching from their tower. Past the colonnades,
the courtyards, the treasury boxes, the lampstands, into what should have been
my place. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">And oh yes, even there I heard the whispers – the gossiping voices, pitying, scorning
voices – “Not as good”, “Not from one of the tribes God chose to return” – as
though I was still an exile even in God’s house.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There were times they listened, though: “The word of the Lord
came to Anna the prophetess…” But there were other times when no word
came, and they wandered away, not interested, bored by the repetition – the
wicked, the adulterous, always looking for a sign.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Lord, my God, though, he was always there. Somewhere …
somewhere beyond the crowds of men, the huddles of priests, somewhere behind
that curtain. Sometimes seeming too remote, too silent, even for me to
feel his presence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">I came each day. No son to care for me since my husband
died – no Sarah’s blessing, no Hannah’s blessing for me. No
daughter-in-law to scold; no grandchildren to chide. </span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Just my time here. Just my time, each day pushing my way
as close to God as I was allowed. My eyes straining through the lamplight
and the night vigils. Peering over heads – glimpsing doors and arches, altars,
flickering candles, shadows, and the endless stream of worshippers. My
sight dimming with the years of waiting – a generation, a whole lifetime of waiting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then … I did see … something. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A child. A baby. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One
child and his parents. One child among many children – his parents one
couple among so many who came through the years to the Temple bringing their
beautiful babies, their offerings, their prayers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">And
at that moment it was as though all those years – all those obstacles, all the
heartache – had fallen away. It was as though, after years of asking and
seeking … and not seeing … I was finally gazing on all the beauty of the Lord
in the temple where I’d spent a lifetime waiting for him.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mary</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When I stop, my hands throb and become all of me. I stop.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I look at my hands in my lap – palm up. They are rough from the grindstone, tiny
hairs scorched and withered by the fire.
The joints ache – it’s worse at dawn and dusk in the cold. They are red and swollen from washing. I rub oil into them sometimes – oil for the
lamps that I fill, the wicks I trim, the bread that I bake. But they still throb – this is the echo of
work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am not good at being still. I only set one thing down to pick up
something else; even as the light slowly fades my eyes strain to stich, to
mend. My hands throb – I look at my
hands in my lap – they twitch for the work they long to do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sometimes the men in the village tell stories – stories of
men hiding in the hills or the wilderness; stories of fighting one foreign army
after another. But my hands carry the
memories of my own battles – moth, rust, decay – a house that wants to fall
down, clothes that will not last another summer’s harvest, a sick brother whose
body was hurtling towards death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There were different hands.
Hands that took the jug from mine.
Hands stilling my hands. Hands
leading me to the shade of our doorway.
Hands that had been subdued by work: axe, hammer, nails. I looked at his still hands. I looked at his hands and sat at his
feet. I sat at his feet and
listened. And for a time there was no
time. My world shrank to his words as my
hands lay still in my lap. There I was:
dwelling in his presence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--------------------<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Until my sister’s voice called my hands back – called me
back to bread-making, and fire tending; to lamp-filling. To sweeping, and stitching, and soothing the
sick. But he spoke over that battle –
that, just once, it was necessary for my hands to be still.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And these things are changed now. There is life in the bread that I bake; light
for the world in the lamps that I fill; resurrection hope for the hands in my
lap subdued by my work, and now by my age.
Here I am: dwelling in his presence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mary</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I think it was his feet that I was aware of first; his feet
that brought him to my sea-side town. I
must have been in the dust – I was always wrestling in those days – the claws
that crept under my hair – the seven voices – speaking as one, speaking as seven. I was always tormented in those days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I remember his forearms, the muscles hard, sinews tense as
he wrestled with me, fought for me. The
voices screaming blasphemies, calling up curses, and the sound of his name
caught up and fighting with their words.
Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And then it was over.
And then I felt such peace. Peace
like a house swept clean and tidy. Peace
like a house awaiting a guest. And he
was my guest. And now there was just one
voice inside me – his voice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What else could I do?
I followed. We followed – 12
disciples, a handful of women. All empty
or emptied – all strangely filled. We
were all following his feet – up and down the rounds, round the lake-shore,
villages and towns without number. We
were with him as he emptied and filled, emptied and filled.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And then I was aware of his feet again. I could barely see them for my tears and his
blood. They were all I could see. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face –
barely recognisable as it was. And for
the first time those feet were still. No
more walking, no more following. His
feet still as stone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was afraid. Out
there, in the darkness, I could almost hear those voices again. My ears strained, I trembled and flinched at
the slightest sound. And we waited. Wept and waited.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And so I went. I went
creeping my way through the darkness and the faintest glimmer of dawn. And found his body gone. I could have howled. Just when he’d stopped moving – he was gone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And then he was back.
I heard my name again – Mary – and I clung onto him, desperate to stop
him moving, desperate that he should stay.
