Easter Journeys

The Way of the Cross. 

Lent is a good time to step outside your comfort zone and challenge yourself. I've never been much drawn towards the challenge of giving up chocolate, alcohol or puddings. I see the point, but it doesn't grab me. I'm more motivated by "time and effort" rather than "stuff", so I tend to have a similar approach to Lenten fasting. This year, I have given up some of the more fun things I generally get up to online - photo challenges over at b3ta, for instance, or gaming at Newgrounds, and instead using the time to put together an online meditation on one of the Stations of the Cross for the BigBible.org.uk's "Easter Journeys" project.


A group of people involved in BigBible put together an online service of 9 Lessons and Carols over Christmas and suggested an Easter project based around the Stations of the Cross and the Stations of the Resurrection. Now my church background does not include either of these sets of Stations as part of its tradition, and that is why this project appealed to me. I was drawn towards the station of the cross which depicts Veronica wiping Jesus' face, as this is a scene not preserved in the Gospel accounts but existed in early apocryphal texts and is preserved through Christian tradition - again, going against my evangelical upbringing of focussing solely on Biblical texts. I decided to limit my research to simply finding out the facts of what was being depicted, pray and meditate upon it for a while, then see what emerged. The end result is based around a theme common to many commentaries on this station of the Cross: responding to suffering in love, and in doing so, revealing the face of Christ.

Tradition has it that the image of Jesus' face miraculously appeared on the cloth which Veronica used to wipe the blood, sweat and tears from his face. I have taken a deeper meaning from this scene: in responding with mother-love to Christ's suffering in such a practical way, the true image of Christ is revealed in Veronica's act of loving-kindness.

The Music
I wrote the music for this presentation first. I need something slow and plodding, reflecting Jesus struggling to lug the Cross and the relentless progress to crucifixion. The structure of the story I was going to tell wasn't clear, but somehow the music wrote itself. Music comes easily to me, but the structure of the imagery was less clear at first.

The Images
Two images stood out to me: Veronica seeing Jesus in need. Veronica reaching out to him with a towel, or veil or whatever was to hand to meet his need. I decided I needed eyes and hands as the basis of the visual narrative, and it seemed to me that using the eyes and hands of women would reflect the practical mother's love aspect of Veronica's encounter with Jesus. So I put out a call via Facebook and Twitter for photographs. This request was met with quite a few questions from female friends on Facebook who wondered what lay behind it. Not everyone who offered to let me use their images is a Christian by any means, and that was important to me too: we can see the image of Jesus reflected in all acts of love because God, in creating humans in His own image, is the source of love itself. We don't have to label love "Christian love" - love is love: Christians merely know the source, we do not own the rights to all that springs from it.

Putting it together

There were times when I seriously doubted this would work. I used freeware for all the visuals on this, and part of the music track. For those who like to know, photographs were treated using Gimp, the video material was composed in Microsoft Movie Maker, the music was written using Sibelius and mastered (and had reverb and other effects added) in Audacity. In the meantime, the co-ordinator of the project requested volunteers to make other design elements, so I put together the avatar which you see towards the top of this blog entry.

So what do we learn from Veronica?
Well, tradition has it that she was the women whom Jesus had, earlier, healed of a haemorrhage. In that account, we see someone who acted in faith and was healed. She touched Jesus's cloak , hoping to go unnoticed, remain anonymous in the crowd, though things turned out rather differently with Jesus seeking her out and praising her faith. Yet here, amid the very public humiliation of the crucifixion, Veronica steps out of the crowd and offers Jesus a little comfort. In touching his cloak, she was healed: her image was restored. In wiping his face with her cloth, Veronica reveals the true image of Jesus: his image will not die with his crucifixion, nor be merely preserved on her cloth. The image of Jesus will continue to be made known through acts of loving kindness, a reflection of the image of God within all of us.

My online meditation upon Veronica Wipes Jesus' Face will be posted here and on BigBible from Good Friday. 

