Recollections and some reflections.

In April 2001 Jocelyn and I visited the Queensland Art Gallery. The "Picasso to Renoir" Exhibition.
I purchased a blank book with Andre Derain's painting entitled 'Harlequin and Pierrot' ( 1924).
This painting by Derain was attractive, enjoyable then decidedly confronting. The soundless musicians in a barren landscape. The challenge is to reach beyond this for if the One who breathes life into dead people walking AND has done so to me then where I am, a sign of that life, at least, should be. AND do I have a song to sing? At times it seems no.
This is what I wrote on the first page of this wordless book.
(Maybe in this noiseful world the only Words available to speak are the words of silence. ... Jan. 2009 )

December 2002 and I take Chaim Potok's book "The Chosen" to read at Lennox Head - a beach side vacation. .... Danny, speaking to Reuven indicates that his father would wish that everyone would " talk in silence" ... the story addresses the delights and awful pain of friendship .... the importance of the word yet the destruction words also bring.
"A word is worth one coin. silence is worth two" a note from the Talmud.
"Silence was ugly, it was black. it leared. it was cancerous, it was death" .......

"Silence talks to me sometimes .... you have to want to listen to it and then you can hear it. ... sometimes it cries and you can hear the pain of the world in it" It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to. ..." (p 259)

"The Chosen" Chaim Potok a penguin book ISBN 0 14 003094 8

The Absent Father and the Word became Flesh

The Absent Father ( father ) in the lives of children ... of families ...... of societies ..... remains a tragedy to be addressed.

Yet ..... the announcement that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us becomes the divine answer which sadly is often ignored even at Christmas when the affirmation is made so loudly.

Obviously this is a putting on notice that this is a theme I wish to explore this coming year. Gathering up material from research done in the past and the reminder in Rowan Williams' book "Dostoevsky Language. Faith and Fiction" will inform some of what is to follow.

Rowan Williams on Dostoevsky

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/08/religion.anglicanism

"Why was the moment when Jesus, perhaps out of compassion for the tormented Inquisitor, kisses the man and then is allowed to slip from his cell into the Seville night, possibly never to be seen again, so important for Williams? "Dostoevsky has no easy answers, but what struck me when I first read the Grand Inquisitor episode was there is absolutely no form of words that can give a solution to suffering. Absolutely none. That's why what ends the arraignment of the captive Jesus by the Grand Inquisitor is silence - and then Jesus kisses him. When I read it I had the dim sense that there was something very important in that what you look for in faith is not solutions but a certain relationship." And that's why Dostoevsky's appeal has endured for Williams: he offers no closure, no authorial master-voice, but an endless dialogue where no one wins the argument but everyone is connected."

This is a portion of the interview Archbishop Rowan Williams had about his book on Dostoevsky. I invite you to access the website noted above. The complete interview is important but this note on suffering has significant resonance for me now in relation to two very close friends. So easy to offer and speak words, so much medical assistance to relieve, to maintain but in the end the power of relationships becomes embracing. The offer of oil, and sharing of bread and wine in the setting of relationship provided a measure of healing that words and medicine could not.

A second note concerns the introduction to this interview with Rowan Williams. With all the crises afflicting the Church of England and leading up to Lambeth 2008 why did the Archbishop spend time writing a book about Dostoevsky? He had his reasons which he gives but in so many ways this was a most suitable way to prepare for Lambeth and the crises. Just to reread The Brothers Karamazov would have provided him with settings / situations / personalities to prepare for most events.
Even the paragraph provided gives a clue to what in the end is required of the archbishop, and one without constitutional powers to exercise authority. The archbishop also reminds us that the One Christians claim to follow declared His Power by his very powerlessness. After all the Cross was the Roman symbol of authority and power. Yet it is used in the purposes of God to deal with the fault lines in humanity and the created order. The Resurrection declares Rome's authority is not final. The Resurrection check mates whatever final act Rome / Babylon ... ?? might make to demonstrate its / their power.

