Category: spirituality

Lancashire Low

Chris Swift1 Comment

It’s probably a phrase which means nothing to all but a few people today, but ‘Lancashire Low’ was once a term applied to the character of the worship offered in the churches of that county. I heard it first when speaking with an ‘ACCM selector’. These figures were the driving force of the Church of England’s process for selecting candidates to train for ministry. Having lived all my life in Lancashire this description came as news to me although, intuitively, I recognised what it was describing. Not high up the candle ‘bells and smells’; nor ‘happy clappy’ evangelicalism, but a fairly sober, minimalist and no-frills approach to divine service. During my childhood and adolescence, as the C of E began to experiment with new liturgies, this character was beginning to change. Perhaps most notably, the Eucharist was becoming the most central act of worship, and a variety of vestments were beginning to be used more widely.

“the Lord’s Supper is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death; it is not only a badge or token of our profession, but rather a certain sure witness and effectual sign of grace and God’s goodwill towards us, by which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in him”.

Mary Astell (1668-1731)

One of the parishes in York which I am supporting on Sundays could not be further removed from ‘Lancashire Low’. The church of St Lawrence, a few yards outside the city wall to the east, was built at the time of Catholic emancipation to offer a High Church, Book of Common Prayer, liturgy for people who might otherwise have been attracted across the Tiber. On Maundy Thursday, when the church is stripped of all adornments, the vestry overflows with the sheer quantity of vestments, candles, hangings etc. etc..

Despite the disparity between the church of my youth and this particular church, there are many interesting features in the character of St Lawrence’s. Firstly, located in an area of significant student accommodation, it counts many 18-30 year olds in its congregation. As is the manner of High Church liturgy, there are lots of ways for these young adults to get involved, for example, in the choir or serving. Perhaps in an age when choice continues to be elevated as the principal virtue, the given nature of the liturgy – its specification and detail – holds a counter-cultural appeal. Also, in a world of words, the presence of fabrics, colour, smells and bells, offers an in-person sensory experience that is welcome and appealing. All too often, when I assist at other churches, there is only the vaguest awareness of a pattern or tradition. “Wear what you like” can be the unhelpful response when I ask about the usual clergy attire for conducting the service. More often than not there are no vestments at the church or, if there are, the sets are incomplete.

Unusually, with an immense amount of hard work by dedicated laity, this church has been transformed from near-closure to become one of the better-attended churches in the city. There has been a sustained commitment to weekly Evensong on Sundays which has established a strong choral reputation and can see attendances reach a hundred. Generous gifts and successful grant applications have put the fabric of the building back into good order. None of this has been easy, not least because many students are only with the church for a few years while some, however, have decided to make York their home and continue to worship and assist at the church.

It is not possible to convey the Gospel, or help people shape and develop their religious life, without contact and engagement. Over many years the church of St Lawrence has done the hard work of building student engagement and outreach. Despite the assumption of many people that a church using the Prayer Book would be destined to failure, the opposite has been true. This is not without risks, as there can be a temptation in any tradition to see what is at hand and miss that to which it points, but you can’t get somewhere unless you start somewhere. In recent years several young men and women have entered on a journey of vocation leading to ordination. This is a church that has an ebb and flow of involvement, but it is unlikely – whatever happens in the future – that people will forget the experience of worship into which they are invited and immersed at a formative stage in their lives.

The Mystery of the Creation

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I have always found that churches and chapels in remote locations have a certain appeal. Sometimes these might be a long way away, such as the Keills Chapel, dating from the 11th century and near the village of Tayvallich on the west coast of Scotland. In other instances they are much closer at hand, like the small church at Bossall a few miles east of York. In both cases these buildings stand in relative solitude, with only a handful of houses nearby. Like the poet Philip Larkin, visiting these empty spaces of ancient significance conjures an atmosphere both melancholic and reflective. Who were the people who built this place, attended services here and, on one particular day, held their last act of weekly worship?

