Sensing Lent 30: Mills and Murals

Reigate Mill Church.

An unexpected trip today to a windmill which is a church inside, gave some pictoral aids to preparing for Holy Week. First of all a theological equation which tries to 'explain' the trinity, followed by the story of Jesus' crucifixion in a series of wall murals.
As this Lenten project is all about letting things speak for themselves, I'll leave you with the pictures pure and simple. Suffice it to say that pictures tell just as eloquently as words, if not more so, the story of Jesus' death on the cross, towards which we journey this Lent.

Whilst the first mural is about a rather abstract idea, neatly set out in a way which might appeal to mathematicians or philosophers; for those unfamiliar with Jesus' crucifixion, we're dealing in more concrete things here: thorns, hammers, ladders, dice, discarded clothing, nails, sour wine, hyssop, spears, a cross and a shroud.

Sensing Lent 29: Rain

Unlike UK weather presenters, the bible consistently portrays rain in a good light (the Flood notwithstanding). Whether it's the early spring or 'latter' autumn rains, rain is a sign of divine blessing, on crops and on people. The early rains would prepare the ground for the planting of crops and the latter rains would ripen the crops before harvest. 

Rain as blessing has given rise to all sorts of theories about 'latter rain', as we are supposedly in the 'latter days' now, according to bible chronology ('last' days - literally, between the resurrection and the Second Coming of Christ). Is God sending some sort of latter rain on the church to prepare her for the Second Coming, as some Pentecostalists say? There's certainly been an increase in interest in the third person of the Trinity since the charismatic movement took off in the 1970s, along with a plethora of wacky theologies about different types of Holy Spirit blessing (aka latter rain theologies).

Rain also carries literary freight. Novelists and film makers employ the wonderfully named 'pathetic fallacy' whereby human emotions are attributed to nature. So a relationship begins to break down, someone's lover leaves, the grey clouds gather and it begins to rain. After he's destroyed his closest relationships, King Lear sits on the blasted heath. On the night that John Jasper sets out to murder Edwin Drood in Dicken's unfinished novel, a storm gathers, rain lashes the window casings. People have commented that when someone you love dies, and it rains, it almost feels as though nature is weeping with you. Not possible of course, but hard to get away from.

Though I don't much like getting wet, I like watching raindrops running down glass and listening to the sound of rain at night. 
When we spend so much time rushing about and worrying and controlling, and thinking everything we do is of vast importance, the sound of rain gives a sense of perspective about our smallness in the universe. Much of what we do will be undone, as Shakespeare knew: 'The rain it raineth every day'.*

Which could be a depressing thought, were it not actually true.

*ending of Twelfth Night.

Sensing Lent 28: Rust

Rust is almost always depicted negatively, including in the bible - 'do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy...'

Since I began my Lenten project on using the 5 senses more, I've been visually noticing a lot more ordinary stuff, especially outdoors, and one thing I rather like, visually if not practically, is rust. And water stains on buildings, and green lichen on fences, and discoloured, stained or chipped walls. I suppose this is completely impractical, but all these apparently negative things make for better Instagram photos (even occasionally suggesting the shape of a cross into the bargain).

Weathering is bound to happen outdoors - call it honest ageing. It happens to faces too. At school I learnt the poem which begins 'they shut the way through the woods/ Seventy years ago./ Wind and rain have undone it again...' 

It seems futile to resist. Keeping things perfect, untouched, unchanged, sealed in a time bubble, is impossible anyway, especially for humans, so we may as well get the cameras out and embrace the effect of 'moth and rust' and take comfort from the fact that in glory, things will not suffer from such corruption, not even our bodies. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. If I'm not mistaken that's a full blown Easter resurrection thought....

Sensing Lent 27: Journal

I don't know why I started writing a journal, but when I look back on all the things I felt the need to chronicle, circa 1981, it seems it was mainly to do with the price of food in the Sixth Form College cafe ('sausage roll, 50p; cookie, 35p' etc.) and whether I could make my lunch allowance stretch to the end of the week. It does not make for inspiring reading.

Thankfully more interesting subjects for journalling arose, chief of which was a newly invigorated Christian faith, which needed exploring via prayer topics and reflections on the bible and on events. And so prayer, bible reading and writing became inextricably linked, and I've been going about 30 years now. Hence the large towers of spiral bound notebooks piling up in various cupboards.

I also kept a journal of the first year of each of the children's lives, which they will no doubt find either vastly amusing or deeply embarrassing when I'm gone ('was up feeding four times in the night, three dirty nappies, ran out of clean babygros, feeling tired and fed up'. That kind of thing).

One major benefit of a spiritual journal is the re-reading. Without it I think I'd simply forget the things God was trying to teach me. You get a sense that somehow there's a progression to the spiritual life, even if it's a regression followed by something important learnt. There's something about the physical writing of it that slows your thoughts down and helps you reflect - or to notice patterns to events or feelings, to give thanks for stuff and/or to give you permission to be sad.