But ever so gently he left. And
now I was the one moving, my heart full of his aliveness. I’ve never stopped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">He is with me, constantly, filling my empty house. Gone but not gone. Moving me – moving you?</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-51221792322816864992012-02-14T12:34:00.001+00:002012-02-14T12:34:34.528+00:00The Gospel of John in Pictures: John 2: Jesus and the money-changers<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Thanks to the BBC/Public Catalogue Foundation </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Your Paintings</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> project for Stanley Spencer's painting </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/christ-overturning-the-money-changers-tables-27344" target="_blank"><em><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Christ overturning the Money Changers' tables</span></em></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> (1921)<em>. </em>This episode is recorded at the <em>start</em> of John's gospel: Jesus goes to Jerusalem in time for the Jewish festival of Passover. Angered by the sale of animals for sacrifice, and the <em>bureaux de change </em>of those trading Roman (and therefore 'idolotrous') coinage for temple-money, Jesus drives out the animals with a whip, and overturns the tables of the money changers (</span><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+2&version=NIV" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">John 2:13-25</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">). A similar/the same episode* is recorded much later in Jesus' life in other Gospels.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Now I don't know whether Spencer's painting was specifically intended to depict this episode as recorded in John's gospel but given that it was originally </span><a href="http://www.kwantes.com/SSG%20website/collection/christoverturningthetables.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">intended</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> as a panel for a triptych, perhaps this picture does demand interpreting symbolically. John's commentary on this episode is that Jesus justifies his behaviour in terms of his own death and resurrection. And perhaps there are echoes of this in Spencer's painting: the picture flattens out the figure of Jesus and the overturning table and in doing so strips this of the physical action from the story; it become formal and stylised, and so becomes more of an icon, an image of religious devotion. The table is blood-red, after all. Does the size of the table, and the darkening archway beyond create a shadow of a garden tomb blocked by a heavy stone across the doorway, and does Jesus' plain white robe demand something of a shroud in our eyes?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">So I'm left with an image that owes most to John's telling of the story - with its symbolic interpretation as a sign of Jesus' death and resurrection, and an delicious ambiguity as an object of devotion: here is an image challenging the systems and traditions which can cluster around religious belief and practice whilst at the same time (as an altarpiece) being one too.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">* a debate for discussion elsewhere!</span>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-76873739747018528772012-02-01T13:01:00.002+00:002012-02-14T12:33:22.294+00:00The Gospel of John in Pictures: John 5 - John the Baptist<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274501;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Puvis De Chavannes' painting, <i><a href="http://mimsy.bham.ac.uk/detail.php?t=objects&type=all&f=&s=baptist&record=7" target="_blank">The Beheading of John the Baptist</a> </i>ostensibly portrays the end of John's life as recorded in both Matthew 14 and Mark 6 where Herod, having held John in prison for some time, gives in to a request from Herodias' daughter Salome at a banquet and has John the Baptist beheaded.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274501;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274501;">But perhaps the painting takes its symbology from elsewhere. The details of the narrative are there, but the scene imagined. Salome waits with the plate, the executioner is captured in all his physicality as he swings the sword to strike. And John, John is there transcending the moment. His stare is elsewhere - directed towards us. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274501;">His head, surrounded by a halo, gives us the clue as to the other narrative reference - intended or otherwise. In John's gospel Jesus says: </span><span class="Apple-style-span">"John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light." And so as the sword arches towards the illuminated head of John the Baptist we have, captured in a visual moment, the extinguishing of John's light as commented upon by Jesus. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The bitterest irony of both the comment, and its visual representation, is that Herod is specifically named as one who 'chose for a time to enjoy his light': 'Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.' (Mark 6:20) And so the painting telescopes too Herod's fascination, and termination, of the 'light' of John the Baptist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Finally, the painting depicts the end of John's life but by depicting John in the clothes he wore at the beginning of his preaching: 'John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist.' (Matthew 3:4) this picture takes us back to the start of his life. And John's clothes reach back farther into the past than that: they are the clothes which the Old Testament prophet Elijah wore (</span><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+1:7-9&version=NIV" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">see 2 Kings 1:8</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">), a prophet whom Jesus explicitly identifies with John (see </span><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+11&version=NIV" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Matthew 11:13</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Malachi+4:5&version=NIV" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Malachi 4:5</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">So this image encompasses the whole of John's life, and his past as viewed prophetically by Jesus, and in his posture - h<span style="color: #274501;">is hands open in acceptance, his pose echoing so many of those images of Jesus himself at the point of trial and execution - this points forward to another execution too. As Herod himself is reported to have said of Jesus, after the execution of John the Baptist: </span><span style="color: black;">“This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead! That is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” (Matthew 14:2)</span></span>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-80673801552423808072011-12-23T21:10:00.006+00:002012-01-27T22:51:09.785+00:00The Gospel of John in Pictures: John 1: NathanaelI <a href="http://heaveninordinarie.blogspot.com/2011/07/encounters-story-telling.html" target="_blank">started writing</a> about images depicting episodes from John's Gospel much earlier in the year. Here is another. Mark Cazalet's <em><a href="http://www.methodist.org.uk/static/artcollection/image3.htm" target="_blank">Nathaniel (asleep under the fig tree)</a></em>* does and doesn't portray a visionary moment from John. Philip, already a disciple of Jesus, persuades Nathanael to come with him to meet Jesus:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false. <br />
How do you know me? Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig-tree before Philip called you. <br />
Then Nathanael declared, Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel. <br />
Jesus said, You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig-tree. You shall see greater things than that. <br />