Deep Meaning, Exuberant Hope

This is the latest of Walter Brueggemann's books that I have commenced reading. It is the third of a series commenced in 1999 with 'The Covenanted self' followed in 2000 with 'Texts that Linger, Words that Explode'. While one should read in series I have this to read ... so I will.
The sub-title is 'Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World'. It is exactly that. We, I, can no longer speak from a triumphalist position to another. Mind you I don't believe we / I have ever had the right to speak from such a place. There is rarely if ever any respect for the other when we do.
This reflection will continue. I have been so confronted I knew it had to be placed on this page ... NOW.

Mahmoud Darwish - Palestinian Voice

[To a Killer] If you had contemplated the victim's face

And thought it through,
you would have remembered your mother in the Gas Chamber,
you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle

And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way

to find one's identity again ........

....

Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment

Were it not for the visits of the rainbow ....

.....

A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved

For my clothing is drenched with his blood

Mahmoud Darwish died on Saturday 9th August aged 67

He was the Palestinian conscience. He had a very clear vision not only of who we are

but who we should be ...... Hanan Ashrawi

Jesus, the metaphorical Theologian

Already Tom Wright had triggered the importance of Parable for me, Kenneth Bailey has fleshed this out in his book - "Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes". He describes Jesus as a metaphorical Theologian, too often his parables lock Jesus into simple story teller. He goes on to write in explanation .... Jesus' primary method of creating meaning was through metaphor, simile, parable and dramatic action rather than through logic and reasoning. He created meaning like a dramatist and a poet rather than like a philosopher.

His parables were a source of Faith rather than ethics and for the first few centuries of the Christian experience this was how the faith was taught.

Bailey continues: "A parable is an extended metaphor and as such it is not a delivery system for an idea but a house in which the reader/listener is invited to take up residence."
Brueggemann also uses metaphor. The metaphor of 'exile' to assist the American Church - read most Western churches in coming to terms with the reality it faces today.
"The usefulness of a metaphor for rereading our own context is that it is not claimed to be a one- 0n - one match to 'reality' as though the metaphor of 'exile' actually describes our situation. Rather a metaphor proceeds by having only an odd, playful and ill-fitting match to reality, the purpose of which is to illuminate and evoke dimensions of reality which will otherwise go unnoticed and therefore unexperienced" : Cadences of Home p1

A Writer to Read: Jacques Ellul

This is to be a note over time. "The Presence of the Kingdom" was the first of Ellul's books I purchased and read. .. in the 60's. I am reading it again ... more carefully. There is a website -

www.ellul.org which provides some English language introduction to this great modern Christian writer. His "Technological Society" and "The Technological Bluff" are sociological critiques of modern technological societies. 

"The Meaning of the City"  "the politics of God and the politics of Man"   "The Judgement of Jonah"  "Anarchy and Christianity"  and "Hope in Time of Abandonment" are some of the volumes I have to read and act upon.

A quick note to Mariko - Thank you for pointing out that list. I did locate it myself from Google and found it very useful as reference, as summary, as a way to connect the volumes I own myself and to direct friends who would wish to investigate this remarkable Christian writer. 

There will be more at this blog site as I read and reflect on his work.

Two Songs are sung

"He taught me the music of the book written by the Creator God. I am not now a believer, but I was then, and felt certain that I was learning the music chanted by God Himself whenever He opened the pages of the sacred narrative. And the angels, too, used that melody each time they told the story to one another. So Mr Zapiski informed me one evening. Sweetly the celestial choir sang the sacred trope, and the music ascended through all the heavens and reached to the seventh heaven wherein was the Throne of Glory on which sat the Creator God, and the Creator God would hear the chanting and be transported with joy, and the joy would overflow and drift downward from the Divine Presence, down like the invisible benevolent rain through all the lower heavens and the fiery stars to our troubled Earth, and brush humankind with its radiance, and for a time there would be peace in the world and an abundance of happiness."  So said this Jewish survivor of the Great War ( 1914 - some say 1918, but actually it continued to the end of the 20th century)

A little later Mr Zapinski told 13 year old Benjamin Walters of another music.

