UNKLE: War Stories
I love this album more every time I listen to it. (*****)
Tom Middleton: Lifetracks
(*****)
Fink: Distance and Time
(***)
Coldcut: Sound Mirrors
(***)
At Grace we celebrated Easter with an early morning communion service and breakfast, followed by a walk in Osterley Park for hardy souls willing to brave the snow. We created some liturgy in the service, which has become the last entry in the 2008 Grace Lent Blog. Do take a look at the Good Friday entry, And you held me, by Anna Poulson. This is the most beautiful reflection on the Passion I've read in a long while, and it's shaped my Easter.
This is the name of an interesting new resource for Lent developed by the Methodist Church. You can sign up to get daily emails with challenges to become less consumerist and more generous and fulfilled.
They have also produced a dummy credit card reminding you to think about what you purchase. Appropriately they are free, with a small charge for postage.
Over the weekend I struggled to write something on the shortcomings I see in Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali's article in the Sunday telegraph about the demise of Christian Britain and the rise of Islamic fundamentalist no-go areas. In particular I wanted to argue that Christians should celebrate and nurture the presence of all major faiths in this country, and suggest that Nazir-Ali's views seem grounded more in the persecuted churches of his native Pakistan than in Britain today.
Then I saw that the Church Times leader column has beaten me to it, and argued more cogently and concisely than I was able to. The link is free to access this week, but may require subscription afterwards.
This blog is in danger of a place where I rave about things I've done, and exhort readers to go and see them. I'll try to be a little less directive in future. But only after I've told you why you need to go and see this play...
African Snow by Murray Watts is the story of the meeting between Olaudah Equiano and John Newton. Equiano captured by slavers as a boy, and spent his life on ships, in Barbados and Britain before purchasing his freedom, writing a book of his experiences, and becoming a leading member of the abolitionist movement in Britain.
Newton was a sailor, had a Christian conversion, and then captained slave ships. In later life he became an Anglican priest and hymnwriter, came to see the slave trade as a great evil.
The play tells the story of the lives of Equiano and Newton, pivoting around the meeting between between the two men arranged by William Wilberforce. It's written and directed with great energy and panache. Israel Oyelumade is superb as Equiano, and the piece throbs with African dance and music. No punches are pulled in depicting the lot of slaves, and Newton is a suitably angst-ridden old man.
The most admirable thing about the play is that it doesn't fudge the difficulty of forgiveness. Near the end of the play, Newton asks Equiano to forgive him for his part in the slave trade, and Equiano is unable meet the man's request. A reconciliation between the two men would have made for a happy ending, but Watts resists the temptation in favour of showing how hard it can be to forgive a person. God forgave Newton, but for Newton this wasn't enough. His slave victims were too numerous, their sufferings too deep for Equiano to speak on their behalf. Forgiveness is difficult and costly. God requires it of us, but who are we to judge those who cannot rise to the task?
African Snow is on at the Trafalgar Studios in London until May 5, then on national tour, returning to London between May 29 and June 2. Details here.
Earlier this week I visited Free at Last?; an exhibition about slavery, in All Hallows by the Tower and on a ship moored in the Thames. The exhibition explores the history of the transatlantic slave trade, and about slavery and human trafficking in the world today.
The centre of the exhibition is a visit to a ship similar in design to the slaver Zong, In 1781, the Zong was embarking on the 'middle passage', taking slaves from West Africa to England. The ship was overloaded, and malnutrition and disease took their toll on slaves and crew. The captain, Sir Luke Collingwood, decided to put the remaining sick slaves overboard, in order to make an insurance claim for loss of cargo in transit. This shocking action, whilst legal in English law, contributed to public opinion turning against the slave trade, and the success of William Wilberforce's 1807 parliamentary bill.
The exhibition told a lot of stories and imparted a lot of information through poster displays, but it was a little light on historic artifacts. The ship isn't a replica of the Zong (as claimed in the publicity), but a modern construction built to a similar design. For all that, it's a bold undertaking for a Christian charity to have undertaken.
In the hold of the ship are replica manacles, and a slave berth showing that the slaves would have had more room if they were chained into a coffin. There were no toilet facilities below deck, and the conditions were unsanitary in the extreme.
While talking to one of the volunteers staffing the exhibition, I learned that the Mayor of London withdrew a significant contribution to the costs of the exhibition because of its Christian content. I tried to resist being embroiled in a Daily Mail-style conversation about all that's wrong with the Mayor, but if the story was reported to me accurately, it is sad that faith content is a bar to the mayor supporting an otherwise worthwhile initiative. Had the exhibition contained content about another world religion, I wonder if the decision would have been the same.
