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REPOINTING

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THE LANTERN TOWER at Bramhall Parish Church was internally renovated in 2009 and is currently clad in scaffolding for external repointing. It’s a bold statement in our community. Added to a fifty year old parish church in 1960, the brick and concrete structure was immediately detested by some in the neighbourhood and loved with a passion by others.

Towering above our baptismal font, and acoustically the church’s sweet spot, fifty+ years on it now houses one of the church choirs. I enjoy the generous sense of space and light and glory it affords; it is the very opposite of cramped and mean, and I’m delighted too that the tower provides exhibition space for suspended artworks and painting. But, most of all, this tower gives me pause to contemplate the connected values of light and vision.

Bertie Barnby was the energetic and inspiring 3rd Vicar of Bramhall in 1960. Several hundreds attended Sunday worship and he was “on the case” of those who didn’t on Monday mornings – which I admit, being an introvert by comparison, would probably put me off forever!

Canon Bertie’s autocratic style wouldn’t win him much approval in 2012, indeed there were mutterings and grumblings back in 1960, but fifteen years after the end of the second world war his vision was bold, brave and efficacious. An accomplished church musician, Bertie insisted upon the Christian virtue of “giving thanks to the God who made us, in the Lord’s House, upon the Lord’s Day”. That was how the Church was built. That was how good and just society would be maintained. The Church was to be the lantern set upon a hill. And so the Vicar’s powerfully envisioned dream of a lantern tower prevailed.

Lantern’s light source

What value has this huge and powerful “statement” of a tower for me and my fellow disciples today? Does it speak of vision in 2012? Yes it does. I want to pause to consider the source of this lantern’s light. And I want to do so in the wake of a friend’s describing a recent sermon he’d heard in which the preacher implied that life inside the Church is full of light and “out there” is full of darkness, for I beg to differ. Bramhall’s tower opens my eyes. At night, when electric light glows inside the Church, there’s a relatively low wattage presence in the road outside, from inside out. But much more powerful, and every single day of the year, too, our lantern tower is illuminated from the outside in. “Out there” is where the Light is, and “out there” is what lights up “in here”. No doubt there’s need for a great deal of healing and regeneration in the world “out there”. No doubt there’s need for a great deal of healing and regeneration in the world “in here”, too. But we’re – each and every one of us – caught up in a life-long process of being healed and vivified by the Light that comes into our lives (and into our tower space) from “out there”. The Church that recognises no need for healing and light from without its walls will crumble and fall. Churches (and individuals) that think they’re the only bearers of light are – in the long run – of no earthly use at all.

Bertie Barnby wasn’t daft. When he called people to offer thanks to God in the Lord’s House – this parable built of stone on Robins Lane – he was consistently inviting his parishioners to encounter God chiefly in the Lord’s House not built by human hands, the “temple within”. Human hearts and souls are built to be “lantern towers” – and in the quiet and contemplative moments of our daily thanksgiving we find that the life of the world is not an enemy, but the Source of the light with which we’re illuminated, from the outside in, so that we’re able to shine from the inside out. Our job is to love well, to reflect the light. The world is “changed from glory into glory” not in the first instance by churchy institutions but by the God, by the Life “in whom there is no darkness at all”.

That’s maybe why there’s such a sense of Presence at evening prayer in Bramhall Parish Church, when late afternoon sunlight glows in the tower space … of the parish church, and of our hearts.

“Bertie’s tower” is about repointing. God grant us grace and vision not to lose heart and to aspire – as extravagantly as God does – to ever more beautiful, ever more salvific and “towering” art.

DELIGHT & FANTASIA

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I’M STILL REVELLING today in the echoes of Thursday’s concert with the world-class Black Dyke Band. The warmth, connection and sheer vivacious brilliance of the musicians gave the music an edge so keen that every muscle and sinew in my body was engaged in the majesty of it. The physicality, the being present, the being carried and enveloped by glorious music (Benedictus from Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man – A Mass for Peace had me barely able to breathe) and the intense connectedness and concentration of the music-makers was fantasia for me.

