Where are the poet priests?

Today we are asked to remember John Donne (1572-1631), poet, priest and Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. As I was thinking about Donne’s life and work I started to ask ‘where are today’s poet priests?’. I’m aware of a few, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, but I can’t help wondering whether we have lost something in our understanding of priestly calling and ministry. Part of the role of the priest is to help others to see things in a different light, from an alternative perspective, and in the Church of England we have a rich tradition of priests who fulfilled this part of their vocation through poetry. In all the discussions about the future of the ordained ministry, and I have sat through too many hours of debate about that subject, I have not once heard anyone ask:

'Where are the poet priests and how will they be encouraged, nurtured and sustained?'.



Update: Check our this excellent follow up blog post developing the theme from Changing Worship The Church and the Arts.

The Holy Spirit in the World Today 2011

In 2010 Holy Trinity Brompton hosted a major two day conference on The Holy Spirit in the World Today. On 3rd June 2011 HTB will be hosting a follow-up conference bringing together theologians and church leaders in the context of a dynamic local church to think about the person, role and work of the Holy Spirit in the church and the world today.



This year the line up includes:

• Professor David Ford: Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge - one of the most widely-respected theologians in the world, and author of many books, most notably and recently Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (CUP, 2007)
• Dr Wonsuk Ma: David Yonggi Cho Research Tutor in Global Christianity, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies - a Pentecostal missionary and specialist in Old Testament Pneumatology and Asian Pentecostalism. He is the author, among other books, of Mission in the Spirit: Towards a Pentecostal/Charismatic Missiology (Regnum 2010)
• Jane Williams: Tutor in Theology St Paul’s Theological Centre and St Mellitus College. She is the author of several books, including most recently, Faces of Christ: Jesus in Art (Lion, 2011)
• Professor Tom Greggs: Tom is one of the youngest Professors of Theology in the UK. He is currently Professor at the University of Chester, and about to take up a new post in the summer as Professor of Historical and Doctrinal Theology in the University of Aberdeen. He is the author of, among others, Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation: Restoring Particularity (OUP 2009)
• Ken Costa: Chairman of Lazard Investment Bank, Chairman of Alpha International, Church Warden of Holy Trinity Brompton, and one of the most widely-known lay Christian leaders in London.

I attended last year’s conference and it was a very stimulating event, though by the end of two days my brain was fried and I needed to lie down in a dark room. The structure of the conference ensured that the theological discussions were grounded in the context of worship and ministry and the programme this year is planned in the same way.

Further details about the conference can be found here and I think there may be a discount for those booking before 14th April. I understand tickets are selling well so book early to avoid disappointment.

The conference can be followed on Twitter here.

Carling Theology

I have been doing a bit of research on Peter Rollins in preparation for a discussion about Rob Bell (Love Wins) and Rollins’s (Pyro-theology) theology in a few days time. There’s quite a lot of material from Rollins on Youtube and he is an engaging speaker. Of course I'm biased since my family, like Rollins, come from Belfast. A particular clip caught my attention entitled I Deny the Resurrection and I warmed to Rollins's main point about the ways in which we deny and affirm the resurrection of Jesus by the way we live.



Watching the clip I found myself reflecting on the story Rollins tells about a friend standing at the gates of heaven. The story sounded strangely familiar and then I remembered this:



So there you have it, Carling Theology.

The cards you’re dealt

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in the last few days about a Spirit of Life festival taking place in Manchester Cathedral at the beginning of May. The usual suspects were in full cry, led by the Daily Mail with its ‘Church of England row as cathedral opens doors to tarot card readers and crystal healers in 'new age' festival’ headline. When you read what the festival is about then it is a lot less controversial than desperate journalists in search of a story would suggest.

Contrary to media reports, the Spirit of Life is a Christian festival offering a balanced programme of different spiritual traditions including Taize, choral evensong and contemporary spiritualities. There are workshops which will discuss spiritualities outside the Christian tradition. There will be no tarot card reading or fortune telling at the event. All contributors are Christians and have undergone a rigorous application process.

Doug Chaplin has raised an interesting question on his blog: Would St  Paul read Tarot cards? and he goes on to discuss the merits and concerns about the use of Tarot cards and The Jesus Deck in Christian outreach. I’m interested to know what others think of the Jesus Deck as a colleague of mine, Penny Horseman, is seeking to get it produced in this country. Penny has set up a website and Facebook page and describes what the deck is about:

The Jesus Deck is a set of 52 + 2 (the Jokers) cards originally designed as a Christian education tool in the 1970’s. It has been published by a US games manufacturer, and was available on the internet.

In the 1990’s some Christians realised that for many people outside the church the reading of tarot cards has enormous interest. While they could not in any way condone the use of tarot cards as future telling , they did see opportunity for talking to people and using them  as a starting point.   Using regular tarot cards they began to engage with people to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.

As an alternative to using the regular tarot cards some of us started to use the Jesus Deck cards. They provided a useful tool for speaking to people about Jesus Christ in a flexible and accessible way in one to one situation. People who were seeking to find out more about Jesus  could have a conversation based around the cards.