I had the chance recently to visit Damian Hirst's exhibition New Religion recently. It's being shown in the church of All Hallows on the Wall, which is now being used as an exhibition venue, wallspace, as well as a place of worship.
The exhibition brings medical imagery to bear on Christian themes. Hirst's Stations of the Cross are a series of screen prints of pills and medicines, as are a similar series depicting the apostles. On an altar is a silver cast of a heart, pierced with barbed wire, razor blades and hypodermic syringes. A cedar cross is encrusted not with gemstones but with pills. Next to it is a familiar memento mori, a skull, but Hirst's interpretation is the silver cast of a child's skull, with adult teeth poised to push out the milk teeth in the lower jaw. A set of beautiful, provocative objects.
For all the religious imagery, this exhibition didn't seem to be much about Christianity. I heard several people wandering around saying that Hirst must have some kind of faith, but that is to miss the point of the show. It uses the language of religion to say that it is the modern cult of medicine in which we place our trust, derive our hope, and make our meaning. I don't think the show says very much about Christianity at all, except, indirectly, that it is the 'Old Religion', superceded by the New.
'New Religion' has been previously been shown in a 'white cube' style of gallery, but a church setting heightens the tension between new and old. Hirst's objects, parodying church furnishings, demand to be taken more seriously when placed in church. I suspect that Hirst was tickled by the invitation to mount his show in a place of worship. Some might view this as a 'home goal' by the Church; he's subverted our symbols, and we've legitimated what he's doing. But I'm heartened that the Christian tradition is resilient enough to be hospitable towards Hirst's New Religion, not threatened by it. A sign, in effect, that we are not ready to be written off as Old Religion just yet.
This week I'm going to review three books for Lent, which begins tomorrow.
The first is The Shape of Living by David F. Ford. It was first published ten years ago as a Lent book chosen by the last Archbishop of Canterbury (whose forward in the latest edition has been replaced with one by Susan Howatch; make of that what you will.)
David is a professor of theology at the University of Cambridge, and has written a book that speaks about the things of everyday life. The focus of the book is the way we shape our lives in the midst of all of the forces and experiences that threaten to overwhelm us. He draws on his academic's knowledge of history, theology and Christian tradition, but uses them to offer practical wisdom as we respond to the threats and opportunities that come our way. He shows that allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by God is the best way not merely to cope with the overwhelmings of the world, but to thrive in the midst of them. Every chapter is realistic about the pain, business and emptiness of modern life, but he shows how we can turn those things to joy, stillness and riches.
An exceedingly wise, readable and practical book.
"...to concentrate on the face of Jesus Christ is to find our boundaries shifting and expanding as we slowly 'grasp what is the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ's love'. This is someone whose hospitality is universal - face by face by face. To be before his face is to find that he is looking with love on all sorts of unexpected, marginalized or to us disagreeable people, as well as on us. Wherever he is he brings them as part of his community. So we find our heart is overwhelmed in new ways by those to whom his gaze, words and actions direct us. Even more broadly, as the mention of light in darkness underlines, all creation is embraced in this love, and we are invited to look with delight and responsibility on 'the face of the earth'."
Enjoy your pancakes tonight!
On Saturday evening I took part in Grace's service Nine, based on the traditional service of nine lessons and carols, only without the carols. A different person or group took each reading, and contributed something to accompany it and a piece of music. I took the third reading, Isaiah 9:2, 6, 7), and followed it with a reflection about our attempts to tame the Christmas story, and the song wonder by Lamb. Here's the reflection;
We’re like the kid who puts her hand up to answer a question in the old Sunday School gag. She says, “I know the answer must be Jesus, but it does sound like a squirrel.”
We hear the words light and child and instantly imagine baby Jesus laying in a manger. The reading comes round every Christmas tucked between carols, and we skip over three verses in the middle of the prophecy that don’t sound so Jesusy. We can hardly imagine the wonder and longing felt by the people that first heard Isaiah’s prophecy. We know what this light is like; we’ve got it wrapped up; tighter than any present.
The people walking in darkness…
What do us city dwellers know about darkness? To us, darkness is yellow. It’s the colour of sodium street lights. It drains the world of colour but not of detail.
What would it be like to see… nothing?
To feel isolated and alone?
To live under the control of empires and powers too strong to oppose?
To long for change, but fear to hope that change is possible?
To lose confidence that God has any power to alter the world?
But darkness is also a place of concealment.
A place where we can mask our true selves.
