Living Wittily

Picasso: Child Holding a Dove, and Our Longing for Peace

Last week was the anniversary of Picasso, whose work is for me glorious, mysterious, wild, disturbing, perplexing, consoling, awakening, upsetting, - these and much more. Some of Picasso's work is beyond me, which mostly says more about my incapacity and knowledge limitation than it does about works that puzzle me. I have a framed print of Picasso's Dove of Peace, which remains an eloquent comment on human capacity for peace destruction, whether in Afghanistan or Syria, Iran or North Korea.

The novel Guernica, by Dave Boling is romance and historical novel, based around the destruction of Guernica by the Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso features in the novel, along with his massive raginbg response to the brutality of the attack on a civilian population. Near the end of the novel a high ranking German SS Officer who admired the painting met Picasso in the cafe and asked, "That painting. Did you do that?"

Picasso's answer was as blistering as the painting - "No. You did that."

Amongst Picasso's paintings Child Holding a Dove is one of my favourites. Is the child protecting the dove or holding it captive? Is the dove of peace safe in the hands of children? Is she holding it close, or in the act of lifting it to the freedom of flight? Is it a toy, like the ball in the foreground, or a precious creature whose gentleness is to be cherished and whose life is to be valued? All or none of these, it doesn't matter. The painting is a lovely image of much that makes human life itself the value that underlies our longings for peace, and the ambiguity and precariousness of our grasp of peace, and the risk that lies in our human choices, to posses it for ourselves, or leave it to fly freely amongst us all.

Child holding an Ipad doesn't have the same aesthetic appeal. But maybe, just maybe, children whose imaginations and awareness are expanded by the best of our technology, will grow into mature people who resist the temptations of the worst of our technology. Let the dove fly.

Liberation Theology is the original Gospel - If the Son shall set you free....

Amongst the many debts I owe to Jurgen Moltmann as theologian and disturber of the Christian peace, is his eye for the connection between Trinitarian theology, and the way we structure our lives - in society, in church and in our personal ambitions and lifestyle. A conversation with some students this morning produced another of those enjoyable exchanges - Moltmann's book on the Trinity was tough, at times infuriating, or obscure, they struggled with it, and except for class requirements I think would have given it a body swerve. But they all were glad they persevered, read, wrestled and faced up to Moltmann's theological challenges, and they came away with a changed view of what Christian theology and life can be, what church is, and what it means to talk of the Triune God of love.

In one his less known books, a collection of occasional essays very loosely tied together by the title Experiences in Theology, there is a section of what could almost be called Trinitarian Tracts - 7 pieces amounting to just over 30 pages in total, entitled "The Broad Place of the Trinity". The fifth one, The Trinitarian Experience of God begins like this:

A few years ago, in Granada, Spain, I came across an old Catholic order which I had never heard of before. They call themselves 'Trinitarians', were founded in the eleventh century, and have devoteds themselves ever since to the 'liberation of prisoners'. Originally that meant the redemption of the enslaved Christians from M oorish prisons, but not only that. The arms of the Church of the Trinitarians in Rome, St Thomas in Formis, show Christ sitting on the throne of his glory, while at his right hand and his left are prisoners with broken chains, on the one side a Christian with a crossw in his hand, on the other a black prisoner without  a cross. Christ frees them both and takes them into fellowship, with him, and together. 'Trinity' was the name for this original liberation theology more than eight hundred years ago." (Page 324)

It's interesting he talks of the Arms of the Church - because the m osaic does indeed show the arms of Christ reaching out in welcome and firm grasp in a way that is so radically inclusive it must have raised eyebrows and blood pressure amongst the hardliners about who is in and who is out, when it comes to the Church.

It is a beautiful, subversive, inclusive, uncompromising, boundary-breaking image, of a Love that is also all these things. 

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A Theology of Reading and the Stranger Christ Who Comes Alongside.

The recent advert for the MacMillan Daffodil Donate an Hour appeal, computes the amount of time we spend doing things in an average lifetime. It throws up some "makes you think" statistics. 7,000 hours in supermarkets was one that surprised me till I thought about it. 280 days with a basket or a trolley and a wallet. That's more than a year of working days. And what Macmillan's are asking is just one hour; on average collectors bring in over £40 an hour, so the argument is persuasive. That's quite apart from the wonderful work MacMillan nurses do to accompany and support those who are in the later stages of illness from cancer. I don't need any more encouragement to give to this charity whose work I've witnessed first hand in numerous pastoral situations. Those who care for the dying carry out a ministry that has deep roots in the soil of Christian charity and medical comfort

But it set me thinking about the time I spend reading. Not as much as I used to; not as much as I like to; not as much even as I need to. There are many other important and urgent calls on time, energy and attentiveness. This post is not an apologia for reading; I take the value of reading for granted as a formative, humanising, life enriching, socially informing, intellectually nourishing, morally challenging and educationally effective human  activity. What I am now researching is the theological importance of reading for personal formation, and as a pastime which requires an ethic of reading so that its formative power is genuinely free to challenge and subvert, or inform and affirm, what we know, what we ought to know, how we know it and crucially, what we do with what we know. Oh, and incidentally, "pastime" need not mean desultory non productive time, which has its own value - but a valid way for a human person to pass the time in ways that enhance their humanity and person).

