Tag Archives: postaday

GREYSTOKE MADONNA

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click on images below to enlarge | slides here

STATUE OF OUR LADY AND CHILD

This statue was carved out of a log of holly by Alfons Lug, a Munich wood-carver, who, with some 400 other German Prisoners of War was quartered at Greystoke Castle from the Autumn of 1945 to April 1946.

His only tools were a pocket-knife and a small chisel, but he was repatriated shortly before the work was finished. It was completed by Fritz Hofmann, a joiner from Thuringia. The colouring was done by Hans Viesel, a master painter from Baden.

July 1946

This text is inscribed in calligraphy at Greystoke Parish Church

THE COSMIC SONG

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I KEEP COMING BACK to Brother David Steindl-Rast – especially when life gets busy. I love the peace that’s so patently present in Brother David’s lovely face, and the way his eyes look gratefully, joyfully, to the sky. And I also love Rainer Marie Rilke’s glorious poetry (translated here by Brother David)

All that is fulfilled returns home to
The One, to the Changeless One …

the Great Song above the earth hollows
and celebrates it all …

Joy and peace for all who spend a few moments in company with holiness in this little film today – or anyday. All that is fulfilled returns …

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LOVE BADE ME

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Love bade me by Stephen Raw | photo/simonmarsh | please click to enlarge

LIFE HAS BEEN absurdly hectic in the last few weeks. It always is in the run-up to our summer holiday and we’re looking forward to ten days near, on and around Ullswater from next week.

We’re currently hosting Stephen Raw’s wonderful artwork “Love bade me welcome” in St Michael’s Lantern tower and it’s such a comfort to me – and to many others. Hurtling and splashing around the place at a rate of knots it’s a marvellous thing to be stilled and awed – like Parson George Herbert, in Bemerton, before me – the inspiration behind this particular work …

Love bade me welcome

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.

George Herbert, 3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633

Stephen’s art can also be seen locally at St Ann’s Hospice, and he has exhibited further afield in Germany, Ireland, Italy and the United States. One of his paintings is in the collection of the Stiftung Archiv der Künste, Berlin. Stephen currently sits on The Royal Mint Design Advisory Committee chaired by Sir Christopher Frayling

Please click on the photo above to enlarge; visit Stephen’s Website here; visit my photo’s “Imagining with Stephen Raw” here; and visit St Michael & All Angels Bramhall, at SK7 2PG

MEGAPHONIC DELIGHT

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SOME OF THE BEST public spaces in the world have chronically bad public address or sound systems, often despite their best efforts. Best efforts have been applied in our parish church’s audio department for years but our own system, when not broadcasting local taxi-drivers or squealing feedback has, at best, behaved extremely erratically and terribly irritatingly!

Today I want to take up a megaphone and announce to our parishioners that for the first time in six years I’m pretty confident that we’ve found the right supplier and the right system for a new start come the Autumn of this year. Even a mandolin’s tones sounded pristeen through the on-site demonstration. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile I’m staying on my knees …

SWIMMING IN MYSTERY

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Swimming in the Mystery of God – please click photos to enlarge

TODAY WE CELEBRATED our Church’s Dedication Sunday. Wonderfully talented people have decorated the parish church on this day for 102 years – with flowers hand-picked from their own gardens. This year, having hosted Angels in 2010 and Windsails in 2011 (see Lumière below) our Lantern Tower is graced by the gently swimming presence of some of the most magnificent fish I’ve ever seen.

“We swim in the Mystery of God as fish swim in the sea”, said theologian Karl Rahner SJ – in an attempt to communicate the profound faith statement that human beings need no more consider themselves separate from God than we could consider ourselves separate from the air that we breathe. We’re all in this together: God, and everything created by God.

I often share Rahner’s little tale of the elderly, statesmanlike fish gliding past two tiddlers one morning. “Morning boys!” he greeted them. “How’s the water?” The tiddlers ignored him and – flicking their little tails – swam on. A little time later one looked at the other and asked “what’s water?”

Oliver John joined in the swimming with smiling enthusiasm as he was baptised this morning beneath and surrounded by the meanderings of many colourful creatures. And all present dedicated themselves anew to the works of Love in the coming year.

Meanwhile, General Synod prepares for major debate upon the morrow in York. Bishop Nick Baines of Bradford writes of Frustration and Joy here – pointing us (for which, hearty thanks) to an audio link to Archbishop Rowan’s fabulous sermon at the Synod Eucharist this morning. How glad I am, for him, that the good Archbishop will swim ere long in the quieter waters of Cambridge. How certain I am, however, that we’ll miss his gentle touch more than any of us have been able hitherto to imagine.

Still, he encourages us to swim on …

GILDED, FRAMED & HOISTED

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CHANGED FROM GLORY into glory, on our tower he’ll take his place. Our weather-vane’s been restored to youthful glory and is here photographed shortly before being hoisted to his perch atop our lantern tower. I’m trying to conjure up a sermon about his subtext:

Don’t touch the gold

I’ll let you know …

INELEGANCE?

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HERE’S A GORGEOUS little clip (I hope she won’t mind) from my priceless friend Mimi’s Blog: Waiting For The Karma Truck. Need something to cheer you up in the mornings? You need Mimi. Trust me.

Bless her, sweltering beneath heat, storm and tempest over there in the dear old US of A – whilst we in the UK are languishing beneath plain grey – Mimi’s always got something delightful and cheering to say. I was thrilled that she spotted and posted a little snippet from the life of the very English Jane Austen – who must have known some merrier summers than this one:

What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance

No writer on the planet could describe Mimi as inelegant. Whether beneath rain or shine I commend her joy-filled blog to your glad days :)

30 & COUNTING

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I THINK I was just 8 when the persistent “knowing” first revealed itself, and about 14 when I read James Insight’s I Turned My Collar Round. It was lovely to spend some time in company tonight with a colleague who’d read it at about the same time.

Thirty years after turning my own collar round, I’ve been enjoying a celebration supper, generously hosted, at his home, by Bishop Robert Atwell of Stockport, with a small group of my peers, all of us wondering how teenage dreams about becoming parish priests suddenly materialised into our having been ordained for three (or four) decades. It has been a very special evening and the word that keeps playing over and over in my mind is “thanks”.

Dag Hammarskjöld’s prayer says what I want to say concisely and very well

For all that has been: thanks
For all that will be: yes!