At times pure delight, flooded with moving colour and spirit, I was awed by the fullness and the flow of being and blowing and breathing, and lamentation and laughter and love, and passion and praise and sorrow, and life and breath and extra-ordinary energy in the entire enterprise. The band were a lesson in what communion truly means. (“On a rare free evening we still all go out together!”) As the years have gone by I’ve come to see, to feel, to “hear” colour in music and in silence more and more intensely, notwithstanding my dependence for “ordinary” sight now on glasses.

And the glorious thought occurs to me that perhaps through the years to come, and on into eternal years, colours become ever more beautifully observable, always and everywhere just the perfectly right colour and hue for the mood and the moment; and the music more perfectly an instrument of eternal healing and restoration, perfect union and vibration, there being silence and stillness – the home and the resting place of all music – often enough, and pure enough, to be able to host unimaginable notes of delight and fantasia, world without end, to which we ascend and ascend and ascend …

I am deeply indebted to the kindest of hosts for friendship and for Thursday evening. And ever more increasingly I know myself deeply indebted to the Kindest of Hosts for the eternal Grace of Life.

SINGLE STATEMENT

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Perfume bottle by Stuart Heath

THE MORE FERVENT your desire to reduce a whole set of experiences into a single statement, the more ignorant you appear, because life is too big, too broad, and too unpredictable to bottle as fragrance – no matter how many flowers are in the garden.

Katherine Monk, film review of Damsels in Distress, Vancouver Sun

LOOK AT THE SKYE

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YESTERDAY’S PEACEFUL reflection gave way to a debilitating migraine-level headache. Frightening afflictions, any pretensions to Superman status in this least superman-like creature on the planet are firmly quashed by such events, perhaps half a dozen times a year.

Good, deep sleep has done its healing work and I’m beginning Wednesday morning just slightly “foggy”. But, short of being hit over the head with a mallet, I’m almost always too inclined to leap straight back into (further debilitating) action again, notwithstanding all my long experience and talk of reflection and the benefits of living life at a slower pace.

Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? We know what the outcome will be, for the world, for nations, for institutions, for families, for friendships, for persons. I need perspective. I need to place my life in the context of a much bigger enterprise. I don’t want to slow down to the point of stopping, whilst not wanting to keep running until I smash face-first into a brick wall either.

I need to make time (4 minutes in this case), to contemplate, to loosen uptight shoulders, to breathe, to consider the glory and the wonder and the majesty of the gift of life. So I’m going to look again at Skye with David Watson’s eye. And then I’ll get cracking …

PROCESS

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… as in that beginning, in every age the same, creation’s Re-creator is keeping hope aflame. From Eden to the desert, the manger to the tomb, each fall becomes a rising, and every grave a womb.

From verse 2: The universe is waiting 
Michael Forster, (born 1946), © 1999 Kevin Mayhew Ltd

REBECCA KOO writes about process. Good religion does too – about becoming. And it takes a lifetime. And falling and rising. Sometimes, even, a feeling like “crawling upon your belly”, wondering, painfully, “what did I do wrong?”. Sometimes knowing exactly, and taking care to learn from the knowing. Sometimes feeling naked. (… so I hid myself). But it’s important we rememember that we’re talking about a “Universe-person” here, about a wholly “catholic” long-haul enterprise, and about every life’s being a necessary part of the Universe’s song. Neither Rome, as they say, nor Universe were built in a day, and process, as Rebecca suggests, comes right across a lifetime, not overnight. “Creation’s Re-creator is keeping hope aflame.”

Religion. From religare. To draw together as one. This is the work of nothing less than Life itself/herself/himself – and our whole lives at (and within) that. So any religious or philosophical assurances about our having no further need to explore, or implore, or pray, or go, or grow, need to be shown the door. Process. That’s the thing. Sometimes painful, sometimes joyful, and every shade in between. “Each fall becomes a rising, and every grave a womb”.