In other words, quite self-consciously and specifically as a Christian, I am interested in reading not only as an intellectual discipline, but as discipline which requires an ethic, a theology and an obedience to the word consonant with our obedience to the Word made flesh. Reading is a search for the Truth that in knowing Him sets free. Reading is a regularly recurring Emmaus journey trying to make sense of things and thrilled when the Stranger Christ comes alongside to rebuke, to expound, to accompany, and to

 

break the bread of life once again. So whether theology or biography, poetry or dogmatics, ethics or novels, history or mystery, philosophy or art, what we read, how we read, why we read, and the immediate and durable effects of the acts of reading are highly significant in following faithfully after Jesus. As a Christian I am also and always a seeker, a listener, a student, with a mind that thinks, a heart that feels and a body that is a living sacrifice. Sotrying as hard as I can, and receiving as much grace as my life can hold, I am engaged in the life work of making this self holy and wholly acceptable to God, which is my reasonable service. Yes that's it, reasonable service.

 On the superficial and playful level I am a bibliophile. But in the deep places of the will, the heart and the mind, I am a lover of the One who took the scroll and read, and declared a manifesto for the transformation of the world. So I won't compute the number of hours I may have spent reading since those early days I worked through the bookcase in our farm cottage. A more important computation is what I have done with the reading, and what it has done to me, by the grace of God, and maybe occasionally by my own determined Emmaus walk. And how I have responded to the countless times the Stranger who is Christ has come alongside to teach, to accompany, and to take the bread and break it so that my eyes are opened in glad recognition, and I see differently, more truly and with something of the loving gaze of God on a world shocked back into life by Resurrection. 

Amsterdam, Van Gogh and the Things that Lie close to the Heart.

We have just spent a few days in Amsterdam doing some of the things I've wanted to do for years. So I spent a long time in the Van Gogh Museum, looking at some of his most famous work. It's a busy place. Even if you book online and miss the long entrance queue, there are still long queues, guided tours, people with audio guides enwrapt in the context and detail, and most folk jostling for a good view of the celebrity paintings. It would have been easy to become grumpy at the sheer struggle to look, see, gaze, admire, appreciate these masterpieces. And I often find those in front of me are bigger than I am which means a total eclipse of the painting if it's one of those really big tourists.And I haven't developed that brass knecked assertiveness that proceeds through an art gallery oblivious of courtesy, - an art gallery seems an inappropriate place to text out the survival of the fittest. 

But standing amongst such riches of aching beauty, soul piercing eagerness to articulate deepest pain and deepest joy, and the anguish of someone who was unheard, misunderstood, and at times ridiculed by those who thought his art was merely madness, the least of my concerns was the bustling art lovers. Enough to be amongst those who have found there way here, to stand in front of this man's soul shaped and passionately coloured art, and to feel the depths of my own humanity, my own needs, and yes my own anxieties and joys. Some of these paintings expose our most cherished hopes, and our most self-diminishing fears, while also drawing us to see in the angst and exuberance of the artist, the two poles of human longing.

All that said, how can you look at the painting of his bedroom and not feel a deep love for the man who saw like that, and thought to paint a place so constrained and ordinary, with such extraordinary freedom and emotional investment. The story of Van Gogh and his brother Theo is one of remarkable courage, vision, tragic struggle against illness, faithful friendship between brothers, grabbing life with both hands yet unable to hold firmly to all that is life affirming and humanly fulfilling.

Some have tried to write about the spirituality of Van Gogh, or have used his paintings as devotional sounding boards. I don't doubt there are profound symbols and hints obvious and obscure in his work that encourages spiritual reflection. Indeed several of the overtly religious paintings do their own kind of aesthetic homiletic. But sometimes the message isn't in the painting; the painting reaches beyond articulated understanding and wounds us where comprehension is unnecessary, and recognition of who we are and why we are is sensed in that place deeper than reason and more permanent than passion. 

 

 I took a photo and removed the picture frame - better than some of the prints on sale, but the power is in the original.

Chichester, Chagall and Visual Exegesis

The Chagall window in Chichester Cathedral is on my must see list.

It's a 20th Century Jewish pictorial exegesis of Psalm 150, created to enhance Christian worship.

It's a startling and beautiful work in stained glass, one of my favourite things to look at. Baptist churches should have stained glass windows may be a minority view of one, but I struggle to see any valid objection to visual beauty as an aid to worship.