"Not everything that sounds like music is truly music. ... The tyrant Phalaris roasted his prisoners in a huge bronze bull, in whose nostrils he had his servants place reeds in such a way that the prisoners shrieks were transformed into music. The sounds came  out as music, but were they indeed music?"  There was a pause a resonating silence."

While Phalaris is long since gone his descendants continue his practice to this day. The spin doctor, the thirty second news bite on television, and all those who sing "all is well when so much is not well". To speak of dead civilians in a war as "collateral damage" and so many other expressions remind us that Phalaris continues his demonic song. The song from Robert Mugabe's lips about his Zimbabwe is such a song. Pol Pot's Cambodian song is another.

"Victory in Iraq" is a Phalaric song. The misuse of the word "terrorist" provides echoes of Phalaris. And now in May 2008 "The Song of Burma"  sung by the Myanmar Junta joins the Phalaric chorus. One of my first posts was "A Justified Complaint" a short story written by Oz Shelach an Israeli. Its telling has a similar impact and therefore worth visiting.

This comes from the third story - The Trope Teacher - in Chaim Potok's book "Old Men at Midnight" A Ballantine Book published in 2001. It is a sobering book touching, CONNECTIONS, JOURNEYS LESS TRAVELLED and JERUSALEM MISSED!

There is a third song sung that arises from that same sacred text. The song that required the words IT IS FINISHED to be said before it could be sung.   

While not directly connected the second verse of a hymn sung yesterday at the Anglican Cathedral here in Brisbane is worth a pause. In other words there are songs we may sing that ring true that care and hope.

"When love is tried as loved-ones change,

hold still to hope, though all seems strange,

till ease returns, and love grows wise

through listening ears and opened eyes."       Brian Wren 

   

Cadences of Home

It was while we were collecting and sending books to the Nanjing Theological Seminary that we were introduced to Walter Brueggemann. So we purchased "Cadences of Home" and read it. It is a must read.

The title extends with ...... Preaching Among Exiles. The suggestion is made that the Jewish experience of the Exile is the learning experience for people today.

A first theme finds expression in the Book of Lamentations ... see chapter 3. In the midst of despair the writer pauses and remembers .. the steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness of Yahweh. A refocus occurs and new hope emerges even with the glory and power of Babylon in full display

Secondly, while in Babylon -Jeremiah reminds the exiles ... "to seek the welfare [ shalom] of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare [shalom] you will find your welfare [shalom] (Jeremiah 29:7). The word 'shalom' - 'peace' can be so often offered so cheaply. To realise it means welfare in a total/broad sense fills this word with so much more power and import.

Thirdly, in chapter 8 'Disciplines of Readiness' Brueggemann touches on remembrance and memory. In times of exile there are two serious temptations. One is to give up remembering, scuttle the past and pretend only the present is important. The second is to remember more respectable and 'secure' memories - for Jews, to remember the Temple and the Royal city of Jerusalem and their restoration. Israel in its time of power and security. BUT, Yahweh says different.

"Hearken to Me, you who pursue deliverance,

you who seek the Lord,

Look to the rock from which you were hewn,

and the quarry from which you were digged.

Look to Abraham your father,

and to Sarah who bore you;

for when he was but one I called him,

and I blessed him and made him many." Isaiah 51: 1 - 2

If you want to seek Yahweh, says Isaiah, seek Yahweh in the oldest, most embarrassing circumstance we ever had. Remember Abraham ..... great yet weak and fallen ....... remember Sarah ... princess .... yet weak and fallen. Even with their failings and doubts and stumblings they are named as living by faith ... BECAUSE THIS WAS ALSO TRUE. They were real people in other words.