He then added, I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. <em>John 1:47-51</em></blockquote>Unlike Cazalet's painting the narrative doesn't suggest that Nathanael was asleep but perhaps what Cazalet's image <i>is</i> doing is intensifying and compressing into a single 'moment' some of the allusions already playing out in the narrative. Jesus' statement about 'the angels of God ascending and descending' sends his readers back to Genesis 28:10-22 and Jacob's dream at Bethel of a stairway to heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it; in John's gospel Jesus himself is the stairway to heaven. And perhaps by depicting Nathanael as asleep under the fig-tree, Cazalet gives us a visual reminder of sleeping Jacob, where the text of the gospel gives us a written one.<br />
<br />
<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">* The conditions of use of the <span class="headtitle"><span style="color: #003366;"><a href="http://www.methodist.org.uk/static/artcollection/index.htm">The Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art</a></span></span> mean that I can't use the image directly within this blog but I hope that you'll follow the link and appreciate both this painting, and the many other beautiful things in the collection.</span></em>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-38319379839338456872011-12-22T19:55:00.001+00:002011-12-22T19:56:33.749+00:00At the End of the Year<blockquote class="tr_bq">As this year draws to its end,<br />
We give thanks for the gifts it brought<br />
And how they became inlaid within<br />
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.</blockquote><em>from John O'Donohue, 'At the End of the Year', with thanks to </em><a href="http://vignettescameossnippets.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">TBH</a>.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-3218392475281838962011-09-09T13:05:00.001+01:002011-09-09T13:05:39.577+01:00'Seeing' religious artSome interesting discussion on <em>The Guardian's </em><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief?INTCMP=SRCH">Cif Belief</a> pages at the moment responding to the question <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/sep/05/religious-art-faith">'Do we need faith to see religious art?'</a> Here's a brief quote from Catherine Pepinster's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/sep/07/transcendental-religious-art">response</a>:<br />
<blockquote>Is [religious art] really appreciated by those who don't believe? Can they fully understand it, indeed conceive of these other minds in another time and place where faith held sway?<br />
<br />
That must depend on the extent to which the viewer can accept the possibility of the divine, or the existence of the religious impulse. I suspect that there is a growing tendency, for all Richard Dawkins's efforts, for people to accept that there is such an impulse. </blockquote>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-25335577376234895832011-08-19T10:50:00.000+01:002011-08-19T10:50:36.713+01:00DoomHolidaying friends brought me back a postcard of The Wenhaston Doom, a C16 painting of resurrection and judgement:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9XxEUPL2sRkaum_ydaGgHqVwGaxhUzVUyWuGrsHOng6fpNdcNZCiw2BVu9qrSkQde-wBkkfiJUNRS00GSe1miRIns-U6Qy1e_sXkTlbjfKyyrqSuWmhmWlG8osfPd6wLnmyJ1Xiovl2Ga/s1600/thedoom600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205px" naa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9XxEUPL2sRkaum_ydaGgHqVwGaxhUzVUyWuGrsHOng6fpNdcNZCiw2BVu9qrSkQde-wBkkfiJUNRS00GSe1miRIns-U6Qy1e_sXkTlbjfKyyrqSuWmhmWlG8osfPd6wLnmyJ1Xiovl2Ga/s320/thedoom600.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><br />
Other people have <a href="http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/wenhaston.html">written more knowledgeably</a> about how this time-capsule from our mediaeval ancestors survived the protestant iconoclasm of the C17 under a coat of whitewash, emerging after a rainy night on a later restoration project to speak to us so eloquently of ways of thinking and worship now irrevocably lost. My interest is in how this piece of art brings both a future, and the spiritual, into our present. <br />
<br />
It's a curious piece of social commentary that the rich - king & queen, cardinal and pope - are shown at the centre of the picture being welcomed into heaven. The message from the painting to its mediaeval audience seems clear: those of high social status are righteous, and will inherit an eternal reward. This view is supported by the Bible text beneath the picture from Romans 13:1-4<br />
<blockquote>Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.</blockquote>But perhaps the painting's message is more complex. The four rich people are all naked, apart from their identifying headwear; under the trappings of prosperity, all humans are equal. In its own time, and perhaps in ours too, a salutory reminder to those of us insulated from human suffering by prosperity and social status often derived from education or profession of how fragile these things are, and ultimately how meaningless. For our society, increasingly divided by disparities between rich and poor, this painting reminds us of some essential equalities. <br />
<br />
Also interesting is how this painting externalises the consequences of how lives are lived. Human beings are notoriously bad at evaluating the future consequences of present actions; in one of my past roles this was called 'optimism bias'. There is no optimism bias in this picture, no hope of 'getting away with' a life lived with no understanding of the consequences of injustice commited in the present, no comfort that things will work out with our best interests preserved.<br />
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However warm the promised punishment for the wicked, this painting could just be viewed as cold comfort for those who suffer(ed) an impoverished present. A future heavenly reward for the 'good' and a future hellish punishment for the 'bad' might offer the comfort of a changed perspective on current circumstances but little else of present benefit. You can't eat this painting or its vision. Material comfort came, and comes, not just from the painting itself but from the response it tries to provoke in those who I think are the real targets of its message.<br />
<br />
This portrayl of judgement as a single point in the future should remind us, as perhaps it reminded those who saw this before it was hidden away, of the very real needs of our world and the ability of our actions now to influence this. By bringing a future into our present, along with a spiritual dimension to our present lives, this painting reminds us of how far a response to its message of essential human equality could carry, with all its consequences of good towards those without a crown or a cardinal's beretta.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-85100062791542516462011-07-28T12:42:00.000+01:002011-07-28T12:42:15.078+01:00Encounters: story-telling.Recently I've been thinking about story-telling in the last two chapters of John's Gospel, which strips out the 'cast' that populates the stories of Jesus' resurrection in the synoptic gospels to tell the story from the perspective of individual encounters between Mary Magdalene, John, Thomas and Peter, and the absent/present figure of Jesus. Some paintings of some of these episodes help. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsR4hLx-A-9WMLt1tb_xhb6XyPeIVq0qePBQxFOHuBo4mnE4gjBjz5AjVNDT5_Bv1_FgKIpHYmkf0qk_oH7IHm0pcBWEuapXpdlDY8N3It_A4d7mUUupAbLRYGHXUFUeCSQox9S9t2gynU/s1600/Lavinia+Fontana%252C+Jesus+Appears+to+Mary+Magdalene.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsR4hLx-A-9WMLt1tb_xhb6XyPeIVq0qePBQxFOHuBo4mnE4gjBjz5AjVNDT5_Bv1_FgKIpHYmkf0qk_oH7IHm0pcBWEuapXpdlDY8N3It_A4d7mUUupAbLRYGHXUFUeCSQox9S9t2gynU/s200/Lavinia+Fontana%252C+Jesus+Appears+to+Mary+Magdalene.jpg" t8="true" width="164px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="Body" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt 18pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Lavinia Fontana, Christ appears to Mary Magdalene c.1581</span></span></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Fontana's painting gives us Mary's encounter from her perspective. Mary arrives at the tomb to find the body of Jesus missing: 'she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, <span class="woj">“Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Th</span>inking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”' (John 20:14-15) In the narrative, Jesus is not dressed as a gardener, only mistaken for one; the painting takes us into Mary's world-view and her split-second moment of mis-identification.<br />