It's an interpretation of written text in image, form and colour. Along with music, such art provides an exegesis that is neither more nor less important than written commentary or spoken exposition.

It's a picture of exuberance. I don't mean it's an exuberant picture, but that it represents worship as praise, gratitude, wonder, noise, dancing, walking, climbing, arm-waving; it represents joy embodied and laughter in movement, the human spirit doing what it does best in response to the exuberance of God, the shared exuberance of Creator and creature, of imago dei answering to our Original.

It's a psalm in glass, and in colour, and looking at it is intended to create in the heart the words it depicts - exuberant praise of God. 

Justification for buying yet another new book on Vermeer!

This morning a book arrived in the post, yet another book.

This is an all but weekly occurrence that whether it puzzles others, frequently puzzles me.

Whence the imperative to read, and to own and handle the word made matter?

Is it self-indulgence, or sacrament - means of survival or means of grace?

Philip Toynbee said books were his royal road to God.

Not all books that lead to God are books about God.

But

To confer with and consult minds other than our own.

To see what others point out to our limited sight.

To feel the impetus of those who push us beyond the restrictive horizons 0f what we know.

To revel in the intellectual humility that provides the humus out of which good learning grows.

To keep alive curiosity and pay attention to the world and listen to our own lives.

To take and read, and to wonder and ponder on goodness, beauty and truth.

To nurture imagination, refresh the wells of thought, replenish our emotional capacity.

Books do this, and much more for me.

And in that sense they are a means of grace, constant sources of new understanding, encounters with minds different from mine and no less valid.

As a matter of interest the book that arrived is an updated classic of art investigation. Beautifully written, it explores the intricacies and complexities involved in establishing the provenance and authenticity of paintings attributed to Vermeer.

But it is Gowing's analysis of Vermeer's temperament and character, and of how these inevitably influenced his technique and artistic expression, that makes this a profound study of genius. When much has been said about cultural milieu, historical context, social influences, and political background, there is still the mystery of temperament and personality, and the complex intertwining of accident, circumstance and personal intention. These may be all but insoluble, but in the attempt, much comes to light that otherwise would remain hidden. Gowing as noted above, is an impetus pushing the reader towards new horizons, teaching us to pay attention to our world, itself a sacrament of creation.

Few artists paid more detailed attention to the sacrament of the ordinary than Jan Vermeer.

The use of the adverb Trinitarianly

Was teaching the doctrine of the Trinity yesterday, and we had an interesting session on Trinity and Community. Starting from love that is purposeful, outgoing and creative and which is self giving and combines both trust and risk, we moved back and forward between the inner relations of the Triune God to the outward expression of that life in the economy of creation, redemption and consummation.

It would be misleading and unnecessary to say we all understood what we were talking about! But a lot of learning took place in exploring the realities of human relationships as we work out in our personal lives, the lives of the communities we inhabit, and the life of the world which is a community of communities living with tensions at times creative and at times destructive. Ecclesiology, missiology, spirituality, worship, pastoral care and compassion, ethics and justice, are significant areas of Christian existence and reflection which are profoundly influenced by the way we think of God. And for Christian theology that means thinking of God Trinitarianly. I know, it's not the most elegant of words, but it is a modifying adverb that should be used frequently in our thinking about those key areas of Christian reflection and practice. It's pushing it to talk of a Trinitarian lifestyle, or living Trinitarianly - but to see ourselves as drawn into the life of God, and immersed in the Love that is purposeful, creative, outgoing trusting and risk-taking, and to ask what that might look like in practice, would be to at least make a start on living Trinitarianly.

Meeting the Christ of St John of the Cross.

I went to visit an old friend on Wednesday. Actually two old friends. One I've known for over 40 years, the other I first encountered 30 years ago. My friend of 40 years shared a coffee, then lunch, then much talking about the things that matter and some things that don't. That friendship has settled into an unspoken but mutually understood trust that enables us to speak with freedom not merely in confidence, but in the confidence that what is said is heard, listened to and attended to.

The second old friend now resides in a setting that does justice to its beauty, power and commanding presence. Salvador Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross needs neither accolade nor commendation. It is a masterpiece. That it excites argument and admiration, creates controversy while depicting reconciliation, and draws you into the spiritual realities of Christian faith while resisting facile devotional reductionism, simply confirms its status as on of the greatest paintings of the 20th Century.

It also excited the hostility of someone with a knife who ripped and scarred it half a century ago, and subsequently inspired the restorers to work with painstaking patience to repair it. Which brings me to one of those epiphany moments that perhaps it takes the context of Kelvingrove Art Gallery, and the love Glasgow folk have for their art collection, and this particular painting.