I confess to a certain ambivalence about the enterprise and I am not sure how big the market is, however, I do know that Penny and others have found The Jesus Deck to be an effective outreach resource in their work at exhibitions and festivals.

It is amazing to see some of the things people will engage with when it comes to matters of spirituality. At last year’s Greenbelt festival my favourite stall was The Gong Shower. This comprised of a large gong (didn’t get the make) in front of which the punter sits while a chap bangs the gong. His partner sits cross legged by the gong and seems to be chanting during the process. I was most impressed with the way that this couple managed to get people to part with £20 for the ‘shower’. Simon Parke describes his experience of The Gong Shower at Greenbelt in 2008:

For the Gong Shower, I sit upright with my eyes closed behind a large shiny gong, which Colin beats repeatedly and in different styles. He says it is a pioneering work which cuts out the head. This is my experience, as the noise passes wonderfully though me. I have the sensation of walking around the vast hallways of my inner self – caverns of possibility.

I don’t have a gong but I do have a drum kit with some glorious sounding cymbals. Is there still time to book a stall at Greenbelt for this year? Must be worth £50 a go to sit in front of my bass drum as I deliver a version of Cozy Powell’s Dance with the Devil.

A hermeneutic of wonder

This is the phrase that has been buzzing round my head since Saturday when Maggi Dawn came to Chelmsford to lead a day based on her book The Writing on the Wall. Through a series of lectures, discussions, a quiz and various reflections, Maggi opened up for us an exploration of the Bible and it’s relationship with high art and popular culture. This was much more than just a dip into her book, as Maggi used worked examples to illustrate her themes and interact with a very engaged and enthused group of over fifty people.

The first session began with an introduction exploring the influence of the Bible on western culture and the importance of knowing the biblical text in understanding art, film and literature. This was followed by a reflection and discussion on the way in which artists have interpreted the stories and illuminated them in different and often contrasting ways. An exercise comparing depictions of Jesus’ resurrection appearance to Thomas by Caravaggio and Granville Gregory provoked a lively discussion.

Maggi then took us into an exploration of The Annunciation. We began with the text from Luke 1:26-38, with people sharing their images and understanding of the story, before looking at how various artists have explored and interpreted the story. Reflections on the paintings by Fra Angelico and Millet, Igor Mitoraj’s wonderful sculpture The Doors of the Annunciation and the poetry of Muir and Rowe helped us to look at the story in different ways and to question our own presuppositions. The session was a carefully crafted and illuminating example of the question:

What if we allow art to be a lens through which we revisit our theology?

I found myself reflecting on the cycle of interpretation that we are drawn into as Christians and how important it is to surface this process not only to examine what we impose on the text but to open ourselves to glimpse fresh insights through the eyes of the artist. So the story of The Annunciation inspires great works of art and those works of art influence how we interpret the story; a classic simple example is the image of Gabriel with wings depicted in Renaissance portrayals of the story. Other artists then challenge that image and take us back to the text. A good contemporary example would be the portrayal of Gabriel as an ordinary man in the BBC production The Nativity. Other themes we looked at in the story included the responses of Mary and the passage of time.

After lunch we kicked off with a quiz that served to further illustrate the influence of the Bible on our culture and language (and highlighted my ignorance). The main session in the afternoon was a sustained reflection on the way that art can change how we see the world and in the Christian context illumine the way in which we engage with scripture. At the heart of this session was a fascinating case study on the life of Abraham. This was rich material for a sermon series or set of Bible studies as we considered depictions of key moments in the story and works on the theme. Maggi drew on insights from Coleridge, T.S Elliot, Kierkegaard, Phyllis Trible, Rublev, Caravaggio, Segal, Rembrandt amongst others. The afternoon concluded with responses to interpretations of The Crucifixion and Jacob Wrestling the Angel from a wide range of artists. The quality of the contributions from the discussions reflected the high level of engagement with Maggi’s themes.

Having let a couple of days pass before recording my responses to the event, I am left with the phrase ‘the hermeneutic of wonder’ (Wordsworth?). As we allow a conversation to develop between the Bible, the artist and ourselves so we are opened up to new possibilities, to creative and challenging insights. Familiar stories and texts from scripture come alive as we learn to sit with layers of meaning and wrestle with questions and ambiguities raised and explored by the artist. The Arts, as Maggi so ably demonstrated, are not there just to decorate, make pretty or illustrate, but to communicate and reveal things that otherwise might remain unseen or constrained.

There is another opportunity to explore The Writing on the Wall with Maggi in Barking on May 7th. Places are still available and details can be found here.

Heaven in ordinary – Duffy, Herbert & Berryman

This morning was given over to a very stimulating session with the students on our Living the Story course. Jonathan Evens was leading the session on poetry and we looked at the work of Carol Ann Duffy, George Herbert and John Berryman. I don’t want to steal Jonathan's thunder and will put in a link if he choses to blog in more detail, but I do want to give a taste of what we covered. (Update: link to Jonathan's reflection on the session.)

First up was Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Prayer. As Jonathan explained, Duffy was once asked if she thinks poetry has to some extent taken the place of religion in our society. Her response was to say ‘It does for me: I don’t believe in God.’ So her sonnet Prayer has been described as the voice of a secular spirituality.