Having strayed into the local second hand bookshop recently, I came across a volume of selected prose by RS Thomas. In one short chapter Thomas writes about “Two Chapels”, with only one thing in common: remoteness. The first is called Maes-yr-Onnen in Radnorshire. It was August and, as the building was locked, Thomas stretched himself out on the grass and began to think about the past visitors to the chapel:

“sober men and women dressed in sober fashion. I saw them leave the sunlight for the darkness of the chapel and then heard the rustling of the Bible pages and the murmur of soft voices mingling with the wind”.

RS Thomas, Selected Prose, Ed. Sandra Anstey, 1986, Poetry Wales Press.

It was in this revery of imagination that Thomas found, like St John on Patmos, he had a vision. It was a moment when he felt he comprehended “the breadth and length and depth and height of the mystery of creation”. Yet, beyond this, Thomas was unable to put the experience into words. Reading the little he wrote about this event reminds me of the visions of Julian of Norwich. In that moment Thomas discerned that “everything is a fountain welling up endlessly from immortal God”. It feels to me as though this ancient chapel suddenly became for Thomas a dark and brimming well, replenishing with living water a world that so often becomes disenchanted and descends into cynicism. Like God, whether attended or unattended, the Chapel stood its ground and told its truth.

Out at the Church of St Botolph in Bossall, it is not difficult to share a little of the feeling Thomas encountered at Maes-yr-Onnen. It is the smallest parish in Yorkshire, built in the late 12th century, and is never open when I visit. The churchyard is overgrown and neglected, but seems to me to be none the worse for the lack of tidy graves or well-tended curb stones. What might seem to some to be a place of death is bustling with life. House martins are nesting in the eaves. A wyvern weathervane tells you from whence a gentle Yorkshire breeze is blowing. Swallows flit too and fro and, above them, swifts wheel and dive on the afternoon’s heat. Despite all our neglect of the planet, here is somewhere that time has forgotten to alter. One small red letterbox, opposite the church, is the only sign of connection to a wider network of society and even that, today, is largely unused.

RS Thomas believed strongly in the connection of people to the landscape of Wales. For him it was the case that “Here, in the soil and the dirt and the peat do we find life and heaven and hell”. To leave the land, and to live in towns and cities, was to abandon connection to the environment in which the Welsh should “forge their soul”. This may seem a romantic and unrealistic notion in 2024. However, as we have seen in recent weeks, it can hardly be said that the current society in England is one where there is peace and flourishing for all. We may not be able to have the kind of connection to the land that Thomas saw as spiritually needful, but perhaps we can make more of those places that offer a sense of spiritual location and peace. Places to stretch out, metaphorically or otherwise, and contemplate. Thankfully, almost without exception, they exist in all our communities and perhaps the call to the church in current circumstances, to quote words TS Eliot put into the mouth of Thomas Becket, is to “Unbar the doors! throw open the doors!” Most of these places are both close to communities but, remarkably, also other-worldly and distinct. They continue to have a part to play in our society but require the resources and support in order to fulfil their vocation to be at the service of all parishioners.

Lines and Labyrinths

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During our recent sojourn in Spain we visited the Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos. The exhibition currently on show comprises various works by the Swiss-born artist, Pablo Armesto. A key theme across the works is the use of light, shapes and, consequently, the implication of shadow. To quote Armesto: “Between science, geometry and spirituality, this is how I conceived this exhibition”.

This exhibition appealed to me because of the interaction of light and material surfaces. It is executed beautifully, and serves to remind us that casting a particular light can change completely the underlying structure on which the light falls – or doesn’t. In other words, by illuminating some threads rather than others the surface appearance can be changed radically. Our eyes are drawn to the light and the form it implies, not the unlit shape of everything underneath. As the commentary on the exhibition says, these are “installations in which light and shadow transform the chromatic perception of the viewer”. Here lines of light address our perception:

“The line is a metaphor for the path, both physical and allegorical, sometimes traveling parallel to the initial idea, sometimes divergent when it has to choose between different options, but never schismatic, never discordant”.