The Transfiguration

Mark Ch. 9 v1-13 - The Transfiguration.
Why did Jesus tell Peter, James and John not to tell anyone about the transfiguration they had just witnessed? This was a very personal revelation about Jesus - a private glimpse of the glory of the Word made flesh to very close friends. Like Lent itself, the transfiguration is only truly understood in the light of Easter. God's glory shone through the flesh and blood of Jesus on the mountain as a foretaste of what we can expect when we, transformed into the image of Christ, shine with that same glorious light. 
We too shall see Jesus as he truly is, and ourselves as we truly are.


Don't Tell.


Don't tell. 
I know you've just seen the most amazing things, 
But don't tell.


Yes, Peter, James and John,
You saw me on the mountain
Revealed among the brightest light
Of creation exploding into being;
Of being spoken into being
By the Word of God
Which, you are gradually coming to realise,
Is who I am.
But don't tell.


It's not that I don't realise
What a mind-blowing experience
The three of you have just had,
But, hard as it is
To pass up the chance to say you were there
And saw all that:
Don't tell.


Elijah and Moses, 
Both revealed as part of the story
Of God's revelation as I spoke to them there,
But both illuminated by my greater glory,
That must have appeared odd.
Very odd. 
And I can tell from Peter's embarrassed blurtings
About setting up three tents
That you don't really get it yet.
So don't tell.


It's not your fault:
There's an important bit of the story
Which hasn't happened yet.
So please, while you don't yet see the whole story
(Because it is still being told)
While you only get glimpses of who I am,
While you grapple in the dark, 
Awaiting revelation,
Don't tell.


Don't tell...
Until the Son of Man is risen from the dead
And the story is fully told,
Then you can tell


In fact,
Then you can tell,
Then you must tell.


Tell everyone.

Lent Meditation II

LENT

Lead into a far deserT
Encountering heaveN
Needing prayer alonE
To ponder future helL

A Lent Meditation I

I came away from the Ash Wednesday service at Ripon Cathedral with this, moved and inspired by the liturgy and by the words of Fr. Nick Buxton who preached tonight. Any theological oddnesses are most likely mine rather than his, however.




The Longer Lent


Ash Wednesday.
Waiting in line to receive and wear
An ashen cross. A sign
Of saying sorry, yet more:
Of meaning sorry, and knowing
Somehow, this is just the start,
A part
Of a longer Lent.


A Lent longer 
Than the forty days it opens.
Wilderness days of reflection,
Journey to death and resurrection.
Walk of faith, no more, no less
Significant than those other times
Of Jesus' life,
Part of the whole.


Incarnation, ministry, sacrifice,
First fruits of resurrection life -
These all and more are
Facets of the Christ
In which we glimpse His glory,
See the Father;
See what we, by grace
Might be transformed into.


This glimpsing, glancing, grasping at
An image never fully seen
Is in itself a Lent:
A waiting time
Of seeking God in prayer;
Of forgiveness, celebrated;
Of being marked by the Cross,
The sign of Christ.


A time of walking
Towards that Cross,
Towards that tomb;
Towards Easter,
Towards Jesus,
The dead and risen Christ.


That is the Christian journey:
The longer Lent. 

On why the Church should stand up for Science a little more.

I was reading an article on the Guardian's website about how scientists are fearing a 'return to the Dark Ages' as vested business interests effectively buy influence over governments (notably the US) in order to overlook overwhelming scientific evidence which is contrary to their commercial interests when developing legislation and public policy.

This change in culture may be one which defines a key difference between the 20th and 21st centuries: the former being partly characterised by western civilisation seeing science as a pro-active and largely positive tool for human advancement whereas the current century may well see those same western cultures becoming increasingly sceptical about scientific discoveries and returning to a model of merely asserting truths based on cherry-picked (if any) evidence as the basis of science without any kind of published, peer reviewed, controlled, duplicable experimental data. Indeed, the danger is that a culture of mistrust of science in general builds up so that any hint of scientific basis behind an argument is actually seen as a negative. The anti-science movement is in full swing and is in danger of building up momentum.

Why should the Church be concerned about this? Well, quite aside from the fact that I think everyone ought to be concerned about the specific issues under discussion in that article, the Church should be taking a lead in standing up for truth in all its forms. And by Church (with a capital letter), I mean its members and prevailing culture. Me and people like me, in other words.

