Living Wittily

Trinity, Tapestry and God's Irreducible Ineffability

A couple of years ago I had a first go at trying to express theology in tapestry. I'd been reading several books on Trinitarian theology and wondered if some of the mystery and meaning of God's Triune life of love can be expressed in colour, shape and symbol. The result was this panel, now framed and hanging in our hall.

Some of it is obvious in its references and inner nudges; however overall it plays with ideas without trying to resolve them through overloaded significance. It neither seeks to explain or depict, how could words or images or sounds do that. But it does allow the play of ideas, and an expression through art however limited the mind of the artist, of the desire of intellect and heart to understand and respond as adequately as created finitude can to the One who bewilders by beauty, graces with goodness and touches the heart of all creation with truth.

"God's cognitive availability through divine revelation allows us, Irenaeus believed, to predicate descriptions of God that are true as far as we can make them, while God's irreducible ineffability nonetheless renders even our best predications profoundly inadequate" George Hunsinger, 'Postliberal Theology' in Camridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Vanhoozer, p.47

The tapestry is called Perichoresis. It is true as far as I can make it...and profoundly inadequate. Like all theology.

 

Scotland in Stitches, Bonhoeffer for Today, and a Glorious Toe Poke.

Yesterday was a day of three halves. In the morning we went ot see the Great Scottish Tapestry for the second time. The first time the Aberdeen Art Gallery was like a cultural sardine tin, with bus loads of stitchers from far and wide, so after trying for ten minutes to see some of the blessed panels, we retreated to Books and Beans (the coffee place in Aberdeen if you want something different, rustic and friendly, surrounded by used books for sale).

Yesterday it was quiet so we were able to move round this amazing exhibition with freedom, time to inspect, admire and enjoy the needlework of women from all over Scotland. Each panel has the names of those who stitched it on the explanation card below - I saw no men's names. Hmmm. Anyway there are over 150 panels each around a square metre, so we looked at the first 70 which took over an hour, and by then we had seen enough for one visit. We'll go back and complete it next week. From prehistoric Scotland to the independence debate, from the first settled migrants to modern immigration movements, from battles to treaties, churches to Toon Cooncils, from agriculture to industry to Enlightenment to heavy industry decline, characters like John Knox and James Watt, local cultures from Gaelic to Doric, lochs and mountains, thistles and heather, castles and tenements - it;s all there, and all of it imaged in cotton, wool and silk. By any standards it is an exhibition that comes from thousands of hours of work, careful organisation, long learned skills and in its complexity and completeness, a superb pictorial history of Scotland.

Late afternoon I went to the inaugural lecture of the Centre for Bonhoeffer Studies at Aberdeen University. Dr Jennifer McBride delivered a superb lecture on 'Who is Bonhoeffer for Today', in which she argued strongly against those who find in Bonhoeffer whatever they go looking for with no regard for the overall context within which Bonhoeffer lived, and spoke and wrote. For example 'religionless Christianity', ripped from context and made into a vehicle for radical, at times radically negative theology, is a phrase that can only be understood within the overall Christological context and cruciform shape of Bonhoeffer's theology.

Mcbride's major work on Bonhoeffer examines Bonhoeffer's insistence that Christian dicipleship and the church as the Body of Christ are authentic insofar as they engage with the world, and do so as expressions of the Lordship of the incarnate and crucified Jesus. One of the genuinely creative points she made was to warn the church against a moral triumphalism by which Christian communities see themselves as the moral and ethical judges of society. The church rather, is the Body of the Christ who took upon himself the sins of the world, and was 'numbered with the transgressors'. Far from being the judge and moral watchdog of society, the church is to be a community of repentance, acknowledging its solidarity with human social and public life in all its ethical co0mplexity and compromise, confessing its implication in the structures of sin, and witnessing to an alternative way of being which expresses repentance as turning away from the practices of domination to the practices of redemptive action, and these based on a discipleship of the crucified, risen Lord, whose life they embody. That at any rate was what I took away, and it provides much to ponder. (Jennifer McBride's book is just released as paperback at £15 - the hardback was £50 - this is a substantial reclaiming of Bonhoeffer for a theology both culturally critical and christologically confessional. I've already got mine ordered).

As I said, it was a day of three halves. The third one was the five-a-side football, my regular Friday night chance to shine with a slowly diminishing brilliance! I scored a long range spectacular toe-poke, after which it would not be true to say the boy done good, my conribution better described in the famous Alan Hansen phrase, 'ordinary and lacklustre'. But it was fun - and overall a day of three good halves.