I am sitting on the bench and all but paddling in the sea shallows at the edge of the painting. In came two Glasgow punters, one who had never seen the painting before and one who thought it was a "braw picture". They stood up close and the experienced art guide who had seen it "hunners o' times" helped his pal to stand at just the right angle, in line with the lights, and pointed out the L shaped scar, barely visible, but there to be seen if you knew where to look. They talked for a while describing in Glaswegian discourse the perpetrator of the damage, and spoke with wondering gratitude (but in that same Galswegian discourse) of those who "sorted it". Then they went away. At no time did they stand and look at the painting as it is. Having inspected the damage and the repair, away they went. I was offended for my friend, and should have gone and asked them to come and meet the masterpiece properly. I'm glad I didn't.

A few minutes later as I walked out of that small place of peace and prayer that is the right setting for this painting, there the two of them were, sitting there and taking in the visual presentation of the history of the painting and how it came to be in Kelvingrove, and how £8,200 was an enormous amount of money 60 years ago, and how one man's vision and persistence resulted in Glasgow owning a work of art that is now all but priceless. It was just ending, and they got up and went back in to the painting. And I smiled a deep inner smile - now they were going to meet my friend properly, having done their background research.

Several times I've taken a class to look at this painting - online just doesn't work. They go having discussed it in class, looked at the background, and with some idea of what to look for. What they don't have an idea of, is what it will be like to stand before this astonishing artistic statement - Dali's professed aim to paint a beautiful Christ of the Cross. Then we go walkabout, in company or alone, and meet some time later for round the coffee table discussion in the cafe downstairs. Some of my most rewarding and moving experiences of teaching and learning (and both are so intermingled we are all learner / teachers) have taken place round such a table, having encountered Dali's masterpiece. And the irony is, in achieving his aim, an act of vandalism has left a scar that is still visible if you know where to look. And in that irony is one of the great theological mysteries, of created beauty, damaged and restored, having the power to subdue our worst and renew our best.

 

Gaugin: Wrestling angels we never come away unscathed

Yesterday at the National Galleries I stood for a while looking at this painting, now recognised as a work that finally defined Gaugin's own style, artistic voice and vision. It's called Vision after the Sermon. My first responses to Gaugin have been lukewarm, and I struggle at times to see beyond, or to want to see beyond, the sophisticated way he uses a more primitive style and naive or even crude choices of colour.

I don't think this is a beautiful painting. But it is powerful and arresting, though it presupposes the prior knowledge of the story of Jacob wrestling the Angel of the Lord. As an expression of piety, prayer and how the religious imagination encourages, even compels spiritual devotion, it is a profoundly moving painting. Gaugin loved to paint the Bretons, men in the fields, women at domestic tasks and just as often at prayer. 

The use of the tree to divide the people praying from the action taking place off centre, almost off stage, suggests strongly the importance of the real, the imaginary and the ways of bringing them into relationship. The angel figure is ambiguous too - who is going to overcome whom, and what is at stake, and for Gaugin the deeper agitation of what goes on inside the human mind and heart when looking for the meaning and value and direction of life. This is a disturbing not a devotional painting, with its contrast of prayer and struggle, real and unreal, this world and that spiritual world that breaks through with life enhancing or life shattering power. 

Whatever else Gaugin's painting does, it takes with unflinching seriousness the awe and dread of some Old Testament stories that make it clear God is not to be messed with, and to encounter the Holy One of Israel is an experience from which at best we will limp away towards the sunrise, blessed but forever changed. "I will not let you go unless you bless me", said Jacob. Gaugin has captured the immensity of what is at stake when we wrestle with angels, when we see beyond the immediate realities of our lives to the reality of God, whose presence and mercy, power and love, challenge and comfort pervades all reality, and with infinite costly patience and struggle persists in His holy and wholesome purposes of redeeming, renewing, reconciling and reawakening to worship, and life and joyous completion, the whole of creation. 

Or so it seemed to me as I pondered and go on pondering this strange painting.

Inconvenient hospitality and the interruptive grace of God

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just framed a print of this painting by Chagall and hung it in my study at College. It's a bit loud in its red frame alongside other prints in more sedate burnished bronze, pine and gold.

Is the mood in this scene anxious, expectant, hilarious, poignant, tense?

All of these and more - how else draw the artist into the trap of painting the impossible communion of heaven with earth, eternal purpose with quotidian humanity, outrageous promise with long familiar disappointment, God's laughter of future joy and human laughter of disbelief subverted by the glimpsed beginning of risky trustfulness.

The angels are central to the picture, but Sarah is central to the story - no wonder she laughed. And no wonder we always fail to explain in our superior cleverness what that laugh meant. Chagall depicts hospitality in all its mutuality, ambiguity, inconvenience and possibility.

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Came away to College without my copy of Buechner - will be a couple of days more waiting before the second part of the quotation from the previous post - hope it feels worth waiting for!

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