Living Wittily

"and Ah! Bright Wings." : The Story Behind the Tapestry

Sometimes an idea for a tapestry takes a while to formulate. I wanted to do something with the Hebrew phrase “tikkun olam”, using the Hebrew script. But as I sometimes do, I complicated that plan by starting to think of what it might take to “repair the world”.

I remembered that powerful image at the start of the genesis creation story, of the Spirit of God brooding over the pre-creation chaos, followed by that lovingly long narrative of Creation when God said, and it was so, and it was good. That in turn took me to the closing couplet of ‘God’s Grandeur’, one of the poems I go back to without ever tiring of it, or feeling I’ve come all that close to understanding it.

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

So two ideas came together, a Hebrew script and the couplet of a Victorian poem. The title of the tapestry is “Ah! Bright Wings”, because the structure of the imagery is sustained by the encircling and brooding, brightly coloured and covering wings.

The Hebrew script commands the horizontal central ground, but surrounded by the wings of the Holy Ghost. But the tapestry tries to relate to much of the rich imagery throughout Hopkins’s poem. The dull coloured square and angular grey and brown stitches symbolise the industrial ugliness that accompanies manufacture on an industrial scale. The combustion and force needed to work raw material into steel, and the engineering that constructs machinery, and the waste that is the inevitable by-product: ‘all is seared with trade; bleared smeared with toil’. The natural world is threatened by human activity and ‘wears man’s smudge’ so that ‘the soil is bare now’. That narrow central panel symbolises the earth stripped and brown, and trampled by steel shod shoes.

The cross is constructed of blocked squares that contrast with the flow of colours in the wings, and its geometric, utilitarian engineering is surrounded by the blues and greens where live, ‘the dearest freshness deep down things’. Those six squares dominate and yet are surrounded by a thin defining thread of red that rises to the top of the Gothic arch where it splits in three directions. It’s only a hint, but intentionally a Trinitarian articulation of the cross. The cross holds together the green of Creation and the smudge of human industrial activity.

And of course the Hebrew script is in green, the colour of Creation. Green represents the defiance of life against death. The seasonal and recurring beauty of the land contrasts with the destructive forces of human possessiveness that is the economic presupposition of mass manufacture, cheap goods, the profit motive and the dominance of factory over field.

The Gothic arch is dissected by red thread, and on the west side the sun is setting and on the east the sun is rising: “And though the last lights of the black West went, Oh, morning at the brown brink eastward springs –‘

The wings frame the whole, and their colours move from red sacrifice, to green life force, to golden light, before tapering inwards through pink to the red that surrounds fields, factories and the rhythms of sunset and sunrise. The colours of the wings are warm as they enfold the heart of things.

Hopkins’ astonishing phrase ‘Ah! bright wings’, is in my view a powerfully hopeful cry that is as much a prayer as it is a touch of poetic brilliance. To repair the world, ‘tikkun olam’, requires nothing less than a replay of the Creation story, an act of eschatological nurture, possible only to the originating Creator and those first divine breaths that energised the spirit of God, brooding over the waters of chaos, intent on creating a world. 

The surrounding frame of triangles and a border in random muted colours, are held together by an unobtrusive thread of gold. That continuous loop of gold makes possible a ‘world charged with the grandeur of God.’ Like a power cable it carries energy, light and the power to renew and replenish.

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Here is the full text of God's Grandeur, G M Hopkins.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Tell Both Halves of the Story.

By the time we were into last year’s first lock down on March 23, we were well into Lent and heading towards Easter. It didn’t stop some Christians complaining tongue in cheek “I never thought I would have to give up so much for Lent.” A year on the not so funny jokes continue. Someone announced on Facebook, “I’m giving up unnecessary travel and all indoor visits to other households.” At best these attempts at humour raise a tired smile. The truth is, the realities we are all living with have seriously reduced our readiness to smile, let alone laugh.

This has been a year of doing without, of lost freedoms, and we have become far too familiar with inner feelings of anxiety, loneliness, boredom and other emotional deprivations. These days when folk ask how we are getting on, at least part of the answer is that precise and peculiarly Scottish word, scunnered!