I suppose if the writers of the 66 Old and New Testament documents hadn't recorded the happenings of God's people down the centuries, we wouldn't have a bible at all and wouldn't even know anything about Jesus, so you could argue that the discipline of writing is foundational in Christianity. We're a people of the Book. 

And, for better or worse, I'm a person of the spiral bound notebook.

Sensing Lent 26: A blue bowl

This bowl came back from my retreat on the Welsh coast last summer. It carries with it shades of the sand flats and the harbour at the edge of the small town there, the expanse of sky and the blue of the sea. As soon as I saw it in the local craft shop, I felt the need to bring it home as a reminder of everything the retreat meant to me.

I've never 'thrown' a pot (on a potter's wheel, that is. I've never thrown a pot either) but it must be very physically satisfying, to see something beautiful and useful emerge from a shapeless lump of clay.

It was the pre-Raphaelite William Morris who said 'have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful'. Bowls are useful, but this one's more beautiful than useful, if I'm honest. In fact the glaze has already slightly worn off due to a regrettable turn in the dishwasher, after I tried to serve some food up in it.

Really it's just beautiful. It couldn't be more blue, smooth, shiny, hard and redolent of the seaside. The light bounces off it like sun off water, and brown pigment runs into the base through the streaks of blue like rivers of sand when the tide's going out. 

It's just a bowl. But it signifies something deeper. It was on that retreat that I learnt to love myself a bit more. I sat in God's presence in the chapel. I walked with no bag and no agenda. I spoilt myself, sitting in a cafe eating an expensive salad I hadn't prepared and buying a blue bowl which would almost certainly not be useful.

Because God loves us, full stop. Not primarily for our usefulness. Which is quite a 'useful' thought in Lent.

Sensing Lent 25: Walking

Jesus would seem to have done a lot of walking. He walked by the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 4:18); He walked on the Sea (Matthew 14:25); and he walked throughout the towns and villages proclaiming the good news of the kingdom (Matthew 4:23).

As with so many things I've noticed during Lent, the physical leads to the spiritual. The bible talks of walking as a metaphor for travelling through life, with or without God. God also promises 'I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people' (Leviticus 26:12). Famously God walked in the garden of Eden in the cool of the evening (genesis 2:8). It's a lovely image of unwinding at the end of a day, seeking fellowship with creation. Sadly, though God was walking, Adam and Eve were hiding. 

Walking seems a good way to pray too. Something about how it clears the head, the rhythm of feet assisting concentration in a a way sitting still doesn't. One foot in front of the other, directing one's thoughts God-ward. As well as a prayer chair, I often make use of a 'prayer hill'. And God's will is often described as trusting one step at a time.

Famously, the book of Psalms opens with walking: someone is blessed if they don't 'walk in the counsel of the wicked (Psalm 1:1). St John also wrote 'If we say we have fellowship with him, yet walk in the darkness, we lie' (1 John 1:16). And sometimes we have to 'walk through the valley of the shadow of death' (Psalm 23:4). 

And lastly, and very simply, wouldn't it be lovely to be like Enoch, who 'walked with God, and then he was not; for God took him' (Genesis 5:22). Walking with God one day; taken by him to glory the next. Perhaps without the element of extreme old age (he apparently lived for 365 years) I'd settle for that kind of walking any day.

Sensing Lent 24: Bud

Everything is in bud. 

I watched an adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood the other night, Dickens' dark unfinished novel about the brooding love/lust of Jasper the Choirmaster for Rosa Bud, innocent seventeen year old beauty, pledged to be married to someone else.

Dickens was probably making a point with her name (he normally did). She is young, about to flower. Who will pluck her? I must admit, the Victorians had just as murky a subconscious as anything swilling around in society in these so called 'secularised' times.

The more I think about science (and I sometimes have a year 9 science lesson on the way home in the car, on the school run, so I should know) the more incredulous I am that so much of it is so...miraculous. You cannot see that leaf, that flower, that fruit emerging. You can't even see the bud. Then all of a sudden, there it is. And a few more days sunshine and, hey, there's the leaf. And the flower. And the fruit. Where does it come from? It's growth - entirely natural and normal. And incredible. (But that is probably a romantic and entirely non factual response to nature, albeit very in character for me).

I wish we could get our heads around growth in the church. It often doesn't feel normal or natural, but inhibited. We have church growth conferences (a bit better than the crass event served up for Adam Smallbone, of Rev. last night on the TV) but perhaps none of it is any use if our church soil is poor. And nothing grows well without a good gardener putting in hours of effort. 

We had Mothering Sunday service here, to which double the usual number of people came. But, guess what? The amount of time it took to bring it all together was also double. So while growth is normal and natural, the soil definitely still needs thoughtful preparing.

I'm looking around the church for the buds. Whereabouts will there be a flowering and a harvest of fruit in the right season, a harvest that feeds the world?