The Colossians Christology Tapestry - Progress Report

I'm sitting listening to Karl Jenkins' Armed man: Mass for Peace, and right now the Gloria is loudly and splendidly defying the grey last day in January morning. I've also been working on the new tapestry which for the moment I'm calling the Christology tapestry. Don't laugh, at least not yet. I mentioned what this is all about in an earlier post over here.

The tapestry is slowly emerging from a daily living with the text of Colossians 1.15-20. The colours and emerging form are inevitably taking on some definition, and once ideas are worked into it they stay there. You can't paint over a tapestry, and you can't unstitch one worked on fine canvas with stranded cotton, so once the stitches are sewn, they stay. Of course there's risk and choice involved in a freehand work, though as it progresses the freedom and the choices are slowly constrained by previous work.  So certain colours are beginning to give shape, texture, character, and fixity to ideas which themselves emerge from reflective thought, mood and feeling, unconscious memory, personal preferences from previous choices, and so it goes on.

This is a fascinating experiment in close reading. I've read the passage often now, slowly as in lectio divina. I've studied it and taken notes from a number of commentaries, and currently working with J D G Dunn's commentary on the Greek text. At times I find myself chasing reference to other biblical references, or working out my own views on the importance of the prepositions, or the parallels with OT wisdom, and so on.

Other times there is the sheer beauty of the imagery, and the theological refreshment of browsing in a text that is profoundly formative of Christian vision, giving urgency to spiritual imagination and lifting devotion into adoration. Then again I've consulted several scholarly articles delving into background, semantic puzzles, literary structure, Pauline theology, history of interpretation, and then gone back and read it again in the new light -  - and all of this bringing the text to life, opening up a theological vista which opens up the mind, and then comes to the point of a needle with thread!

Anyway. Reading Dunn's comments about the Colossian hymn this morning Ifound this:

  "...it is important to realisethat this is not the lanaguage of clinical analysis but of poetic imagination, precisely the medium where a quantum leap across disparate categories can be achieved by use of unexpected metaphor, where the juxtaposition of two categories from otherwise unrelated fields can bring an unlooked for flash of insight."  The Epistles to Colossians and Philemon. NIGTC (Grand rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) 93.

That's as good a description of the proper use of metaphor as I know.

When Infinity Dwindles to Infancy...And God's Final Word is Spoken

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In his comment on yesterday's post Graeme wonders if "trying to imagine the invisible being made visible" might be the aim of my new tapestry. And if so maybe an empty canvas would best depict the mystery of Christology. Yes, and no. Yes in the sense that the Colossian hymn is about the pre-existent coming into existence, the Creator becoming a creature, what the poet calls 'infinity dwindled to infancy', and yes, the invisible becoming visible - which all sounds like paradox as escape route.

Therefore no, I'm not trying to make the invisible visible by an empty canvas because incarnation is revelation, and the last Word God has spoken, in the sense of ultimate, final, definitive and therefore effective in accomplishing that for which He is sent, is the person of Jesus. Thus the Colossian Christology is both mystery and revelation, glory and humility, splendour and tragedy, as the one who made all things comes into that which was called into being by Love, and in the midst of brokenness and fragmentation, reconciles all things to himself making peace by the blood of the cross.Not paradox then, but both and, both mystery and revelation.

So an empty canvas won't do, at least not for me. But neither would one in which the content was so specific and sure of itself, so settled and certain, so tidy and predictable that it becomes the mere human image of that which in unimaginable. So perhaps the canvas which does indeed hold all things together in any tapestry, nevertheless supports a content that seeks to imagine, understand and represent that which elsewhere Paul urges as impossible but imperative, "to know the love that surpasses knowledge". But Graeme's question is a cautionary reminder that all art, from the written to the painted, the sculpture to the photo, the tapestry to the woodwork, are sacraments of thought and devotion, mere finite feeling after the infinite. But when it comes to worship, the word "mere" doesn't mean insignificant, but on the contrary indicates those activities and responses which are the telling evidence that God has put eternity in human hearts. 

The photo is taken 30 miles south of Fort William, another of those moments when mystery and gratitude, wonder and worship, merge into praise.

Christ who goes before us, walking on nail pierced feet

For various reasons I've found myself reading in and around some of the parts of the Bible that were written out of suffering, loss, and the disequilibrium that can unsettle what we thought were the more secure anchorages. Harvey Cox's commentary on Lamentations in the Belief Commentary series is more a commentary on the experiences which generated the text than the text itself; which makes it a brilliant and illuminating companion when wandering through the dark nights of the soul of that text, written with blood and smudged with the tears of those whose world disintegrated before their eyes.