Quite a lot of the Psalms describe that feeling of being scunnered, when the Psalmist has had enough, but the hard stuff keeps coming. “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me…my tears have been my food day and night.”

If you’re scunnered, read the Psalms, for two reasons. First, whatever it is you’re feeling and thinking, it’s there in the Psalms, and it is prayed to God. Second, the Book of Psalms is like a pharmacy for the soul, pointing us towards those restorative thoughts and practices that will help us move from where we are to a firmer foothold, a better place, a different standpoint to view the life we are living.

The great Reformer John Calvin recommended reading and praying the Psalms as a way of understanding our hearts and speaking to God about the best and worst that happens to us:  

 “There is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men and women are wont to be agitated.”

When we read Psalm 42 carefully, which means prayerfully, this depressed and troubled Psalmist shows us how to be honest with God. He doesn’t feel guilty about being sick of the way life is, and he doesn’t try to say what he doesn’t feel. He says it like it is. Thirst, tears, downcast, waves and breakers have swept over him, he feels forgotten, mourns the life he used to enjoy, disturbed and upset – Calvin is right, all the negatives we can think of are right here in a prayer to God.

But that’s only half the story. And often when we are scunnered, it’s because we are only telling ourselves half the story. Here’s what else is in Psalm 42:

“These things I remember…how I used to go with the crowds…with shouts of joy and thanksgiving.” (v4) This has been a year like no other we have lived through, with all the losses we have each experienced. But God loves us no less. God is no less working his purposes towards our healing and wholeness and salvation. Alongside our complaints about how life is right now, take time to remember the blessings that, despite everything, have not been absent throughout this past year.

“Put your hope in God for you shall yet praise him…,” (v 5) Yes this has been a tough year. But, our hope for life and for eternity is in the eternal love and redeeming power of God, our Creator and Saviour. In under six weeks we will be celebrating Easter. “It’s Good Friday but Sunday is coming.” Hope is one of the most powerful antidotes to that loss of impetus and interest in life that comes from having to deal with more than we feel able to cope with. I love that defiant little word “yet” – “you shall yet praise him”. In the end, after all, when the world does its worst, there will yet be reason to praise. “Yet” is only one letter different from Yes. And the resurrection is God’s ultimate and final Yes! to life, yours and mine.

“By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, at night his prayer is with me – a prayer to the God of my life. ( v8) At a time of isolation, anxiety and exhaustion, our minds fed with 24/7 coverage of Covid, it is especially important to remember who is ultimately in charge. God commands his steadfast love by day, and at night his concern and compassion surround us. “God is my rock! That is true, rock solid true. No matter what we feel at any one time. God’s loving concern is steadfast, faithful, rock solid, and energised by loving purposes for you, and all that he has made.

Yes there’s a lot that can get us down. But remember God’s blessings as well as our troubles, hope in God because we will yet praise him together, and whatever happens, God commands his steadfast love and he is the God of your life,

Let God be God.

God is sovereign , nothing else must be regarded as sovereign , including our ideas about God . As I have sometimes put it , the great advantage of believing in God is that you are then liberated from believing in a lot of other things that incessantly try to set themselves up as god — like nations , and governments , and ideologies , and dictators , and presidents , and ( yes ! ) religions , and churches , and priestly hierarchies , or even ( in democracies ) majority opinion!

(Waiting for Gospel, Douglas John Hall, p.37; A book of late essays by Hall)

His earlier book The Cross in Our Context remains one of the most challenging books on the Church at the end of Christendom having to relinquish a theology of Glory and return to a theology of the cross. It's one of the books I return to often, and value it more each time.

Photo of Westhill Community Church, on a dark late winter afternoon!

Lent 2. "He leads us to pray for what it is his pleasure to do..."