Pablo Armesto

The title for the exhibition is “Complejidad, araña, laberinto”. I think that this is best translated into English as “complexity, spider-webs, labyrinths”. This phrase comes from a poem by the Andalusian poet Rafael Alberti, entitled “a la linea” (‘To the line’). While a line may sound a modest thing to be the subject of a poem, Alberti reminds us of the joyous capacity for it to be a “beautiful expression of the different”. Certainly, in Armesto’s installations, the vibrancy of illuminated lines could not be made clearer. It reminded me of the well-known comment by the artist Paul Klee, in his Pedagogical Sketchbook of 1925, that he was engaged in “taking a line for a walk”.

A circle of light created with the use of curved lines – by Pablo Armesto

The recent work I have been doing about Laurence Sterne includes the representation of a physical gesture – the waving of a stick – in volume IX. It is nothing more than a squiggle; a pen-line dancing across the page. It is used to express the notion of liberty and is, perhaps, the representation of the neat text going ferrel. A reminder that the careful shaping of ink that allows us to see letters and to read them, is made of the same stuff as this dramatically inserted hieroglyph. Different forms of the same material may shatter our expectations and leave us wondering what will come next. Art has this capacity to subvert our smooth reading of life and question the solidity and what we see. Like Sterne, Armesto’s filaments stretch our imagination, providing an intense optical experience and stimulating our thoughts about patterns – whether they are there, or simply the imposition of our expectations on the otherwise chaotic things we behold.

Truth Stretched Thin

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I love visiting Spain and Spanish-speaking countries. Ever since spending a year in South America in my early 20s, and acquiring a feel for the language, a small part of my growing up was rooted in hispanic culture. A recent trip to Spain brought introductions to new cities, including Burgos and Alcalá de Henares. The latter visit arose from a longstanding wish to see the birthplace of Spain’s most distinguished writer, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The author of Don Quixote was born there in 1547 and it is where he spent the first four years of his life. Understandably, alongside his former home which is now a museum, the city celebrates its famous author in numerous statues, street names and public institutions. Don Quixote is considered to be the world’s first novel in the modern sense of the word.

Given the date of his birth and the febrile politics of a recently re-conquered Spain, Cervantes was born into a world in which it had been decided that the co-existence of faiths was intolerable. In 1492 the Muslims and Jews who had not converted to Christianity were expelled from Spain. Those who had converted lived amongst neighbours who, very often, sought any sign that the conversion was one of “convenience” and would report people to the authorities. This was the time when the Inquisition was in full force and those who converted were keen to appear compliant. Many years ago, while participating in a canyoning activity north of Almuñécar, in Andalusia, a young instructor accompanying us told me that his surname was the same as the name of a local village. His family’s story was that they had been Jewish and, like many of the converts who remained, they took the name of a local town in order to immerse themselves in Christian Spain and avoid suspicion. Such practices were commonplace.

There is a claim that the family name of Cervantes came from a town of that name in Galicia, and may have been taken for reasons of conversion. However, this is far from certain. The proximity of the Cervantes family’s home to the Jewish quarter of Alcalá de Henares might be a more persuasive argument for some kind of connection. Today, all that indicates the onetime presence of a synagogue and Jewish “corral”, as it was called, is a small plaque. Cervantes senior was a doctor and the family lived both opposite this old Jewish quarter and beside the city’s ancient hospital.

A statue of Don Quixote outside the house in which Cervantes spent the first four years of his life in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid

Initially, after the Reconquest, the Jewish community experienced relative security compared with other European countries. This did not endure.

“Yet Jews were still better off than their Ashkenazic brethren in the rest of Europe who were expelled from England and France and faced continuing and unrelenting pogroms and persecution in Germany and Central Europe, eventually driving them eastwards to Poland and Lithuania. The Christian rulers of Spain exploited the skills of their Jewish subjects and a thin layer of upper class Jews remained wealthy and influential. The Jewish population of Spain generally still felt comfortable there. After all, they had lived as Spaniards for many centuries. Why should the situation change now?”