Sam Ballentine's commentary on Job is a masterpiece of theological reflection rooted in the text and nurtured by a faith unafraid of questions, and a sympathy with human perplexity and pain that turns theological erudition into an education in existential courage. And then there is Isaiah, those chapters from 40 onwards, hopefully imaginative, scornful of cynical realism, scintillating both in its visions of the incomparable and transcendent God, and in its demolition of the entire structures of idolatry and imperial power games.

All three compositions are work of the highest art. Which brings me to why I'm writing this. Re-reading the poet Christian Wiman's Ambition and Survival I came across this passage which I marked.

'John Ruskin..writes in Sesame and Lilies:

"the more beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the work of people who feel themselves wrong; - who are striving for the fulfilment of the law, and the grasp of a loveliness, which they have not yet attained, which they feel even farther and farther from attaining the more they strive for it."

 There is a sense in which all art arises out of injury or absence, out of the artist's sense that there is something missing in him [or her].'

The connections between beauty and the wrongness of the world, between human losss and incompletion and creativity, are powerful, mysterious and defiant of our best explanations, which makes them often a source of further perlexity. Out of such human turmoil as inspired the poet who wrote Lamentations; out of such personal catastrophe when life's deepest ties are torn apart and explanations merely add to the anguish, comes a masterpiece of world literature like the book of Job; and out of such broken spiritual hopes and national humiliation, when exile in an alien culture is  a relentless reminder that hope is suppressed by imperial hegemony, there erupts Isaiah's poetry of passion and power, of liberation coming with the certainty of Divine promise and, renewal envisioned on the scale of the God who is the Eternal and the Creator. Such beautiful art, the distilled essence of faith crushed like grapes for wine, and bearing a hope that springs from the same seeds, to grow again and turn into the wine of God's Kingdom - such beauty from brokenness.

And perhaps, with all our current fascination with words like discipleship and discipling, there is a deep corrective truth to be recovered; from the same root comes the word discipline. There is in Jesus call to discipleship a cross to be borne, a way to be travelled and a sacrifice of self made possible only because the weight of the Cross is more than balanced by the power of the resurrection. And when faith becomes weight-bearing, the great mystery of the Gospel is that our strength to follow the way of the Cross comes from the living Christ, who goes before us, walking on nail pierced feet, but as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith; the living Christ in whom we live and move and have our being; the living Christ of whom Paul wrote "I am crucified with Christ; I live yet not I, but Christ lives within me; and the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son  of God who loved me, and gave himself for me". 

The photo is of the Shalom tapestry, a visual exegesis of selected psalms.

The Shalom Tapestry and Shalom as Vocation.

The Shalom tapestry is coming along slowly.

          Peace Haiku

     Shalom comes slowly,

     each stitch hand-crafted  prayer,

     for mercy, peace, love.

For a couple of months now I have lived with the form and the content of this beautiful strange and life-enhancing word. The quest for shalom means seeking well-being of heart and body, discovering energy and resilience to live faithfully and creatively for God, receiving from the Holy Spirit the freedom to trust our imagination to envision healing and wholeness and justice for our world.

This small  tapestry (4 inches by three) is part of a bigger project. When finished it will be the small panel at the bottom of a larger, brasher celebration of Shalom based on rainbow colours. Working with these Hebrew characters, and the English letters in the larger panel, is an experiment in contrast, construction and compassion. This small panel is entirely impressionistic. I love the sound of the word Shalom – the threads impossibly try to give sight to the sound as I say it or hear it spoken; the colours depict mood which you may rightly say is likewise impossible, but the attempt is still important; sometimes while working it I listen to music, carefully chosen music. So reader, what music should be played when stitching Shalom?

During the last two months of stitching Shalom I have prayed for Malala Yousafzai and Afghanistan; for Palestinian people and Jewish settlers; for children, teachers and families in Newtown Massachusets, and for children and families in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan; for people close to me struggling with the life they are living or trying to survive, and for others I hardly know but whose hurt makes prayer and work for Shalom both an enacted imperative and an essential attribute of spiritual integrity.

To seek Shalom and pursue it, to be a Shalom maker, to recognise again the words of Jesus ‘my Shalom I leave with you’, to lie within reach of and to trust the Shalom that passes all understand ding – not a bad way to live really, or to really live.And during Advent to share the longings of millions for peace on earth and mercy mild....

Tapestry: Using Colour, Shape and Design as a Form of Exegesis

Working on the design for a new tapestry. I think Greek script in the New Testament is a beautiful form of writing. Several NT Greek words have profound resonance in Christian thought and experience. I am exploring ways of using colour and shape to give visual texture to those resonances, while at the same time wondering if colour and shape have any contribution to an exegesis of key words in theology and spirituality. 

So I spent a while drafting a design, choosing colours and now just seeing what builds. But while stitching each letter, and therefore looking closely at these words, slowly giving shape, choosing colour, co-ordinating action of fingers and vision, I am wondering what the contemplative patience of such work contributes to a deeper appropriation of a text.