A place to hide the things we don’t like about us.
Perhaps we know darkness after all.
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…
Ah yes, the light. We know about that! The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes. But little lord Jesus no crying he makes. But this baby is also the light of the world. The harsh light of day, penetrator of dark corners, revealer of blind spots who tramples on rose-tinted glasses and heals jaundiced eyes.
This is the light that will not be tamed, controlled or confined. We coo and cluck over the baby in the manger, and attempt to cut God down to size, and make him in our image. For what could be dangerous about a tiny child? Yet the coming light will overturn empires, rule with justice and righteousness, see into the heart of us and save the world. God was born as a boy and made his dwelling among us. That doesn’t mean that because we know babies, we know all there is to know about God.
So watch and prepare for the coming of the light. Greet the coming with joy, and also fear.
Watch and wait. Expect to be surprised. But not comfortable.
Watch and wait.
At the end of last week I went with Alex to Crosby, just north of Liverpool. It's currently home to Antony Gormley's installation Another Place. Stretched along 3km of the foreshore, the installation consists of 100 life-sized iron castings of Gormley's body.
This stretch of the coastline is remote and industrial. The docks of Liverpool give way to various bits of heavy industry. To get to the beach from the car park, you first have to follow a path around a shallow lake and through some sand dunes. We visited at low tide, so were greeted by a long expanse of brown sands giving way to mud flats and tidal shallows. Three or four people walked their dogs, but the view was dominated by metal. The tall, spinning rotors of a wind farm dominate the skyline, but at a human scale, Gormley's statues suggest stillness, attention, focus. From the sand dunes they look identical; all still, all standing straight, and all looking out to sea.
Closer inspection reveals that even if they were originally identical, they aren't now. The ones further down the beach are covered in water, and become home to barnacles and weed, while the ones at the top of the beach are streaked with rust. Crosby is the fourth home of the installation, and Gormley doesn't clean the pieces up between sites, allowing the crust of sea life to become part of the story of the work. And the work changes every day as the tide covers and reveals the figures. Gormley says,
“Each person is making it again… for some it might be about human evolution, for others it will be about death and where we go, where our bodies finally belong, do they belong to the earth and the elements? And I think that’s what’s amazing about in a way the work of now - contemporary art, it’s no longer representing the ideology of a dominant class it’s actually an open space that people can make their own.”
As I wandered around with Alex we mused on mortality and how we face death. The figures are well-separated from one another; as we contemplate the unknown, we do so alone. The temptation is to turn away, to busy ourselves with the mundane and avoid facing the sea. Death is the final taboo for us. By paying attention, these figures are prepared for the coming of the sea. They stand firm. Though they may disappear from view, their presence is not erased by the high tide. They are revealed again as the waters ebb. A hint of resurrection?
But we are at the other end of the Christian story. Advent, the time of preparation for the birth of Christ, is a time of contemplating the unknown. Of watching, waiting, expecting. Of trusting that God will save us, and preparing for his coming. For me, Another Place is a parabolic reminder of what I need to do in the coming days.
On Tuesday evening I went to the third and final event in the St. Paul's Institute event series Costing the earth? the quest for sustainability. In it Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project said this (taken from the transcript, which can be downloaded here );
...we're being peddled a world of rapid consumption, and told that the world is incredibly fast today. And I've done a test on this on my staff. I take them to the pub and I slam my fist on the table. I spill their beer and I say close your eyes. Tell me the colour of your beer. Tell me where the bubbles rise. Is it in the middle or along the side? What's the person next to you wearing? Hardly anybody except those who
are mostly silent can tell you the answer. The world's no faster than it ever was. It's just that we skate really fast over the top.
This hit me between the eyes. I don't look, listen and enjoy each moment nearly enough. Perhaps my resolution for next year should be to stop skating.
The theme that Smit and others on the panel were bringing out was that our rapacious appetite for speed is doing terrible damage to the planet. Another panellist, Satish Kumar, suggested that we need to divert our lust for economic and technological into a lust for growth in art, spirituality, poetry and ethics, and rediscover poverty as a virtue in the monastic tradition, the voluntary acceptance of limit. When he first said all this it sounded naive, but on reflection, Kumar and Smit were saying something profound, that in order to save the planet, we must change our idea of what constitutes the good life. It's relationships and time that are important, not wealth and speed.
The Bishop of London advanced the idea that we should rediscover Sunday as a day for not working, shopping or traveling. If we could stop burning carbon on Sundays, it would cut carbon emissions by a seventh. A great idea, but for most people, friends and family are too geographically distant.
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