Son, behold thy mother. The procession of life swirls onwards …

LIGHTS ALONG OUR WAY

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A FAVOURITE little Brittany painting exists in several incarnations, variously representing storm (as above), tranquillity, mother / daughter, night and day. Lighthouses have been a constant in my life – and the deep and comforting sound of a foghorn sometimes meets me across silent spaces when I pray. I metaphorically encounter at least half a dozen most days. Perhaps you can recall especially memorable “lighthouses” recently encountered? Real or metaphorical, and whatever the weather, they’re lights along our way.

WHAT’S GOOD NEWS?

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I’M OFF TO A DAY CONFERENCE on “Catholic Evangelism” tomorrow. I’m not wholly sure whether it’s going to be about Catholic Evangelism (capital C, capital E) or catholic evangelism (small c, small e), and I’m rather hoping for the latter … hoping, that is to say, for a catholic evangelism that really is about good news (evangelism) universally applied (catholic), ie, for everybody – no matter their “faith tradition” or lack thereof – everywhere.

I’ve spent a very great deal of my life passionately pondering what exactly constitutes good news, and in particular why having some sort of acknowledged relationship to / with the Source of our lives might matter – to individuals, to communities, to nations, to our world, to the whole created order – some of these whole and healthy, some desperately broken, hurting, and in need of that Divine touch that brings healing. And I’m consistently finding that old definitions of what it means to be Catholic, or Protestant, or Christian, or shades in between all of these, don’t fit all sizes any more, if they ever did.

Christ everywhere …

What constitutes Good News in a ‘catholic’, pluralistic world? Where is an / our anointed Christ to be found? (as I’m sure such a Christ is indeed to be found, anywhere in the world, and across the world’s faith traditions). And the questions are so important to me because as a Christian priest, seeking always to live and learn – to be a disciple – after the pattern of Jesus of Nazareth, I have observed that some kinds of Catholic, some kinds of Protestant, and some kinds of “Christian” plainly do not represent very good news for many people at all. So catholic evangelism must be something quite different, something much more open, something prepared always to be held to account as to the reach of what it purports to be good news. Catholic evangelism will not, I think, be too prescriptive.

Feast of life for all

Catholic evangelism will offer the “feast of life” to people in the “highways and byways” won’t it? Catholic evangelists, personal and corporate, will have dismantled their drawbridges. Catholic evangelism will be less concerned (although not wholly unconcerned) with the Faith of our Fathers and hugely more concerned with Faith Being Received Today. When I’ve asked adults over the past thirty years whether they’d like to come to confirmation classes, so that they can be presented to the bishop, confirmed, and thereafter receive Holy Communion many have politely declined. When I’ve offered the Sacrament of Holy Communion “no questions asked” it has been the case, more frequently than I can count, that the recipient has ended up doing the asking, seeking to confirm a present and acknowledged reality – satisfied hunger – in their lives.

Let’s explore!

And I remember that Jesus was ever ready to go the extra mile for children, too. “Do not try to stop them for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these”. Catholic evangelists will work hard at becoming more, well … catholic – so that they’re more plainly seen to be, well … “Christian” or “Anointed”. Catholic evangelists will be interested in marginalised multi-tasking-capable women, tax collectors, prodigal sons, unimaginative but very opinionated men, quieter and more imaginative men, too, and in lost sheep. Catholic evangelism won’t chastise the lost sheep for having left the fold in order to “explore”, still less tell the poor creature that God forbids it. Instead truly catholic evangelists (like Jesus of Nazareth) will make the fold larger so that there’s the space for MORE sheep to engage in the business of exploration, to engage, that is to say, in their God-given Life!