The Spanish Expulsion from the Jewish History website accessed 28/06/24

Perhaps the strongest argument that Cervantes had Jewish ancestry comes from evidence internal to Don Quixote. In an excellent BBC World Service edition of The Forum scholars argue that in his novel there is “an implicit cultural critique” which questions, as far as it can, some of the negative narratives about the descendants of Muslims and Jews still living in Spain. In a section of the novel where Don Quixote is in Toledo, he seeks and finds someone to translate a text in Arabic. By showing the continued presence of Hebrew and Arabic speakers in Spain Cervantes put in doubt the official story of a single, homogenous, Christian culture.

Out of the troubled waters of post-reconquest Spain Cervantes created a story capable of finding a broad and appreciative audience. Don Quixote might be seen as a kind of Rosetta Stone, enabling different communities to discern for themselves an intelligible and constructive place in Spanish society. That is no small feat, and the unparalleled significance of Cervantes in Spanish culture bears testimony to his achievement in enabling humour, insight and compassion to leaven the complex experience of living in a society where the past was an ever-present and potent challenge to the present.

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water”.

Don Quixote

Those who do not think as we do

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I am standing in a Spanish market town which looks like so many others which I’ve visited over the years. As it happens, by longstanding tradition, Monday has been market day from time immemorial. However, on Monday April 26th 1937 – about a month after Easter – it was a day like no other. From 4 pm, and lasting for several hours, German and Italian planes bombed the hell out of Guernica. The buildings consisted mainly of wood, and the aircraft first targeted the town’s water tanks and fire station. Those who attempted to flee into the countryside were strafed by German fighters circling the drop zone of the bombers. It is estimated that with visitors to the market from nearby Bilbao, there were 10,000 people in the town that day. Three days after the attack the forces of General Franco occupied the town and, consequently, it is very difficult to know the true human cost of this atrocity. The most likely figures estimate 1,645 dead and 889 injured. Given the length and intensity of the attack these numbers may be underestimates, but we shall never know for certain. Due to the longevity of Franco’s reign independent data-gathering and interviews with survivors only took place long after the destruction of the town.

Guernica had no air defences. In fact, there was nothing in the town which could have responded to an attack from the air. Without fear of their own losses, German and Italian forces reigned down terror – and this was a primary goal of the mission. It communicated around the world that Axis forces could, and would, attack civilian targets with impunity, wherever it was deemed necessary. Reducing a town to rubble simply became one strategy in the ambitions of conquest which the dictators desired and sought to enact. It was a powerful example to anyone contemplating resistance about the cost of non-compliance.

“It is necessary to spread terror,” General Emilio Mola declared on 19 July 1936, just a day after the coup began. “We have to create the impression of mastery, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do.”

General Emilio Mola quoted in “Guernica” in the BBC History Magazine

It was the event which inspired what has been described as the last political masterpiece of art, Picasso’s Guernica. Visiting the peace museum in the town there are several representations of Picasso’s work, set alongside many photographs of the destruction left behind. As with Ukraine and Gaza, and so many other places, the piles of rubble and scorched buildings stand as symbols of desecrated communities. There are always narratives that seek to find excuses for such actions. “Local people were sympathetic to terrorists; they sheltered them; they conspired with them”: therefore the cost they have paid is entirely proportionate. Only the delusional can believe that the eradication of schools; hospital and places of worship will bring about an enduring peace. Instead, it plants in the hearts of the survivors, and especially the young, a determination fuelled by a loss which seeks justice by all available means. These fires burn long, long, after the incendiary devices have done their worst.

In Guernica’s ‘Park of the Peoples of Europe’ are works by the Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida (pictured) and Henry Moore. Chillida’s piece (pictured) is entitled “Our Father’s House” and was commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the bombing.

The desire to eradicate difference is perhaps one of the most pernicious threads pulled through the most shameful parts of human history. When our arguments don’t prevail, or people seem unreasonably stubborn to retain their language or culture, let’s simply bomb them into submission. What we never seem to learn, despite the beguiling simplicity of this approach, is that it doesn’t work. It perpetuates hatred and drives culture underground, not to extinction. If a fraction of the energy and resource that went into war were taken to promote peace, we would live in a very different world. It took the horrors of WWII to create the United Nations, and several other institutions dedicated to promote understanding, peace and reconciliation. At some point, God willing, may we find in the aftermath of today’s destruction an equal determination to seek peace and pursue it.