There's a problem here, in that the wider presumption is that science and faith will always be on opposite sides of the fence. This is how it publicly plays out for the most part, at least in popular media portrayal and - sadly - in public utterances from some clergy, too. And there may well be good reason for arguments and discussions on issues where the two spheres overlap, but the right of science to explore truth is important because truth itself is. Interestingly, both science and faith suffer from either partial- or mis-reporting in the press. The problem basically is that kaleidoscopically technical arguments in both disciplines don't often translate into the simple, primary-coloured pictures of print media or the sound-bites needed for the breakfast TV sofa. Another reason why a more nuanced understanding of complex issues should be defended by all sides. For instance, it would have been good to see some significant Church figures wading in to point out the fatuousness of attacking Richard Dawkins on the basis of having slave-owners in his ancestry. The Church of England itself hardly has clean hands on that one, for a start, let alone the whole issue of "So what?". I mean, I'm no Darwinian expert, but I'm pretty sure that being a slave-owner is not a genetically transmissible trait.

Throughout the last century, science did indeed provide humankind with enormous benefits, but it unleashed monsters too: weapons of mass destruction at the extreme end, and things with unforeseen consequences or which we needed to devise new structures to control, or work out the moral side of at the other. For instance, contraception is one area in which faith and science have each had a lot to bring to the discussion. The contraceptive pill put women in greater control of their bodies and was broadly welcomed by the Church of England. However, contraception was keenly discussed as a potential tool in eugenics earlier in the same century. (And, having thus annoyed people on both sides of the argument, can I point out that these are just two of the plethora of points to be made on either side of that one - I'm not equating Christianity with one and Science with the other, here!).

The lesson from this is that neither Science nor the Church can appeal to its own history for justification and we should most probably stop beating each other with historically informed sticks. Glass-houses and stones, and all that.

So should the Church be on the side of science, come what may? Of course not. Issue by issue, discovery by discovery, we should be engaging in the discussion of the moral and social impact of science's discoveries and similarly, engaging in discussion about the limits of appropriate areas of research. But we must defend science as an honest, truthful human endeavour, and challenge where we see it being misrepresented through partial or incorrect use of data or distorting its conclusions to fit a different agenda. Frankly this is so widespread as to make it feel like you're wasting your time in pointing out errors, but a good start is to be a bit more critical and science-savvy yourself. Try to ask yourself "Where's the data for this?" when you read a science-based story, or to mentally at least question whether a claimed cause and effect can truly be said to be linked. I have to say that, having brought my daughters up with this approach, I've made a rod for my own back. They've been brought up on a mixture of the Bible and Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science' when it comes to questioning the world around them which makes for keeping their Dad on his toes but also for some quite inspiring scepticism when it comes to cosmetic ads.
For an interesting take from a chemist on cosmetic ads, this is worth a read.

The flip side of that is that we should also be brave enough to challenge our theology in the light of science. My own denomination, the Church of England appeals to Scripture, Tradition and Reason in its approach to truth. As the blogger Archbishop Cranmer comments today, one of the reasons why Anglicans don't do unity particularly well is that we aren't papal in our decision-making structure, but rather have this more collegiate, synod-based model where local areas are left to prayerfully work out how their local tradition and their reasonings mix in with scripture to come to some kind of answer. A pig's ear? At times, yes. But one I am rather at home in.

As an Anglican, therefore, I defend Reason wherever it is found and, especially, where doing so makes me uncomfortable or challenges me to weigh what is discovered against scripture and tradition. This is a healthy tension to have in ones faith, but seldom a cosy one.

And may the Lord save us from being too cosy.

The Table

The Table

'Twas the night before Christmas
And all through a stable
A man was attempting
To construct a table.
In spite of his skill
At the carpentry trade
His tools on a workbench
In Nazareth were laid.

The manger in which
All the fodder was scattered
Seemed solid enough
And that was what mattered.
For that was the main thing:
A solid, safe cradle
Was needed in case
Of a birth in that stable.

But Joseph got busy
And lashed up some poles
And some planks with some rope
That he'd found by the foals
And managed to make
A table, quite steady
And sturdy enough
In case baby was ready.

The night passed and
Jesus was born in that place.
The table lay, unused,
But stood, just in case.
Visitors came
And were slightly perplexed:
When attempting to use it,
Young Joseph got vexed.

