Living Wittily

Learning Latin and Learning Hope from Van Gogh and Levertov

As often, when I am looking for words of substance I turn to poetry from one of those poets who have been my companion for a long time. Denise Levertov is one whose work I have read and pondered, for a long time. Some of it is worth pondering, some was so immediate, so woven with context that its fabric quickly fades with time. One reason Levertov is to be cherished is that, at her best, her poetry has a long view, she understands the importance of time and patience in the formation and growth of hope. This was a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve, and who wrote her heart in her poems. And the longer life went on the more she became a poet whose political and ethical vision burned with moral passion and compassion. From her opposition to the Vietnam war, the atrocities in Cambodia, El Salvador, Iraq, and global threats of nuclear armaments, ecological crises and economic injustices, she wrote with anger, pity, love, and with hope. For Levertov, hope is inherently patient, involves waiting, summons us to take the long view, literally, longing for hope.

I remember my first year of learning Latin at school I came across the little word "diu", meaning "for a long time". I never forgot it, I liked it from the first day I learned it. Perhaps the sense of permanence, the longevity and spaciousness of time implied by those three letters, "diu", for a long time, appealed to a boy with his own hopes and forward looking into a future yet to come. Levertov's poem For the New Year 1981 is a poem about hope, the patient multiplication of gestures that take the long view and make space in human hearts and relatedness for hope. The Van Gogh painting becomes self explanatory after reading the poem

For the New year 1981 

I have a small grain of hope—
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source—
clumsy and earth-covered—
of grace.

–Denise Levertov

Rublev and Vermeer as Conversation Partners.

This Vermeer painting hangs beside my desk. Above it is the Rublev Trinity icon. Vermeer and Rublev, a century or two apart, but at cultural poles; and as two of the greatest exponents of their particular art forms, they took their gift and technique to new levels in these two paintings.

Sometimes art can be devalued by too much scrutiny. If something strikes us as beautiful or meaningful, at that precise and gifted moment, analysis is quite literally, a waste of time. We are arrested by a painting, summoned from well practiced but desultory routine by an interruption which demands and receives our full attention. Questions why or how can wait as we attend to the encounter itself.

Once a painting becomes familiar, because it has been gazed upon a thousand times, glanced at or noticed thousands more, and has become a piece of the mental furniture in our personal space, there is little need for analysis. That annoyingly banal, or dismissive phrase so beloved of celebs and sales executives comes into its own as an aesthetic recognition: "It is what it is".

I've lived with the Rublev for decades, and the work of Vermeer for near twenty years. The biggest book in the house is Serena Cant's Vermeer and His World, 1632-1675. It's 45cm x 35cm x 2.5cm! It provides thoughtful, deeply informed comment of each of Vermeer's paintings. His technique, colour choice, extraordinary detail in portraying the ordinary, human interest,innovative and astonishing brushwork - all of that and much more are explained and pointed out.

From this book that requires a large coffee table to read it, I have learned much of the how, and perhaps a little of the why, of beauty, and found some kind of explanation for the 'won't take no for an answer' quality of those paintings that appeal to us, summon us, require of us a degree of attention we reserve for those people and places and objects we truly and finally love.

Art is such a personal thing, a matter of taste we reckon. Which is why there is all the difference in the world between a nice picture, and a painting that is not primarily there for decoration, but for conversation, and at some deeper levels of emotion and thought, communion. These two paintings are not there as conversation pieces, but as conversation partners, from whom I learn much and whose presence is gift in the present continuous.

I like this call to worship......

The following is taken from an order of service for First Baptist Church of Ithaca from July 7. I like the call to worship - its realism, biblical echoes and the prayer that says most of what most of us want to say most of the time.

 

And Moses said, "I am slow of speech and slow of tongue..."

All: But God sent him anyway

Jeremiah said "I am just a boy..."

All: But God spoke through him anyway

mary was perplexed by the angel's visit

All: But God still invited her to give birth to Jesus

God invites us to understand that we have gifts and we are needed;

whether old or young; tired or energetic; quick or slow;

whoever we are, however we are.

All: We hear your call O God. We have come.

 

PRAYER

Holy One we come to you, for we need healing.

We come to you for we need teaching.

We come to you for we need leading.

As we gather; as we sing; as we pray; as we listen; as we speak.

May we open ourselves to your balm, your blessing, your word,

Amen

The painting is a detail from Michaelangelo's Sistine Ceiling.

A Trinitarian Theology of Art and an Eschatology of Aesthetics.

Now I have to say at the start of this post - it won't appeal to everyone's theological interests; it's a bit obscure; you may end up wondering "what's the point, Jim"? So if you're not into reflection on the connections between art and Trinitarian theology, aesthetics and dogmatics, human creativity and contingency on the one hand and Divine creativity and eschatological telos on the other (I speak anthropomorphically!), then if you've had enough already, click elsewhere now!

What I have in mind touches on a number of strategically placed theological flying buttresses: imago dei, creation, providence, the Triune nature of God and the incarnation. I got to thinking all this when reading an essay entitled Art: A Trinitarian Imperative by Brian Horne. The main argument is that there is that in human nature and existence which is compelled to create, to express, to articulate in sound or vision, in music, word, image or object, to bring into existence that which is born within. The image of God in human being and experience is expressive; and this for two reasons.