Shameless

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Many businesses have compliance officers. It is the responsibility of these members of staff to ensure that a firm complies with all the legal and regulatory requirements laid upon it. However, I am going to suggest that there is a different understanding of compliance which is a significant dimension in the various scandals that have come to light in recent months. Whether it is the Post Office, or the entire system of politics and health care provision, in the case of contaminated blood, something has led seemingly intelligent and responsible people not only to fail to act, but to actively work to suppress concerns and continue with dangerous treatments for which other – safer – options were available. What has led these people to comply with behaviours and a culture they knew to be wrong?

Organisations are very good at suppressing criticism. Even when there are good policies and procedures for raising concerns, unspoken influences shape the course of action people feel able to use. For example, without overwhelmingly compelling evidence – and other willing witnesses – the balance of power sits with management. Managers organise rotas; authorise annual and compassionate leave requests; they write appraisals and references. Suggesting that something is wrong means that a manager has allowed something to happen under their watch; been so ill-informed as to be unaware; or are directly complicit in some aspect of a negative culture. In all circumstances it is a risk to whistleblow, whatever paper assurances exist in corporate policies. Even if nothing negative happens at the time, managers may salt away their feelings about the employee and save their retribution for a future time when their action, and past events, can no longer be connected.

Sometimes chaplains fail to recognise these dynamics and express their views with naive candour. I have known several chaplains over the past couple of decades who decided to raise a concern directly with a CEO or organisational chair. This may be no bad thing, but it can irritate all the managers they have cut out between their organisational position and the top of the chain. Perhaps, in the spirit of naval chaplains, the chaplains regard themselves to be the equal of whoever they happen to be addressing. In some cases they have not even bothered to voice their concerns internally but, in the first instance, have gone to an external party. This kind of behaviour was picked in early drafts that led to the NHS England chaplaincy guidance of 2003, Caring for the Spirit. At one point there was text to the effect that chaplains could offer critical insights about an organisation, so long as this did not come as a surprise to that organisation. In other words, chaplains should escalate things internally before writing to their bishop etc..

The problem with internal escalation is that it can be stimied in a number of ways. I have seen on many occasions how the legitimate concerns of a chaplain have been reinterpreted and dismissed while, at the same time, subtle changes may have been made quietly in the background. While it is good that a chaplain’s observations might help put things right, it may also have marked the chaplain out as a troublemaker as far as management was concerned. Organisations possess a gravity that bends behaviour towards various degrees of compliance.

Watching the recent questioning of the former Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells, I was struck by the complete absence of shame in the testimony. There were tears; apologies; and a lot of regret that she had been poorly advised, but no shame. This was an organisation that persecuted and prosecuted its own staff; trusted a faulty software programme more than people; and defended its wrongful actions long after it was clear that reasonable doubt existed about Horizon. At least one person caught up in these horrors committed suicide, and many others were falsely imprisoned. Surely the person who sat at the top of such an organisation, receiving an enormous salary and bonuses, would be ashamed to say they were in charge? Yet that was not the impression given during the testimony.

“A certain kind of shame is valid in its proper context. If you do something morally wrong – steal a colleague’s idea or make a promise you don’t intend to keep – you should regret it, feel guilty, even ashamed of your actions. That’s not unhealthy. It might lead you to apologize and might prevent you from doing it again”.

This Leadership Motivation Is Toxic. Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Do It by Erica Ariel Fox, Forbes Magazine 5 December 2022

All this suggests that the training and formation of senior managers gets so invested in processes and operating systems that some of the core humanity of leadership gets left behind. In the case of the Post Office, the voices of staff working in the branches were given remarkably little weight. To meet financial targets, and defend an eye-watering investment in Fujitsu, people were simply thrown overboard. If that isn’t something a leader should feel ashamed about, then our selection and development of leaders needs a serious overhaul.