Whether such a visual medium contributes to the meaning of the text would require a much more technical discussion of hermeneutics, theological asthetics, liturgical symbolism and iconography. I've no such ambitions. Working tapestry is a form of meditative activity, which may at times draw the heart into contemplative attentiveness, the controlled freedom that comes from serious engagement with and receptiveness before the text. That said, there's something different about designing a tapestry around the form of a script, the shape of letters and words, and allowing that treatment to be shaped by theological presuppositions about the meaning of the words. What would be interesting is whether anything new emerges from a several week process of concentrated creative work focused on the form of the letters and words.

So we'll see what comes of it. For those interested I work in stranded cotton, blending the colours like paint on a pallette, and use a minimum of 22 points to the inch canvas.

Cross - stitch theology: "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world".

Just completed the latest tapestry - this time of the triumphant Lamb. It's based on the image of the Lamb on the covers of the recently reprinted volumes of John Howard Yoder. I tried some creative adaptation and intentional uses of colour to enrich and deepen the symbolism. The cross, the eucharistic cup, the bleeding wound and the banner of the Lamb are each christological referents. The ground on which the lamb stands is a God loved world, won by love not conquered by power, the blood of the lamb making peace, and the life of the world renewed by mercy.

The stitch work is a mixture of half cross stitch and goebelin. It's an interesting exercise in contemplative rumination on a Scripture symbol, to work a tapestry that is a combination of received symbol and creative playing with colour, and to dwell with such enriched ideas over a time.

This one is for a friend, for whom the slain lamb is the defining symbol of his spirituality. The primary themes of such spiritual commitment are justice, peace, reconciliation, the confrontation of power with gentleness, the imperative of speaking truth to power, the theological and ethical no to violence and coercion that lies at the heart of the cross, the Lamb as a summons to a different and dissident kind of discipleship.

If you have time, inclination and no other priorities you might do worse than Behold the Lamb of God!

Most of the slim paperback re-issues of John Howard Yoder's work have the symbol of the victorious Lamb slain displayed on the front cover. It is a powerful image going back to the early church, but re-appropriated within traditions which emphasise peace, peacemaking and non violence. The Book of Revelation has in the midst of the throne, not the emperor, and not the image of power, might and force, but the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. I guess that image is just too subversive, too threatening to power, too ludicrous as a political vision, and just too impractical as a religious option, for it to have had widespread adoption as a central motif of Christian theology, spirituality, ethics or political practice. 

My latest tapestry, which is being worked for a friend who stands within that tradition, is an attempt to work this image using purple, gold and red, and framed in a broad goebelin stitch border incorporating these colours representing sacrifice, love and majesty - thereby subverting the majesty of power by using its primary symbolic colours of power and spectacle to convey an entirely different kind of power, strength and purpose.

"Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." I still remember those days at college working through C K Barrett's commentary on John, and fumbling my way through the Greek lexicon, comparing the uses John the Evangelist made of that great invitation and command to see, "Behold...." - it's a good word, a take your time word, a get ready to see something new word, a would you stop twittering and tweeting and start looking at life with eyes open and mouth shut long enough to hear and see life changing truth. "Behold!".

One of the by products of freehand tapestry is a process that combines contemplative patience with creative practice. Bringing a symbol into being as a manufactured (ironically the word means made by hand!) artifact is itself a form of beholding, a way of not only seeing but of expressing vision, a slow intentional absorption of the varied meanings and memories of a symbol that resides deep in the mind and heart of the Church.

(The painting is Caravaggio, John the Baptist Holding a Sheep).

Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole and the joy of tapestry

Just completed a tapestry of this picture. It's a detailed aspect of Strawberry Hill, the Gothic Castle built in Twickenham by Sir Horace Walpole in the 18th Century. It has since been incorporated into St Mary's University College, and was the place where Pope Benedict addressed thousands of Catholic young people during his recent visit to the UK. Below is a fuller picture.

I spent some time reading Walpole's letters some years ago while researching the life of Hannah More, the bluestocking evangelical playright, committed Tory and writer of moralistic tracts that now read like politically combustible material!

Walpole's Letters are rightly valued as amongst the finest examples of the genre, because Walpole combines literary lightness of touch with imaginative and informative comment, laced with spontaneity and wit, and all the time he is self-revealing in his thoughts and feelings, providing a rich tapestry of detail on the social and cultural conventions of18th Century life. Oh, and the letters can now be downloaded free to my Kindle - which is easier than burrowing in the basement of Aberdeen University Library for the hard to find Correspondence of Hannah More and the relegated multi-volume set of Walpole's letters :))