"Lord teach us to pray", said the disciples.  From the very start Christians have known that prayer requires disciplined effort, focused thought, and the sacrifice of time. But the disciples' request presupposes that prayer can be taught; not just prayers, but the how of prayer. Prayer as practice, or technique, or habit, or skill, suggests a functional or instrumental view of prayer. Prayer makes things happen, prayer works, prayer makes a difference. It's something we do.

Many a book on prayer takes this approach, and one of the best is Richard Wagner's Christian Prayer for Dummies. Seriously. The approach encourages practice, experiment and discipline, and outlines basic training in prayer, even a section on turbocharging our prayers. Prayer is a subject you learn about alongside Windows 10, Wood Turning, Wine Making or Existentialism - other books for Dummies. 

But then there are books that aren't so much about the practical how of praying, but the theological whys and wherefores. A theology of prayer begins to explore different types of prayer, considers the God to whom we pray, and ponders the problems and questions that always come up when we pray.

Julian of Norwich has a different approach again. She isn't so much teaching her Christian readers how to pray, as teaching them about the God to whom we pray. She is specially keen to pass on what has been revealed to her about how God hears our prayers, inspires our prayers, and certainly desires our prayers.

By doing this she is portraying a God who is accessible, not to be feared, holy but loving, a God who needs no persuading to hear and lovingly receive the cries of the human heart, whether praise or plea. In Julian's thought, prayer is not one way traffic from human to divine, it is a conduit of love through which divine love communicates with the human heart, inspiring and enabling the response of loving trust and grateful joy.

"He looks on us with love and wants to make us his partner in good deeds. And so he leads us to pray for what it is his pleasure to do. And he will reward us, and give us endless recompense for these prayers and our goodwill - which are his gifts to us...God showed such pleasure and such great delight, as if he were in our debt for every good deed that we do. And yet it is he who does them. And because we ask him eagerly to do things he loves to do, it is as if he said,: 'What could please me better than to ask me - eagerly, wisely and willingly - to do the very thing I am about to do? And so, by prayer, the soul is attuned to God." 

That last sentence, "And so, by prayer the soul is attuned to God." Julian's understanding of God being delighted in the very fact we pray is in startling contrast to any idea that prayer is a wrangling or pleading with a demanding God. She is redressing a theological balance here. God is not the stern task master demanding we exhaust ourselves labouring away at persuading God to hear and answer prayers. On the contrary, God initiates prayer, gives grace, energy and words to our prayers, and he "leads us to pray for what it is his pleasure to do." It isn't going too far to describe this as a spirituality of playfulness, prayer as a serious but non-competitive game. 

When all our praying is said and done, isn't what we really want just as Julian describes, the soul in those moments of praying "attuned to God." During these times of reflection in Lent, that is a profoundly simple goal in our praying, and itself a key definition of what prayer is, "the soul attuned to God."     

 

Lent 1: How many prayers do we have in the bank?

I'm reading several books over Lent. Some of them are slim but I hope making up in substance what is reduced in page count. Starting with this unambitious new volume by Sheila Upjohn, The Way of Julian oif Norwich. A Prayer Journey Through Lent.

Unambitious refers to my own choice of a book that feels like playing at home. I've been reading Julian's Revelations over the years since my first encounter in 1974 with a book that, like some of our most dependable friends, we come back to after not having seen each other for ages, and pick up as if our last encounter was yesterday. 

Sheila Upjohn is an undemanding writer. Which doesn't mean that she is in any way superficial. Already it is obvious she knows this text intimately, as you would expect from someone who translation of the Revelations is one of the most popular and accessible, without ever being trite or dumbing down the intimacy that lies at the heart of mystical theology. 

Already there is cause to pause, for thought: "It's a new thought that our prayers are stored up in heaven, and it's challenging, too, when you think how few of them there may be." Just read that again and do a quick calculation of how many prayers have been added to our prayer treasury in heaven this past week. Upjohn raises this intriguingly searching question in response to Julian's description of how gladly God receives and keeps safe each of our prayers.