The Bible Unbound

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Some years ago, an academic at the University of Leeds commented to me about his experiences in teaching students studying chaplaincy at postgraduate level. He was not a religious person. While many essays which he marked contained good arguments and relevant sources, he noted a tendency for several students to write a conclusion in which some random bit of the Bible would suddenly trump all previous discussion. This would happen in such a way that there was no context or scholarly debate – as though whatever it was that Jesus had said in the Gospel of Matthew was clearly intended to be the final word on the NHS in the 21st century. Sadly, I am not persuaded that this problem in hermeneutics has been addressed in the intervening years.

Reflecting on this issue I began to wonder, for the first time, whether the physical presentation of bibles is part of the problem. All the books are bound together as a single volume, with an identical font and layout. There are many advantages in doing this, not least the referencing system that allows a chapter and verse to be identified quickly and accurately. It also conveys the fact that these particular books have been given a distinct and common authority by the Church. However, I suspect it has some homogenising effect which may incline people to regard it as some kind of dictionary or encyclopedia, with a common framework of description and interpretation. Little could be further from the truth.

In preparing this piece I assembled a collection of 66 books. The photograph of these titles heads the blog. There is poetry; fiction; history; biography; law and much, much more. Of course, through their distinct bindings, illustrations and typefaces, all these books appear as individual volumes. Many of them relate in different ways to the same subject but, even then, the audiences for which they are written are different and this shapes the style and content of the writing. I offer this as a visual image of what the Bible might look like freed from the effects of common presentation. Perhaps, if we hold this diversity in our mind’s eye, we might read and understand the Bible differently.

Documents became ‘scripture’ not, initially, because they were thought to be divinely inspired but because people started to treat them differently.

Armstrong, K. (2009). The Bible: the biography (Vol. 8). Atlantic Books Ltd.

At the most simple level, it is a reasonable question to ask whether a book of poetry is the best place to find advice about writing laws. Or that an allegorical method of discussing suffering in a universe with a omnipotent God provides us with material for a book on history? When the presentation of books indicates their topic and approach, we start to read them in a way that is appropriate for their genre.

I am not a professor of biblical studies. Knowing that this is the case makes me all the more cautious about lifting isolated phrases from scripture to support particular arguments. It’s not that I think the books of the Bible are irrelevant to these debates, but I appreciate that understanding the context and purpose of biblical passages is a precaution against their misuse. It also seems to me that it is important to be open to where this kind of study of scripture takes us. It is all too easy to have a determined position on an issue and recruit the Bible to our cause. When supervising students’ work I often ask people to read Paul Ballard’s important chapter on the Bible and practical theology published in 2012. In this paper he appeals for more work to be done in this area but, alas, there appears to have been only limited development in the past decade.

“More important, the use of scripture is an area that has not received sufficient attention in practical theology. It is imperative, therefore, that greater attention be paid to how the Bible actually functions and how it acts as scripture. The Bible is too important to be left to biblical scholars and the systematic theologians”.

Ballard, P. (2012). The use of Scripture. The Wiley-Blackwell companion to practical theology, 163-172.

I shall continue to encourage students to review their use of scripture and consider how it is featured in practical theology and the study of chaplaincy. I certainly would not wish to see the Bible being avoided, but more nuance and awareness is needed when a few words are drawn upon and inserted into an otherwise well-argued essay. Perhaps my greatest concern is that people outside chaplaincy and ministry might assume that a sophisticated and well-informed knowledge of scripture should be a basic skill for clergy and licensed lay workers. All too often, at the moment, this does not seem to be the case.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Pebbles and sea-light

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When I was training for ministry (several decades ago) there were many memorable moments. On one occasion a tutor was preaching for an act of corporate worship in the college when she happened to remark that, amongst other things “good taste” would not save us. A frisson ran through the student body. Ordinands at Westcott House rather prided themselves in aspirations to good taste, and this act of plain speaking was not altogether welcome. However, it hit home and – as all sermons should – gave us food for reflection.