The Sound of Silence

One of the biggest growth areas in our parish (liberal Catholic with blurry edges – a bit like my paintings!) – has been a call to shared and silent meditation in the parish church – arriving and departing in companionable silence. No coffee or handing out electoral roll forms afterwards. And numbers in excess of many a church’s entire Sunday congregation have responded to a call – we believe a Divine call – to dwell for a space, together in the “house for the Church”, to wait upon the Word that touches life in silence. (The Word – not words. There’s not “even” a Bible reading). It’s life-changing, say many participants. It’s the only occasion in my month when I’m really and deeply aware of the heartbeat of God, the pulse of life, say others. This silence, this “that’s not very Catholic” but absolutely catholic encounter is breathing into our common life new elements of what it means to bear good news in our lives today, what it means, first and foremost to BE the Body of Christ now on earth, what it means to be religious in the original sense of the word (religare) – reconnected, re-membered. Restored to what we’ve forgotten.

Old assumptions yield

So whether tomorrow proves to be slanted more to Catholic Evangelism, or to catholic evangelism, I hope we’ll be asking the same question – What is Good News? – at least sometimes. Because, remembering Louis MacNeice’s Mutations again:

… old assumptions yield to new sensations.
The Stranger in the Wings is waiting for his cue.
The fuse is always laid to some annunciation …

TINY BOAT LARGE LAKE

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MORE EASTERTIDE encounter today – on a sun-blessed Ullswater where, whatever the season, in time or timelessness, I am a tiny boat in the company of a large and beautiful lake … ashore, or afloat, going or staying, lying down, sitting or standing just out of sight, warm or cold or dark or light or shadow or bright? Funny: here the questions don’t occur. I’m not conscious (except in the recesses of my memory) even of being a boat. This encounter, it would be better to say after all, is simply joy in the company of a large and beautiful lake. And all is well here. All is well.

RAYS ETERNAL

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OUR HEARTS BE PURE from evil, that we may see aright the Lord in rays eternal of Resurrection-light; And, listening to his accents, may hear so calm and plain His own ‘All hail’ and, hearing, may raise the victor strain.

St John of Damascus

A TENDER RECOGNITION

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Mary stayed outside near the tomb, weeping. Then, still weeping, she stooped to look inside, and saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head, the other at the feet. They said, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ ‘They have taken my Lord away’ she replied ‘and I don’t know where they have put him.’ As she said this she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, though she did not recognise him. Jesus said, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him.’ Jesus said, ‘Mary!’ She knew him then and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbuni!’ – which means Master. Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and find the brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ So Mary of Magdala went and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her. John 20.11-18

THE MARY MAGDALENE of my own imagination doesn’t look at all like some of those depressing religious pictures. Not a haloed saint, not miserably gazing upon a skull set down in the middle of her dressing table, not wanton, bare-breasted, or mournfully reflecting upon her dreadfulness and that of others “of her kind”. No, my Mary Magdalene, first apostle, is an ordinarily beautiful, fully alive, self-aware, tactile, tender, practical, imaginative and lovely young woman. Human and humane. Someone possessed of an extraordinary ability to empathise, a bit of a loner perhaps, someone who “gets it” when Jesus speaks, someone who, just because she’s lovely – inside and out – is great to be around. And Jesus loves her.

I don’t know who made the gorgeous image above – (I’d love to know – and would gladly credit it) – but here’s the girl in my heart, using her own imagination to tell Jesus that she understands more than perhaps even he thinks she does; that she loves him; that loving him heals her and makes her whole; that her love might bring something of healing to him.

Here’s the Mary I imagine went on from this Prologue – this genesis, this in-the-flesh close-breathing, this out-of-the-ordinary, tearful, beyond-the-Law touching of the Word-before-time, this “costly” anointing, this first moment of tender intimacy, and wholly mutual acceptance – to have a thousand little conversations with Jesus, long before the ultimate events of what we’ve come to call Holy Week (“it’s no wonder they call you the Master, love. None of us have ever met or dreamed about someone quite like you”). A thousand little conversations about what was to be in the future, their future, everybody’s future (the future of R S Thomas’ “mirrors in which the blind look at themselves and Love looks at them back”) – after the “return” to “my father and your father”, to Where we came from.

