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.