During a recent visit back to Cambridge I was reminded of this criticism. It occurred to me while visiting the fabulous Kettle’s Yard, the University’s collection of modern and contemporary art. This gallery-in-a-home is the last word in aesthetics, where each object is placed with exquisite care to balance and complement the whole experience of being there and responding to the art. Even down to the daily placement of a fresh lemon. The collection was the creation of Jim Ede, an enthusiastic supporter of young artists in the early days of their careers. The setting for the works Ede acquired was a reaction to “the greater austerity of the museum or public art gallery”. It was to be a place where people could sit in contemplation.

Pebbles and sea-light,
drift of grain across an ebbing floor,
land’s end. The wind is sharp as gulls
pat David Pembroke’s window,
lettering the e stars across
a winter wall.

Extract from Rowan Williams, “Kettle’s Yard”, 4 March 1984 in Williams, R. (2014). The Poems of Rowan Williams. Carcanet.

There is something inspiring and daunting about this relentless commitment to art in a domestic setting. The inclination is to take a seat in every room (this is allowed) and contemplate the shape of the space; the artworks; and the light coming from generous windows. I could have spent all day walking amongst this careful and spiritual placement of works by renowned 20th century artists. We went there with two friends from South Africa and they were equally bowled over by the rich diversity of works.

Because so much about Kettle’s Yard is breathtaking, it is hard to think that salvation cannot be achieved by art and aesthetics. Like the work of the tragically young Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, killed in the First World War, all these works point to something else: they are not consumed by their own necessity. Art is always going somewhere else and, even in the case of Gaudier-Brzeska who died aged 23, it is natural to ask ‘what would have been next?’ Given such talent at so young an age, what other works would this genius have brought into the world.

Good taste may not be salvation, but sharing thought-provoking beauty across so many different forms is surely a step to thinking beyond ourselves; to enlarge our world; and to wonder about what other acts of creativity are yet to enrich us.

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things”.

Philippians 4:8-9

The Apparent Surface

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Recently I visited the exhibition William Blake’s Universe, in Cambridge. For many decades I have admired and enjoyed Blake’s work as both an artist and a poet. This exhibition sets Blake’s work alongside British and European Romantics who influenced his development. A review in The Guardian found this to be a weakness in the exhibition at the Fiztwilliam. Given that the space allotted is not overly large, Jonathan Jones found Blake to be overshadowed by the other artists, whose works are numerous in the gallery. This is a reasonable criticism, although I felt that the range of artists represented had its own merits – but perhaps this detracted from the ambitious title for the exhibition.

Blake is known for his paintings of vibrant angels and mythical characters. As in the way of classical painting, heavenly figures might be denoted by the presence of a halo. In the art of the Renaissance it can feel at times that the gift of a halo is a game of celestial quoits. Such paintings depict the lucky recipients of a shining disk as those rewarded for faithful and sacrificial behaviour. Often these heavenly signs shimmer and blaze with the finest gold, testimony that someone has achieved divine approval. They stand out from the canvas as the bright honorific of exceptional virtue.

Perhaps it was due to the nature of the medium, but at the William Blake exhibition I was stopped in my tracks by a rather different impression of a halo. A key supporter of Blake during his life, the sculptor and artist John Flaxman created many mythical and Neoclassical figures. In his illustration to accompany Chatterton’s poem the Battle of Hastyngs, Flaxman depicts “Queen Kenewalcha”.

Queen Kenewalcha by John Flaxman

Looking at this painting I was struck by the depiction of the halo as an absence. It felt as though this was a gap in the paper rather than any addition of splendour. In the review of the exhibition Jones quotes Blake’s writing about the production of his books combining, as they did, both text and illustrations:

“in the infernal method, by corrosives … melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid”

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake, 1790

The halo Flaxman gives Queen Kenewalcha seems to be this kind of melting away, as though sanctity has worn a hole in the fabric of reality and allowed the underlying brightness to shine through. This halo isn’t a painstaking accretion of gold but an elliptical opening that has emerged in the life of someone who isn’t wholly captured by the beguiling surface of a reality we take for granted. Getting to the light, for the artist, becomes the act of stripping away the stuff that pleads its own importance and necessity. In this illustration, the saint is lit by this small portal of connection with a radiance which comes from the reality that is our true destiny.