First, the incarnate Word is the revelation of the kenotic outgoing love, enfleshed in a human life, made material, a true representation of the imago dei. The human artist exhibits the imago dei, and echoes the materiality of the incarnation in the musical notation of the concerto, the accumulated precision of brush strokes, the toilsomely shaped sculpture, the organisation of letters and words into meanings articulated, communicated and more or less comprehended. Secondly, and this is Horne's point, such a process, expressive of the divine radiance, is the human will responding freely to the movement of the Holy Spirit.' In other words art is an inner impetus towards creation originating in the human imaging of God, but that impetus and its creative expression in aesthetic articulation is the work of the Spirit of God, the creative, formative power of a love that brings into being.

This is an exciting line of thought for me. two of my main interests in theology are exploring the tradition of Christian Trinitarian thought, and seeking connections between art and theology. Horne is arguing that the divine mystery of the Trinity involves the radical immanence of the Holy Spirit, the ultimate transcendence of the Father, and 'the union of these two modes of being in the expressive form of the Incarnate Son. And from that Trinitarian standpoint he concludes that the Holy Spirit and human inspiration towards expressive art, are deeply and intentionally related in the essential created and creative nature of human beings. Quoting Von Balthasar whose pneumatology affirms the role of the Spirit as the on who mediates the glory of God, "Since the Spirit Himself is the glorification of the love between thre Father and the Son, wherein God's true glory disclosed itself to us, it is likewise only he who can bring about glorification in the world."

The idea that human art and expressiveness is inspired by, has its origins in the Holy Spirit, and echoes the divine creative impulse towards that which is loved, an urgent love which dwells in and flows from the eternal communion of the Triune God, is a powerful theological argument for artistic expression, skilled manufacture, and the sanctification of the impulse to create that which is beautiful, true and good. Horne finishes this intriguing essay:

"Since self-expressive energy has been revealed to us as the very structure of the life of God, it cannot be an activity which is optional in the life of creatures who are made in that image: it is a Trinitarian imperative. We may not choose not to create if we are to be human."

In answer to the imagined question at the start of the post, "That's my point, Jim". The Triune God of love, in whose image we are created, by whose love we are redeemed, and by whose Spirit we live and move and have our being, empowers and enables that which, in the words of a dear friend, words she uses often to end her prayers, 'Lord, bless us and make us for blessing, and wholeness and joy" Amen to that sister!

The photos on this post were taken in Amsterdam and Vienna. Van Gogh's bedroom is for me one of the most poignant and joyful portrayals of home, not only as place, but as safe space and comfortable place. The butterfly, that fragile glory of life that images transformation and resurrection, is a photo I waited a long time to take, because butterflies are not the most obliging models of God's created masterpieces. The close-up of Raphael's Madonna of the Meadows tries to capture, and all too inadequately, the most beautiful face I have seen on canvas. And the statue of Mozart in Vienna, overlooking the musical flower bed, gave me a photo that in its own quirky way celebrates a musician whose music is one of the aesthetic wonders of the world, and will be, according to one of my best friends, 'the music played in heaven.' I can go with that - Mozart's music, oh and maybe some Tallis, and Beethoven, and....well, heaven's a big place and time isn't a problem, let's just wait and see, and hear, and touch, and smell, and all to our taste.

Martha and Mary; The Genius of Vermeer

A friend introduced me to Vermeer's art some years ago, and ever since I've shared the enthusiasm for his work, each painting a masterpiece in its own right. I've seen several of them, and Jesus in the Home of Martha and Mary (in the National Galleries of Scotland) is the only surviving work on a biblical theme.

The detail is astonishing from the thread work of the table cover, the woven basket, the folds of the drapery and the understated and uncluttered background. The biblical narrative is itself vivid, emotionally charged, relationally tense, and I personally find it's resolution not entirely satisfying. My sympathies lie firmly with Martha, and if she is guilty of flustered activism on behalf of the guest, then Mary's concentrated attention also ignores the problem of bread. Who baked that loaf? You can't eat contemplation! And I think Vermeer is well aware that the bread at the centre is freighted with ambiguity, daily bread and eucharist. Hallowed be thy name is balanced in the Lord's prayer by give us this day our daily bread, - a balanced life requires both - bread and eucharist, action and contemplation, work and rest, physical and spiritual.

Vermeer I think is aware of the tensions of unfairness, contrasting temperaments, different ways of saying welcome, and the ambiguity and diversity of devotion which swings between rapt contemplation and the sweat and flour encrusted hands of the kitchen. Amongst the interesting but unanswerable questions is why Vermeer chose this incident from the Gospel? Perhaps because he is the finest artist of domestic detail and the immense human significance of the ordinary routines of home life. The painting is a wonderful commentary on the incarnation, a depiction of the Word become flesh, and a celebration of relationships which always have to be negotiated, understood and open to the necessary caution of not jumping to conclusions about what the other person is thinking, feeling and trying so hard to achieve.

 

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.