<br />
In John's resurrection narrative Thomas is absent when Jesus' other disciples <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEvoIbISOlsoxQaKdlhDlan6jvAffR4L2YtAoRuNsJXLTsz6NmQQyMuzz406JJz2urQGHLkA5qyvD9vRrBV52OCl20aUYMVSSpxkKXPgdDCHBR2M6mJoSatC9V-qE8_W9ylBaPdg4IRSES/s1600/Caravaggio%252C+The+Incredulity+of+Saint+Thomas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="146px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEvoIbISOlsoxQaKdlhDlan6jvAffR4L2YtAoRuNsJXLTsz6NmQQyMuzz406JJz2urQGHLkA5qyvD9vRrBV52OCl20aUYMVSSpxkKXPgdDCHBR2M6mJoSatC9V-qE8_W9ylBaPdg4IRSES/s200/Caravaggio%252C+The+Incredulity+of+Saint+Thomas.jpg" t8="true" width="200px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="Body" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt 18pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span lang="EN-GB">Caravaggio, The Incredulity of </span><city><place><span lang="EN-GB">Saint Thomas</span></place></city><span lang="EN-GB"> c. 1601-1602</span></span></span></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table>see him, refusing to believe their story: "“Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” A week later, Jesus appears again, inviting Thomas: “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” (John 20:25,27). Caravaggio's picture shows this curiosity pushed to its limits. As with Fontana's picture, so with Caravaggio, the artist imagines his way beyond the details of the story. There is no indication that Thomas took Jesus up on his offer but it's clear that it's Thomas' searching doubt which becomes the focus of the picture, clear from the intensity of the gaze of the three disciples and the glow of the painting's light upon their curious faces. Only Jesus remains fully in shadow: is he the least known? The least knowable? Whilst his hands accept Thomas' investigation perhaps the shadow across his face implies that in the narrative of the painting, Jesus cannot be known by this investigation. A visual depiction perhaps of Jesus' subsequent words to Thomas: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” <br />
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Following Jesus' encounters with Mary, and Thomas, the story continues with Jesus appearing to Peter and six other disciples, who are out on a fishing trip on Galilee. Duccio's painting is itself a commentary on different ways of story-telling through painting. The 'realistic' expressions on the faces of the disciples in a <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-2tnC7JQnXWHE8-7jwsNxn7TAMQHF63Q78XCH17UwloGBixw0470qU2T8ZOIQyhihBojwHoyXQiXyY7Fnl-E26lUn2zD0hwXd2r6S3ddx5wU1m0h94J4RyXJXS6vRQSe06sdmifbUR659/s1600/Duccio%252C+Christ%2527s+appearance+on+Lake+Tiberias.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-2tnC7JQnXWHE8-7jwsNxn7TAMQHF63Q78XCH17UwloGBixw0470qU2T8ZOIQyhihBojwHoyXQiXyY7Fnl-E26lUn2zD0hwXd2r6S3ddx5wU1m0h94J4RyXJXS6vRQSe06sdmifbUR659/s320/Duccio%252C+Christ%2527s+appearance+on+Lake+Tiberias.jpg" t8="true" width="320px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="Body" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt 18pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span lang="EN-GB">Duccio, Christ’s appearance on </span><place><span lang="EN-GB">Lake Tiberias</span></place><span lang="EN-GB"> 1308-11 (Maesta Altarpiece)</span></span></span></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table>painting whose composition is so stylised betray a shift away from an earlier style of painting which followed conventions about the portrayal of sacred things to allow pictures to act as 'signs' (icons) - directing their viewers towards sacred things. For me this is a shift towards painting the sacred in terms of the everyday of the painter. Just as Fontana gives us Mary's reality from John's story of Jesus' resurrection, so Duccio also uses his 'reality' to bring the sacred into the world we know; heaven in ordinarie.<br />
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<em>With grateful thanks to my 'picture researcher', Sonia Mundey.</em><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-55092898245392684532011-06-01T20:09:00.000+01:002011-06-01T20:09:17.892+01:00Something understoodA happy conjunction between gifts and experiences shared with close friends in this quote from Pete Rollin's book <em>The Orthodox Heretic</em>. Whilst it speaks directly of a specific kind of activity, this could equally be broadened out to describe something of religious experience more widely - 'something understood' in the terms of the <a href="http://heaveninordinarie.blogspot.com/2010/11/meeting-god-in-pub.html">poem</a> from which this blog takes its inspiration:<br />
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<blockquote>In academic life the <em>said </em>is often privileged over the <em>saying</em>. What is important is that meaning is communicated and, as such, the way it is communicated is important only insomuch as it gets the meaning across. Yet there are forms of communication that give emphasis to the saying over and above the said. </blockquote><blockquote>An interesting example of this can be seen at work in the music of Sigur Ros, a band from Iceland that employs what they call “Vonlenska” (or “Hopelandic”) in many of their songs. “Vonlenska” sounds like a language, however it lacks consistent grammar, logical structure, meaningful syllables, and often even discrete words. When a song is sung in Vonlenska, the words that you hear do not “mean” anything; nothing is said in their saying. Yet the saying itself invites a change in the sensitive listener. In contemplating the music, one touches upon a deep resorvoir of emotion that emanates from the song. This mode of “communication” is similar to what we see taking place between an infant and its parents. The grammatical nonsense that is communicated by the infant to the parent and by the parent to the infant is a discourse in which nothing is said, but a connection is established or deepened.<br />
<br />
When we are facing difficult situations is it not true that the pastoral act is not one that offers some explanation for the suffering (the said) but rather is found in the act of who who offers presence to the other in the form of words and gestures (the saying)? Here it is not an explanation that brings healing and comfort, but rather the fact that someone is interacting with us, the fact that someone loves us and stands with us…<br />
<br />
…This is pastoral care at its most luminous.</blockquote>I'd broaden this out, to argue that to describe this change, brought about by ordinary things - in this case - listening to music, is to describe religious experience itself.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-89791847976681153472011-03-17T16:34:00.000+00:002011-03-17T16:34:00.578+00:00Prayer PlacesI'm a great admirer of the work of Tom Hunter whose beautiful photographs I first met through his <a href="http://www.tomhunter.org/html/lh_01.htm">Living in Hell</a> series. Re-discovering him this week I've found his <a href="http://www.tomhunter.org/html/pp_01.htm">Prayer Places</a> works - in the light of current conversations about the nature of church such as my <a href="http://heaveninordinarie.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-is-your-religion.html">previous posting</a>, I think these are worth contemplating in the light of Magdalene Keaney's commentary:<br />