The point of the table
Was not clear to them;
Was not clear to Joseph
Nor all Bethlehem.
But Joseph was certain,
Could feel in his gut,
That a table was key
To events in this hut.

The women said, "Typical!
Building and fussing, and
Making that thing
While Mary was pushing!"
Joseph, however, stayed
Faithful and still,
Content in his knowledge
That this was God's will.

Joseph had heard
The right message, it's true
And acted upon it
But hadn't a clue
That his timing was out:
No table required
For the birth of God's son
Whom the shepherds admired.

But the Body and Blood
Came to earth on that day
In that stable
In the form of a babe in the hay.
And the table came later.
It bore bread and wine.
When Christ died for all
It remained as a sign.

Advent, week 1. A story reflected.

December 1st: God sent the angel Gabriel to visit a young woman.
Her name was Mary.

As we drove home along the slow, undulating, winding B roads it really was pitch black outside. The kids were just about asleep and my wife was nodding off in the passenger seat beside me. Suddenly there was a presence over my shoulder outside the car, barely visible in my peripheral vision. You take your eyes off that road at your peril in daylight, let alone late at night....

December 2nd: She was scared. She had never seen an angel before.

...and yet I allowed myself a glance out of the side window. It was a snowy owl, wings outstretched and keeping pace with the car as we both swooped downhill. It could only have been ten feet away, possibly less, and the sight was magnificent: such grace and beauty in flight. I woke the rest of the car and told them to look. They all managed to catch sight of the owl before it banked off into the fields. We all felt we had seen something very special.

December 3rd: Gabriel said, "Don't be afraid. You are very special to God."

When we got home, not long after, as we got ready for bed, my youngest child told me, "That was awesome, Daddy. It was like something magical. Or in a film, like CGI.". I agreed. I think we all dreamt of silently swooping, enchanted owls that night.

December 4th: "You will become pregnant and give birth to a Son. 

You must name him Jesus."

The following morning, I was still thinking about that owl. I was convinced it hadn't been there by coincidence but had actually been flying alongside us for fun. That may sound odd, I know, but somehow I had the idea that the owl had been playing with the car. Having seen its lights perhaps it decided to race us, or just fly alongside to keep up with us, or even perhaps watching out for anything scurrying and tasty caught in our headlights. In any case, a game of sorts. How amazing that a creature with its own life, concerns and things to do should have crossed paths with us in this way.

December 5th: "He will be called the Son of the Most High God."

Surrounded by the more obvious signs of nature and creation as we were, living in a very small rural community among grazing fields for sheep and horses, woodland, pheasant habitat, crop fields and delicately babbling becks, it was easy to take the natural world around us for granted. This is true wherever you live, familiarity breeding if not contempt, then certainly complacency about the beauties, conveniences or facilities around you. Life out here has more of the beauties than conveniences or facilities for sure, but even so, every place becomes ordinary to some extent once you live there. The owl had brought me a message though by reminding me of what wonderful things there were to see if I'd only stop and consider them: creation itself is an act of incarnation, of God revealing something of himself to us.

December 6th: Mary asked, "How can this be so? I am not married."

I was a little confused in my reasoning about this: I knew that God was not only evident in the kind of nature we see in the countryside. Indeed, the countryside is as man-made a landscape as any city. The whole of creation is testimony to its creator. And, that aside, God is not defined merely in terms of the wonder of the world. That is merely a symptom, a sign of the person of the Creator God. But still, that encounter on the road late at night had touched me, and I could only go on what this gliding, beautiful messenger had put in my heart. I knew the message was that, not only is God our Creator. The advent message rings true: God Is With Us.

December 7th: Gabriel answered, "With God, all things are possible."

Somewhere, elsewhere, in the middle of a city, perhaps someone else was being similarly touched and prodded by the Almighty using a pigeon, a rat, the swirling of litter in an alleyway, the ringing of burglar alarms or silent raindrops creeping down a window. Who knows?
But the messenger I saw that night on the road told me clearly that God is alongside us. He is out there whether we know it or not and has made it his business to allow us to share a journey with him, even if it means taking our eyes off our own road a little.