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Mean Time (Anvil, 1994)

We explored Duffy’s poem in relation to one of George Herbert’s poems on the subject Prayer (1). Not surprisingly more overtly Christian than Duffy, Herbert’s poem is no less rich with imagery and contains some phrases that have become part of our cultural landscape. It seemed to some of us as if Duffy’s Prayer was a reflection on Herbert’s phrase ‘Heaven in ordinarie’.

Prayer, the Church's banquet, Angel's age.
          God's breath in man returning to his birth,
          The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth;

Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tower,
          Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
          The six days' world-transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss.
          Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
          Heaven in ordinary, men well drest,
The Milky Way, the bird of Paradise,

          Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
          The land of spices, something understood.

The Poetical Works Of George Herbert, ed. George Gilfillan. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1853

Later in the session Jon invited the students to compare two poems by the American post-war confessional poet John Berryman (though the students didn’t know they were by the same author at the time). I hadn’t read Berryman so enjoyed engaging with something fresh and challenging. Again so much to explore in a short space of time and I look forward to spending more time reading Berryman’s work. The first poem is Dream Song 201 one of several hundred Berryman poems in the Dream Song cycle featuring the principal character Henry.

Hung by a thread more moments instant Henry’s mind
super-subtle, which he knew blunt & empty & incurious
but when he compared it with his fellows’
finding it keen & full, he didn’t know what to think
apart from typewriters & print & ink.
On the philosophical side

plus religious, he lay at a loss.
Mostly he knew the ones he would not follow
into their burning systems
or polar systems, Wittgenstein being boss,
Augustine general manager. A universal hollow
most of the rest seems;

so Henry in twilight is on his own:
marrying, childing, slogging, shelling taxes,
pondering, making.
It’s rained all day. His wife has been away
with genuine difficulty he fought madness
whose breast came close to breaking.

The second Berryman poem is called Eleven Addresses to the Lord (6)

Under new management, Your Majesty:
Thine. I have solo'd mine since childhood, since
my father's blow-it-all when I was twelve
blew out my most bright candle faith, and look at me.

I served at Mass six dawns a week from five,
adoring Father Boniface & you,
memorizing the Latin he explained.
Mostly we worked alone. One or two women.

Then my poor father frantic. Confusions & afflictions
followed my days. Wives left me.
Bankrupt I closed my doors. You pierced the roof
twice & again. Finally you opened my eyes.

My double nature fused in that point of time
three weeks ago day before yesterday.
Now, brooding thro' a history of the early Church,
I identify with everybody, even the heresiarchs.

As with the first two poems it seemed as if Dream Song 201 was a meditation on the line ‘Confusions & afflictions followed my days'’ from Eleven Addresses (6).

So, yet more examples of the way in which artists have engaged with Living the Story from within and without. One thing I immediately responded to was the way in which Duffy’s poem recognised the moments of gift or grace in the everyday. It reminded me of the need to step back and be alert to what is going on around me, instead of striving to see glimpses of heaven in the extraordinary. Of course the glimpses of heaven in the extraordinary are fantastic when they come along.

One final comment. The final stanza of Duffy's poem referencing 'the radio's prayer' reminded me of this classic from Blur.

Don’t you know it? Bible Year 2011 (10)

I have a Bible on my Blackberry. In fact, I have lots of versions on my phone thanks to Youversion. However, I sometimes feel embarrassed getting my Blackberry out during a service as it looks like I’ve had enough of the liturgy and started to check my emails. I have a mate whose wife wants to get a sign which says ‘It’s O.K. he’s reading the Bible on his iPhone’ to avoid the scowls of disgruntled worshippers.

A couple of days ago I was chatting to a colleague and one of our area bishops and the conversation turned to Bibles on phones and iPads. My colleague explained that in the parish he had encountered a problem with reading the Bible on his phone when visiting parishioners. No sooner has he turned to an appropriate passage than the parishioner says something like ‘Oh, that’s very clever, what sort of phone is that? Can I have a look please?’ Accessing his Bible on his mobile became a distraction in such circumstances and so he has reverted to the printed word. The bishop joked that only the Word of God on the printed page was good enough, before going on to quip that more preferable still would be a scroll or perhaps a wax tablet.

As a wet behind the ears curate I learnt an important lesson while visiting an elderly housebound member of the congregation. I asked her what she would like me to read and she requested Psalm 121. I explained that I only had my New Testament with me. For some bizarre reason you are only given the New Testament when ordained deacon and get the whole enchilada when ordained priest. ‘Don’t you know it?’ my parishioner asked, before proceeding to recite Psalm 121 word for word. She then went on to various evening prayer collects by which time I was in a cold sweat. Needless to say, I never left the house without a Bible and a small copy of the Book of Common Prayer tucked in my jacket pocket after that experience.

I think back to my pastoral visits some 20+ years ago and reflect on how much easier it would have been if I’d had my Blackberry with Bible and daily prayer at the click of a couple of buttons. Then I remember that lovely faithful elderly lady I used to visit and I begin to shake as I think about what she would have said if I’d got my mobile out in the middle of our chat.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.