<blockquote>[Tom Hunter's photographs] also make me think about what a church is. How do they exist outside ritual, once a congregation, the community that defines and activates them, have left? Or perhaps they are not empty after all.</blockquote>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-77492405235871950502011-03-10T15:46:00.000+00:002011-03-10T15:46:21.455+00:00What is your Religion?Discussion over the question in the 2011 Census: 'What is your Religion?', with arguments that this is a leading question which actively encourages people to tick a religious answer, have reminded me of this piece of dialogue regarding market research methods from the TV comedy Yes (Prime) Minister:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Yes or no?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Is that really what they do?"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result."<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "How?"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"<br />
<strong>Bernard Woolley</strong>: "Yes"<br />
<strong>Sir Humphrey</strong>: "There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample."</blockquote>There are more serious questions at stake - does a leading question lead to artifically inflated numbers of religious people in the UK, in turn create an unfair bias towards religous groups in the allocation of public services? I suspect humanists and fundamentalists* alike might welcome a rooting out of 'true' as opposed to 'nominal' religous believers.<br />
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Whilst 'What would Jesus do?' is one of my own least favourite questions, closely followed by 'What would Jesus think?' I'm left wondering how this concern over religious identity squares with someone whose recorded teaching seems to resist the identification of following his teaching with membership of a religious organisation. Jesus' teaching in the Gospels only explicitly mentions 'church' twice (Matthew 16:18; 18:15) and on both occasions what seems to be in mind is a much looser 'meeting' or 'congregation' of similarly commited people than a monolithic institution. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*I'm using this word very precisely.</span>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-85659939065858657892011-02-15T13:34:00.000+00:002011-02-15T13:34:09.769+00:00Lily Allen and the BishopThe <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-12274525">suggestion</a> by the Bishop of Sheffield that Lily Allen's song 'The Fear' makes useful accompanying listening for a Bible-study course speaks into a 2,000 year old debate about Christians' attempts to ventriloquise secular or non-Christian cultural sources into speaking on matters of their faith. <br />
<br />
Paul famously tried this in a soap-box moment at the Aeropagus in Athens, quoting both Cretan philosopher Epimenides and the Cilician Stoic philosopher Aratus as speaking of the God known by Paul as a disciple of Jesus (Acts 17:28). The narrative in Acts then takes Paul from Athens to Corinth, and there's the implication in one of the letters that Paul wrote to the church there that he'd reflected on the preaching technique used in Athens and (perhaps) rejected it as ineffectual:<br />
<blockquote>When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. (1 Corinthians 1:1-5)</blockquote>Strictly speaking, the use of the song in the course is not because it consciously articulates Christian doctrine but rather (says the Bishop) because it captures "something of the spirit of the age", and Lily Allen has <a href="http://www.nme.com/news/lily-allen/54694">endorsed</a> its use in this way. <br />
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I'd have no blog if I didn't think that cultural artifacts spoke both into, and from, religious experience but it leaves me wondering about an uncritical approach to this, or at least to an attitude that would view such approaches with great skepticism.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-4966854188659216952011-02-02T09:09:00.000+00:002011-02-02T09:09:19.481+00:00Defying GravityI think my love of words is becoming apparent. I hope it's just a harmless eccentricity, albeit one bordering on the pretentious (numinous? I mean, really?). Much of this has to do with ambiguity, and the ability of a single word to carry multiple, and sometimes contradictory meanings. The coining of new meanings creates new places for the imagination to play. <br />
<br />
'Gravity' is one of these words: first used in English in figurative senses, as in the quality of being grave or serious, its use in the physical (scientific) sense only came in the seventeenth century as in 'the attractive force by which all bodies tend to move towards the centre of the earth'.<br />
<br />
In an imaginative space, the force becomes a metaphor for serious things, a (un)happy carrying of two sets of meanings in a single word. Some examples would be the song <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/And-Straight-On-Till-Morning/dp/B004GD51GU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1296144413&sr=8-1">'Gravity is merciless'</a>, or Roger McGough's lament for a dying friend in his poem 'Defying Gravity':<br />
<blockquote>Soon now, the man that I love (not the armful of bones)<br />
Will defy gravity. Freeing himself from the tackle<br />
He will sidestep the opposition and streak down the wing<br />
Towards a dimension as yet unimagined.<br />
<br />
Back where the strings are attached there will be a service<br />
And homage paid to the giant yo-yo. A box of left-overs<br />
Will be lowered into a space on loan from the clay.<br />
Then, weighted down, the living will walk wearily away</blockquote>Had they had access to this range of meanings the first Christians might have been happy with idea of the physical body as a 'box of leftovers' but probably less so with the idea that this was entirely dispensable. For them, there was an intimate (but difficult to define) relationship between their present experience and their belief that Jesus' <a href="http://heaveninordinarie.blogspot.com/2010/11/life-interrupted.html">resurrection</a> was an experience that they would share too: <br />
<blockquote>But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?' How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. (1 Corinthians 15:15-38)</blockquote>So a single word can both define a measurable scientific reality and yet help us explore (using something we experience constantly) the unmeasurable territory of the inexorable passage of time into the future and the time-limited reality of our own mortality. A love of words may be harmless, but it helps us in the serious business of living too, and as it's my blog, the last words on gravity are mine:<br />
<blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>Ultrasound</strong></div>I found you in my night sky<br />
Picking out your constellation<br />
Reminded by each single star<br />
Of that moment<br />
When all your future<br />
Was crammed into a point of light<br />
<br />
Coalescing towards me out of the dark<br />
You will be caught<br />
In my lifetime's gravity<br />
<br />
Until this fades<br />
And you spin away from my sky<br />
Leaving my night starless</blockquote>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-88853230769945955222011-01-26T14:25:00.000+00:002011-01-26T14:25:33.428+00:00Seen / UnseenIn spite of some of my earlier posts I'm not always a fan of 'religious' or 'Christian' art, which can often be twee, or mawkish, or both. Illustrating some of the narrative sections of the Bible can avoid some of these pitfalls, as in my posts on <a href="http://heaveninordinarie.blogspot.com/2010/11/one-of-pictures-above-my-desk-is-clive.html">Elijah</a> or the <a href="http://heaveninordinarie.blogspot.com/2011/01/insignificance-of-jesus-crucifixion.html">crucifixion of Jesus</a>, but trying to depict some of the Bible's concepts can be more challenging. Which is why I'm very fond of this photograph:<br />