Our Lord himself is the first to receive our prayer, as I see it. He takes it, full of thanks and joy, and he sends it up above and sets it in the treasury where it will never be lost. It is there before God and all his holy ones - continually heard, continually helping our needs. When we come to heaven, our prayers will be given to us as part of our delight - with endless, joyful thanks from God." (Chapter 41)

That is such a subversive description of the dynamics of prayer. Not us giving a prayer of thanks, but God giving thanks to us for our prayers. Really? Our prayers are kept in heaven and continually heard; time bound as we are we tends to think a prayer is spoken, thought or felt, and time moves on. But, says Julian, the prayer perdures, and retains its efficacy as the voice of God's child that continues to echo in praise, petition and intercession.

Upjohn is right, at least for me. This is a new way of thinking about prayer, especially for those of us often tempted to think of prayer as a functional discipline, or a conversation along contractual lines. Even allowing for the more devotional intimacy of pouring out our hearts to God in love, gratitude and worship, the idea that all those spoken words, stirred emotions and ideas given thought, are received by a glad God grateful for the gift they are, and that they are stored in heaven as God's treasure - that's an altogether different level of prayer dynamic. 

That is why Julian is such a provocative companion during Lent. She insists that joy, gratitude and love are not one way traffic, but a cycle of giver and receiver in which each enriches the other by gift exchange. Prayer is a commerce of love.  

A poem in which we overhear the gentle interrogation of the heart, by heart-stopping beauty.

First Snow

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
flitters like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills; 
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found —
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

Looking at, and looking through the ordinary, was one of Mary Oliver's gifts. This poem has a tone of breathless wonder, as the poet becomes caught up into one of nature's quietly transformative happenings. The sense of wonder is intensified by the presence of questions seeking answers, and later in the poem, answers seeking questions; but "not a single answer has been found", except it has, or so it feels. 

To read this poem through aloud, but quietly and slowly, is to begin to see and feel the miracle of snowfall. Climatologists can better describe the phenomenon in terms of science; but it is the poet who is best equipped to analyse and articulate the power of snowfall to interrogate the subjective impact of snow. The 'white rhetoric' of trillions of falling snowflakes evokes the longings, stirs questions we hadn't thought to ask, and provokes the imagination to see more than is merely visible.

Throughout the poem Oliver uses words that are uncomplicated and which are descriptive of inner responsive feelings as well as the visible phenomenon of snowfall and its pristine aftermath. "Whence such beauty and what the meaning." Oliver's poetry often acknowledges nature's mysteries, with hints at the metaphysical clues of loveliness, beauty, energy and silence. 

Once the precipitation has ended, "the silence / is immense, /and the heavens still hold / a million candles..." So the skies of heaven are cleared, and predictably awe inspiring, but the earth beneath is transformed into a magic landscape of beauty, possibility and and surprise. This poem is about quietly satisfied joy in a world where newness is not only possible but made visible in the light of a million candles. 

But it is that word "though" that is the poem's hinge that folds the earlier italicised questions to wards a kind of resolution. Not answers to the questions of the metaphysically speculative or aesthetically curious observer. But an answer more humanly resonant, that is felt rather than spoken, experienced rather than described, and that satisfies the human person's longing for wholeness and at-homeness in the world. The questions have assailed the mind and troubled the spirit; the answer is not in the earthquake of argument, or the wind of aggressive enquiry, or in the fire of logic energised by reason - but in the still small voice that can only be heard during a night walk in snowlight. Assailing questions remain with not a single answer found - but

walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.       

One further thought. Today I spent a couple of hours digging out our car, shovelling snow, clearing pavements, mine and our neighbours'. I have never resented that kind of work, least of all moving snow. There are so many compensations to snow. I have unqualified sympathy with Oliver's attempt at describing a natural spirituality of snowfall upon a landscape. Reading her poem this morning, looking out at a North East blizzard, I'm aware it isn't quite the same as snow gently falling in moonlight. But I guess we all know enough about the entrancing power of snow to sense that Oliver is expressing something of our own questions in search of an answer; and perhaps too pointing to an answer that sends us searching for the questions. Either way, this is a poem in which we overhear the gentle interrogation of the heart, by heart-stopping beauty.