There is another note that answers critics of Bishop Tom Wright. Bishop Wright insists that the Gospel is that 'Jesus is Lord'. The Gospel is not foundationally about how you and I are saved. That is consequential of the Gospel. What does Walter Brueggemann write that addresses this matter?

He writes what Isaiah has written.

Isaiah 40:1 Lift up your voice with strength,

O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings ......

Say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God"

Then again in Isaiah 52:7 How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of him who brings good tidings

who publishes peace

who brings good tidings of good

who publishes salvation,

who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."

"Good tidings" is "Gospel" - "basar" in Hebrew.

Walter Brueggemann proceeds from "Your God reigns" with "Your God has just become King"; "Your God has prevailed!" "The gods of the empire have been defeated". These declarations were made when the Babylonian Empire was to all intents and purposes in power.

The result is that THE JEWS ARE NOW FREE TO GO HOME! What a wonderful way to describe salvation .... you have been in exile, you have been lost, BUT NOW YOU CAN COME HOME!

Paul and Jesus are Jews; their story is the fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied. Paul writes to the Romans, to the Galatians etc about the Gospel and its implications. For Jesus, for Paul the Gospel is that CHRIST IS LORD, CAESAR IS NOT. Even though Rome to all intents and purposes remained in power. However there is a fundamental difference between Isaiah's words re Babylon and Christ. Caesar claimed to be Saviour and Prince of Peace and the proof of this was civil society and the Cross was used for any who chose to challenge these claims. But the Cross became Christ's statement of victory through His resurrection. Caesar where is your power. Consequently, Salvation is a reality, the publishing of salvation is a result of Christ being, becoming Lord.
Caesar offered salvation. So did the kings of Babylon about whom Isaiah prophesied. Jesus could not offer salvation unless He was / is Lord. This is Paul's purpose in writing "Romans"

Art Gallery Visit

Canberra, when visited, involves a journey to the National Art Gallery. On this occasion we had our own guide - a very close friend. John Brack's "Third Daughter" provided a personal recollection with accompanying smile. A remembrance to be shared.

Anselm Kiefer's "Twilight of the West" and Jannis Kounellis' Tryptich both called for pause, step back, ponder, be disturbed. The latter caused a problem. Can I use a word beyond tryptich to describe this work or does "naming" the work preclude another from naming it? Naming of course enables a person to take some control and even box in what the artist intended. Jocelyn, Laurel - our friend and I all gave a different word to describe the work. Mind you, as long as we acknowledge that all we were saying was to express our response I suppose it was ok. However, too often the first to name sets the boundaries of the responses.

The middle, and focus piece was a T cross - no person, an overcoat draped over the cross bar. The left piece - three posts II I with trousers over II and a shoe on top of I: The right piece with - two horizontal bars. Coat hanging on one end, a hat on the other.

Suggestive of Christ's crucifixion BUT no person. Jannis Kounellis, a Greek Communist who went to live in Italy had no place for Christ nor a christ figure. Far too desolate for that. Loss, despair come to mind.

Then came the confrontation. James Gleason - "The Citadel" ( see above) produced in 1945 while lecturing in Sydney Teachers' College; 'too aggressive', they said, to hang in London's leading surrealist gallery in 1949.

Gleeson writes - "The human citadel of hope smashed and mutilated ... shattered ... bones have grown into thorns in some places. It is a human landscape with many cave-like forms.

I have substituted for war-torn brick and stone [ destroyed cities too readily become a business opportunity for the likes of Dick Chaney's Halliburton] a symbolic pattern of human flesh, bone, teeth and brains. [Who can restore these?] These are the horrors of concentration camp and battlefield seen through the eyes of a surrealist.

This painting demands to be hanging in the offices of all involved in the decision to go to war.

Gleeson's work is worth viewing ... no more than view, that can become voyeuristic . They are confronting. "Images of Spring disguised in lethal attitudes of Duty", "A Cloud of Witnesses" and "We Inhabit the Corrosive Litoral of Habit" are three other paintings that demanded my attention.