<em></em><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNOAhIET53yQpEujEJW2u2agtWX_3MD_G1bXex0qaWgsAMHsZoOl5opl73W8qTKpUwKrNcnp1LADReSiOwIptogMZGbBzuaLwMMmFOllRSMkNLf4mn6dPBUwx_CE_vHTOKGMwmmh8IKDSw/s1600/5_Mystery_and_Ignorance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNOAhIET53yQpEujEJW2u2agtWX_3MD_G1bXex0qaWgsAMHsZoOl5opl73W8qTKpUwKrNcnp1LADReSiOwIptogMZGbBzuaLwMMmFOllRSMkNLf4mn6dPBUwx_CE_vHTOKGMwmmh8IKDSw/s320/5_Mystery_and_Ignorance.jpg" width="257" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">(Mary Gaston, <em>Mystery & Ignorance, </em>used with permission)</div><div align="left" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">At first glance this both disturbs and baffles, creating a puzzle as we look at it. Of course, this can and can't be read as a picture with a spiritual dimension and perhaps it's that level of uncertainty which creates the appeal for me. If there's a link between this photograph and the Bible, I find it in words Jesus speaks:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (<em>John 3:8)</em></div></blockquote>As in the picture, so in this statement, there are ways in which the unseen can become tangible, the spiritual part of our everyday lived experience.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-83685393517472953282011-01-24T15:52:00.000+00:002011-01-24T15:52:14.616+00:00A brief interlude on questions...<blockquote>though truth and falsehood be<br />
Near twins, yet truth a little elder is;<br />
Be busy to seek her; believe me this,<br />
He's not of none, nor worst, that seeks the best.<br />
To adore, or scorn an image, or protest,<br />
May all be bad; doubt wisely; in strange way<br />
To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;<br />
To sleep, or run wrong, is. On a huge hill,<br />
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will<br />
Reach her, about must and about must go,<br />
And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.<br />
Yet strive so that before age, death's twilight,<br />
Thy soul rest, for none can work in that night.<br />
To will implies delay, therefore now do;<br />
(John Donne, <em>Satire III</em>)</blockquote>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-24431569525033720722011-01-17T13:11:00.000+00:002011-01-17T13:11:10.613+00:00Zero YorkshiremenOthers will comment more eloquently on the literary merits of The King James Bible - published 400 years ago - than I can. It's true that the influence of its language has been widespread: how could the following piece of parody from the film <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/">Monty Python and the Holy Grail</a></em> be possible if the words and rhythms of the Authorised Version were not so well known:<br />
<blockquote>LAUNCELOT: We have the Holy Hand Grenade [...]<br />
ARTHUR: Consult the Book of Armaments! [...]<br />
BROTHER MAYNARD: Armaments, chapter two, verses nine to twenty-one. [...]<br />
SECOND BROTHER: And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy.' And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large chu--<br />
MAYNARD: Skip a bit, Brother.<br />
SECOND BROTHER: And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'</blockquote>The Monty Python team were also famously responsible for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Yorkshiremen_sketch"><em>Four Yorkshiremen</em></a><em> </em>sketch, but it's a source of mischevious delight to me as a 'Southerner' living in exile in the North that neither Yorkshiremen nor indeed Northerners of any description had any significant influence on the language of the King James Bible:<br />
<blockquote>[W]ith virtually no exceptions, the scholars assembled [by King James I] for the purpose of translating the Bible were based in the South of England [...] Northern forms of English made little, if any, impact on the translation. Alister McGrath <em>In The Beginning - The Story of the King James Bible</em></blockquote>Mischief aside there's an interesting feature of the language of the King James Bible which the Monty Python parody (unintentionally?) emulates, and which brings it very much into the world of this blog. The Authorised Version uses the Thou/Thee/Thy forms of address for both God speaking to people, and people speaking to God, as in the 'Lord's Prayer': Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. (Matthew 6:9)<br />
<br />
The (singular) Thou/Thee/Thy form of address had been used in Mediaeval England amongst family members; the (plural form) Ye/You/Your as a mark of respect when addressing a social superior. Whilst this distinction was slightly old-fashioned by the time the translators of the King James Version set to work it fascinates me that the translation made this familiar way of speaking to God, as though to a family member, a commonplace in our language. A relationship with transcendence might beg a respectful form of address; in the language of the King James Bible, people speak to God as though to a family member. Heaven in ordinary.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-48469520410268355482011-01-14T14:28:00.000+00:002011-01-14T14:28:09.128+00:00The insignificance of Jesus' crucifixionVisual arts relish the crucifixion of Jesus: the courtroom drama of the trials, enormous crowds, the potential for enormous crosses silhouetted against a darkening sky - there can be moments of bathos too: who can forget the portly and aging John Wayne as the centurion at the foot of the cross in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059245/"><em>The Greatest Story Ever Told</em></a> drawling "Surely this was the Son of Gaaaaaad"?<br />
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A lot of this visual drama may be mis-placed. Crucifixions were commonplace enough in the early first century. Following the death of Herod in 4 BC there were outbreaks of revolt throughout Judea. Varus, the Roman legate of Syria took two legions and brutally pacified the country, particularly in Galilee:<br />
<blockquote>Upon this, Varus sent a part of his army into the country, to seek out those that had been the authors of the revolt; and when they were discovered, he punished some of them that were most guilty, and some he dismissed: now the number of those that were crucified on this account were two thousand. (Josephus<em>, </em><a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/josephus/works/files/ant-17.htm"><em>Antiquities of the Jews 17</em></a><em>.10.10</em>)</blockquote>Commonplace, and perhaps in easy public view: "those who <em>passed by</em> hurled insults at him" (Matthew 27:39). <br />
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Odilon Redon's painting <a href="http://www.barber.org.uk/811.html"><em>The Crucifixion</em></a><em> </em>strips out much of the over-dramatisation, depicting a moment of strange everyday intimacy which would only be possible without theatrics. Mary, Jesus' mother, and his disciple John are shown by the cross in a painting of this moment:<br />
<blockquote>When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, "Woman, here is your son", and to the disciple, "Here is your mother". From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. (<em>John 19:26-27</em>)</blockquote>The picture is not prescriptive; the lack of detail both leaves space for the imagination to play but also suggests, very subtly, something other-worldly. For me this picture achieves with greater credibility something that more over-dramatic portrayals strive for but fail to deliver: the way that an ordinary public execution in a culture in which these were commonplace brought something heavenly into the lived experience of Christians. Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-39304390279021663472011-01-10T14:58:00.001+00:002011-01-14T14:39:20.220+00:00Finding Sanctuary<span id="btAsinTitle">A perceptive friend bought me a copy of Abbot Christopher Jamison's book <em><a href="http://www.findingsanctuary.org/">Finding Sanctuary: Monastic steps for Everyday Life</a> </em>as a Christmas gift. This is, and isn't, 'the book' of the BBC TV programmes <em>The Monastary</em> and <em>The Big Silence</em>. </span><br />
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The appeal of the book for me is in the way that it demonstrates the ability of ancient Christian traditions - in this case the 'Rule' (a set of practical guidelines, or 'disciplines') written by Benedict 1,500 years ago for communities of monks - to offer an antidote to what the book calls the 'busyness' of everyday life. Whilst this antidote is accessible, it is not just another consumer product, Jamison writes:<br />