Mary, imagine …, Mary, turn around …, Mary, can you feel it? …, Mary, the colours …, Mary, the joy of it …

Yes, I can imagine. I want to imagine. We all do. But if you died first, Jesus, God knows what I’ll do. You must be careful. We need you. Don’t strain so. O God. I know you’ll have to go. And I shall want you to, of course. Yes, we’ve talked about it often enough. But will you really come back to me? From the inside out? Jesus, I believe. Help me when my heart breaks. Help me in my unbelief …

Mary, Mary, Mary. I will. I will. I truly believe we’ll find each other on the inside …

If fully human Jesus was Everyman then Mary of Magdala is Everywoman. To prostitute her memory is wicked calumny – (how many unseeing men, half-dead, dull-in-heart-and-mind-and-head, have done that through the centuries?) – calumny of a kind that has led, and still leads, to immeasurable sickness of head and heart and soul and mind and body. Masculine and feminine, each needs the other. ( Both traits found in both women and in men, heterosexual or homosexual – it’s an “other” that’s the key requirement here). Thank God that the crisis wrought by precisely that sickness, and agonisingly recognised as the “hole in the heart” not just of the Church but of humankind generally today, can hardly help now but to point humankind everywhere on earth towards the light of a “more excellent”, a wholly more natural, and healthier, God-given way.

Human relationships, as much as for any of the ways we relate to the Divine, are not to be patronising, patriarchal, law-bound, or shame-laden. Human relationships will thrive, and the reign of God come to be felt among us, when they instinctively include, and resist exclusion. Love is not to be imprisoned or entombed. And, post-crisis, then and now, a wider-reaching Love is here to stay. Though patience is still required, though sin and death appear yet, in places, still to prevail, a new way of loving is here to stay. A new Way, a new Truth, a new Life.

Mr Vernon Dursley to Harry Potter about a certain (Wise old? Dove-like?) owl:

‘If you can’t control that owl, it’ll have to go!’
Harry tried, yet again, to explain.
‘She’s bored,’ he said. ‘She’s used to flying around outside. If I could just let her out at night …’
‘Do I look stupid?’ snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy moustache. ‘I know what’ll happen if that owl’s let out.’
He exchanged dark looks with his wife, Petunia.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J K Rowling

On Resurrection Day, “when it dawns on us”, in Mary and in Jesus, Wisdom is encountered entre deux. Wisdom’s used to flying around outside, she’s done so since the genesis of things, and before that, too; she carries messages home – for the inside, the God-side. Yes, there’s real intimacy here, a communicating communion sort of a business. But an early lesson in wisdom for all humankind is “do not cling”. Let him, let her, fly. Let the Spirit blow where She listeth. Something’s dawning. Look at the sky.

Ascension – returning – to the fullness of God lies yet ahead, though this very Resurrection morning it is an energising Hope. A hope that will ultimately change the course of the history of worlds. For there will be a returning, a tender returning, a deeply intimate, glorious, colourful, joyful, prayerful, fulsome returning for Everyone to the One who is both “my father and your father”. Don’t cling today beautiful Mary. But, believe me, lovely, knowing, wise and giving Mary, the day will dawn when we may cling, and we may laugh, and we may talk and pray and sing “We’re an Easter people! All of us! And alleluia is our song”.

And on that day I believe Jesus will be heard greeting his Mary of Madgdala as Rabbuni. Teacher. Master … She’s beautiful. Just like this painting. An ordinary, beautiful girl. Just sometimes a little bit wild. And she gets it, perhaps she is, Wisdom.

Jan Richardson and her husband Garrison Coles have made the
exquisitely beautiful The Hours of Mary Magdalene. Enjoy it here