“To be a human person is to be a per-sona, through whom (per-) lights and fluids, vibrations and sounds (-sonae) flow. Living in attunements, we become “resonant selves,” and being religious is to a wide extent about attuning to the reality to which we belong.”

Gregersen, N. H. (2023). “THE GOD WITH CLAY”: THE IDEA OF DEEP INCARNATION AND THE INFORMATIONAL UNIVERSE: with Finley I. Lawson,“The Science and Religion Forum Discuss Information and Reality: Questions for Religions and Science”…

The Last Inn

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I once worked with a secretary who was fond of pithy analogies. As we age, she remarked one day, it’s like the old fashioned reel-to-reel recording machines. As it nears the end the depleting spool turns ever faster. Perhaps it’s the effect of familiarity that means some days pass almost unnoticed – we are established in our routines and the lack of new experiences or surprises causes our perception of time to drift. This may be why just a few days away from home may seem to occupy much more time. A new location; new people to meet; unfamiliar experiences to share.

Since August last year I have been working on a project to produce a Lent book. This has developed as a conversation between my own experiences in ministry and the legacies, literary and otherwise, of Laurence Sterne, 18th century parson and author. There are several reasons for this choice, circumstantial and otherwise. The echoes of Sterne haunt the streets of York, from the Minster where he preached, to the nearby building where Tristram Shandy was first printed. The villages just north of the city contained the parsonages where he lived and Bishopthorpe Palace was home to his great grandfather. Much further afield the work of Sterne continues to inspire many different kinds of artistic response. The book for which he is best known, Tristram Shandy, has never been out of print since 1759. Sterne’s ghost is one whose latent power can still turn a coin.

Tristram Shandy was published episodically across many years, coming to an end with volume nine. During the production of the work Sterne’s health deteriorated. He suffered from tuberculosis and often travelled away from a cold and sodden Yorkshire to find a warmer clime. In volume seven he describes one such expedition, going by chaise and spending nights in various taverns. It is this setting that leads Tristram to think about his death (which he had already escaped once). Drawing on earlier writing, Sterne’s character reflects on his place of death, and which location would afford him the most comfort in his final hour.

The conclusion drawn is that an inn would be the best place for “this great catastrophe”. Tristram thinks that the understandable care and concern of friends, mopping his brow and smoothing his pillow, would “crucify my soul”. This thought occurs at an inn within the town of Abbeville where, it would appear, Tristram suddenly realised that choosing which pub might in fact be rather important. He concludes that it could not be the inn at Abbeville, even “if there was not another inn in the universe”. To avoid any possibility that it might be the setting for his last breath, the chapter ends with Tristram demanding that the coach and horses be ready to depart at four o’clock the next morning.

“He [Archbishop Leighton] used often to say, that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an inn; it looked like a Pilgrim’s going home, to whom this world was all an inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it.”

Quoted in Bishop Burnet’s History of his own Time (1724)

If the wish that Sterne gave to Tristram was one which the author shared, then it was granted – partially. Sterne died on the 18th March 1768, away from his friends and family, in a boarding house that had become his London lodgings. Journeys constituted a significant part of Sterne’s life, both as a child and an adult, and his ultimate departure came in the city that had granted him fame and a modest fortune. In his last days he struggled even to pen a letter. In his final correspondence, to Anne James, he writes of being “at death’s door this week with pleurisy” and ends by commending her “to that Being who takes under his care the good and kind part of the world”. At 54 Sterne had gifted to the world a remarkable literary legacy and stimulated a debate about his life and thoughts which remains productive because it is still contested. He knew, as did Tristram Shandy, that life is fleeting – and he made the most of the joy that shone fleetingly between the clouds.