<blockquote>You cannot mistreat people one moment and then find sanctuary the next. Finding the sacred space begins with the recognition of the sacred in your daily living.</blockquote>In the world of this blog this is 'heaven in ordinary' - finding the spiritual in the everyday. In other words, the benefits of religion can't easily be divorced from the practical discipline of actually living it. One of the pieces of practical advice in achieving this which particularly resonated with me, given by Benedict in the Rule and quoted in the book, is:<br />
<blockquote>You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge. Rid your heart of all deceit. Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when somebody needs your love. Bind yourself to no oath lest it prove false, but speak the truth with heart and tongue.</blockquote>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-78109694324313617242011-01-06T21:42:00.001+00:002011-01-14T14:33:44.365+00:00The Ox, and Ass, and LobsterAll sorts of animals crowd into the Nativity story, as in this piece of dialogue from the film <em>Love Actually:</em><br />
<blockquote><strong>Karen:</strong> So what's this big news, then? <br />
<strong>Daisy: </strong>[excited] We've been given our parts in the nativity play. And I'm the lobster. <br />
<strong>Karen:</strong> The lobster? <br />
<strong>Daisy: </strong>Yeah! <br />
<strong>Karen: </strong>In the nativity play? <br />
<strong>Daisy: </strong>[beaming] Yeah, *first* lobster. <br />
<strong>Karen:</strong> There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus? <br />
<strong>Daisy:</strong> Duh.</blockquote>Or in the carol <em>In the bleak midwinter:</em><br />
<blockquote>Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,<br />
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;<br />
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,<br />
The ox and ass and camel which adore.</blockquote>Or in the mediaeval Latin text <em>O magnum mysterium, </em>often set to music, and for me most memorably by Morten Lauridsen:<br />
<blockquote><div>o great mystery</div><div>and wondrous sacrament,</div><div>that animals should see the newborn Lord,</div><div>lying in a manger!</div><div>Blessed is the virgin whose womb was worthy</div><div>to bear our Lord Christ. Alleluia!</div><div>Lord, I heard your call and was afraid;</div><div>I considered your works,</div><div>and I trembled between two animals</div></blockquote><br />
Lobster, ox and ass are all missing from the narratives of the birth of Jesus in the 'canonical' gospels written by Matthew and Luke, as are any mentions of animals at all, apart from the 'flocks' watched over by the shepherds outside Bethlehem (Luke 2:8).<br />
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What interests me is the way in which the birth stories in Matthew and Luke are sparse enough to both beg, and to hold, an imaginative filling-in of details. One of these imaginative 'fillings-in', and perhaps the source for some of the more traditional animal inhabitants of the Nativity story such as the Ox and the Ass, is the 8th century Pseudo-Matthew gospel:<br />
<blockquote>And on the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary went out of the cave, and, entering a stable, placed the child in a manger, and an ox and an ass adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by the prophet Isaiah, "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib." Therefore, the animals, the ox and the ass, with him in their midst incessantly adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by Habakkuk the prophet, saying, "Between two animals you are made manifest." (Chapter 14)*</blockquote>What all these texts betray are two deep human desires. Firstly, a curiosity about the details of life of Jesus, and in particular his childhood, which the New Testament both stubbornly refuses to meet but also (strangely) prompts by allowing so many empty spaces within which the imagination can work. Secondly, a longing for the divine to be made real and understandable within the span of domestic experience; the Ox and the Ass provide the realism, the prophetic 'authority' of Isaiah and Habakkuk appear to provide a divine sanction for their inclusion - heaven in ordinary.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*The Isaiah quote is 1:3, that from Habakkuk is 3:2 but where the King James Version has 'O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of<strong> the years make known</strong>; in wrath remember mercy.' the Pseudo Matthew gospel relies on the Septuagint (LXX) which translates the words in bold as 'two living creatures'.</span>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-36565741413150897642010-12-08T09:15:00.001+00:002011-01-14T14:32:04.811+00:00A Christmas CarolRe-reading Charles' Dickens <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol"><em>A Christmas Carol</em></a><em> </em>at the moment. I've been reflecting on what sort of Christianity it reveals. In the basic 'moral' of the story, Scrooge's Zacchaeus-like (see Luke 19) conversion from "the love of money [which] is a root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6:10) to open-handed generosity, the narrator demonstrates a high regard for the New Testament's ethical teaching. <br />
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Elsewhere, there is a degree of scepticism towards some of the manifestations of institutional Christianity, as in this conversation between Scrooge and the second of the Three Spirits (the ghost of Christmas Present):<br />
<blockquote>In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker’s oven; where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.<br />
‘Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?’ asked Scrooge.<br />
‘There is. My own.’<br />
‘Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?’ asked Scrooge.<br />
‘To any kindly given. To a poor one most.’<br />
‘Why to a poor one most?’ asked Scrooge.<br />
‘Because it needs it most.’<br />
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, ‘I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment.’<br />
‘I!’ cried the Spirit.<br />
‘You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,’ said Scrooge. ‘Wouldn’t you?’<br />
‘I!’ cried the Spirit.<br />
‘You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?’ said Scrooge. ‘And it comes to the same thing.’<br />
‘I seek!’ exclaimed the Spirit.<br />
‘Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,’ said Scrooge.<br />
‘There are some upon this earth of yours,’ returned the Spirit, ‘who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.’<br />
Scrooge promised that he would; </blockquote>True Christianity, within <em>A Christmas Carol</em>,<em> </em>is found in an everyday practical care for the poor and not pious legalism, perhaps reflecting Jesus' comment: "The poor you will always have with you" (Matthew 26:11). Sunday is not kept sacred by taking away the possibility of a hot meal from the deprived. Elsewhere, there's an echo of Jesus' identification of being a Christian with care for the poor: ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40):<br />
<blockquote>‘And how did little Tim behave?’ asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.<br />
‘As good as gold,’ said Bob, ‘and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.’<br />
Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.</blockquote>So, for me, Dickens' morality tale portrays a Christianity strongly rooted in practical ethical action towards an ever-present poor - heaven in ordinary once more.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-70167802636436884492010-11-30T15:44:00.001+00:002011-01-14T14:34:54.375+00:00Life, InterruptedHistorical studies of the life of Jesus leave us with the enigma of the end of his life - that his followers believed that he had risen from the dead:<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Much about the historical Jesus will remain a mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing is more mysterious than the stories of his resurrection, which attempt to portray an experience that the authors could not themselves comprehend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the midst of mystery and uncertainty, we should remember that we know a lot about Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We know that he started under John the Baptist, that he had disciples, that he expected the 'kingdom', that he went from Galilee to <city w:st="on">Jerusalem</city>, that he did something hostile against the <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Temple</place></city>, that he was tried and crucified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally we know that after his death his followers experienced what they described as the 'resurrection': the appearance of a living but transformed person who had actually died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They believe this, they lived it, and they died for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the process they created a movement, a movement that in many ways went far beyond Jesus' message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their movement grew and spread geographically.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><strong>E.P. Sanders</strong>, <em>The Historical Figure of Jesus</em></div></blockquote></div>The early Christian communities soon began to ask their leaders how they would share in the resurrection experience of Jesus; Paul writes: 'But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”' (1 Corinthians 15:35). <br />
<br />
The artist Stanley Spencer, in paintings such as <a href="http://www.southampton.gov.uk/s-leisure/artsheritage/sotonartgallery/search/view-artwork.asp?acc_num=1383">The Resurrection with the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter</a> or <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=13675">The Resurrection, Cookham</a>, pictured this resurrection experience in terms of the every day. The dead clamber out of their tombs in much the same condition as they entered them, dressed in contemporary clothes. Life, interrupted, appears to continue on much the same terms. For Spencer, resurrection seems to be less transcendental and more part of our present, lived experience.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-48651775904570036012010-11-24T11:53:00.002+00:002011-01-14T14:35:22.631+00:00Meeting God in the pubAs I mention in 'About Me' inspiration for this blog comes from George Herbert's poem:<br />
<br />
<strong>¶ Prayer. (I)</strong> <br />
PRayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,<br />
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,<br />
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,<br />
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;<br />
<br />
Engine against th’ Almightie, sinners towre,<br />
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,<br />
The six-daies world transposing in an houre,<br />
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear;<br />
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Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,<br />
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,<br />
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,<br />
The Milkie way, the bird of Paradise,<br />
<br />
Church-bels beyond the starres heard, the souls bloud,<br />
The land of spices; something understood.<br />
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Relevant definitions of 'ordinarie' from the Oxford English Dictionary below for those who like that sort of thing. For me the point is in the potential play on words and definitions. God might be met within the fixed and unchanging worship of the Church (the ordinary of the Mass), or in the pub; eating, drinking and all the activities of daily life can also be numinous or transcendent.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">I. Rule or ordinance.<br />
3. Christian Church. A rule prescribing, or book containing, the order of divine service, esp. that of the Mass; the established order or form for saying mass; the service of the Mass, or that part preceding and following the canon. In the Roman Catholic Church (usu. with capital initial): those parts of a service, esp. the Mass, which do not vary from day to day; spec. those unvarying parts which form the mass as a musical setting (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei). Also in extended use. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">III. Something ordinary, regular, or usual.<br />
12. a. Customary fare; a regular daily meal or allowance of food; (hence, by extension) a fixed portion, an allowance of anything. Obs<br />
c. An inn, public house, tavern, etc., where meals are provided at a fixed price; the room in such a building where this type of meal is provided.</span>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-15500795048411687712010-11-18T13:35:00.001+00:002011-01-14T14:36:02.421+00:00RevelationThinking about Revelation today. <br />
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The images from John's vision echo in all sorts of contexts: from the enigmatic preacher/gun-slinger in Clint Eastwood's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089767/"><em>Pale Rider</em></a><em> -</em> 'And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death' (Revelation 6:8) to the rather less mysterious appearance of Death and the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Pollution (Pestilence having retired in 1936 following the discovery of penicillin) in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's novel <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens">Good Omens</a>.</em><br />
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David Miles' <a href="http://www.davidmiles.net/"><em>Apocalyptic Images</em></a>*<em> </em>draw on the present and everyday - including images of people he knows, such as in the picture 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' - to create representations of John's vision. Heaven is found, or represented, in ordinary things. As David Miles' writes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>Whether the reader of the Book of Revelation has, or has not, a specific understanding of this enigmatic book is, to some extent, of little importance. What is compelling is that all believers who, through subsequent generations, have encountered the book, have discovered that that which John ‘saw’ has a resonance with the times in which they themselves live.</blockquote>* Further brought to life with music and words in the presentation <a href="http://www.approachingapocalypse.com/"><em>Approaching Apocalypse</em></a>.Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8013669381391304635.post-15013811151555749462010-11-17T16:48:00.003+00:002011-01-14T14:41:32.287+00:00Heaven in ordinarieOne of the pictures above my desk is Clive Hicks-Jenkins' <em><a href="http://www.hicks-jenkins.com/prophet.html">The Prophet Fed by a Raven</a>. </em><br />
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<em></em><br />
<em></em><em></em><br />
The prophet's clothes might be yours or mine, drinking from the brook helped by a chunky mug; Elijah has become present in our time. His eyes might be closed in prayer - or is that a sideways glance down (modesty?) or inwards (reflection?) and away both from the food and the supportive raven. No black-feathered raven this: red and fiery with tail feathers which might be tongues of flame - a premonition of the chariot of fire and horses of fire which separated Elisha from Elijah, separating present from past?<br />
<br />
So, for me, the painting brings the spiritual into our present: heaven in ordinary. Which is what I hope this blog will be about.<br />
<blockquote><em>Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, "As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word."</em><br />
<br />
<em>Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: "Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there."<br />
<br />
So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. (1 Kings 17:1-6)</em></blockquote>Heaven in ordinariehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859368904770957562noreply@blogger.com0