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Amy Wineheouse – Rest in Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love

Amy Dead!

So the stark announcement in one of the Sunday Papers. There is no shortage of reporting and comment about the "troubled singer", "wrestling with issues", "fighting her demons", and no shortage either of admiration verging on adulation, the kind of overblown sentiment that creates such pressure and unreality for celebrities. It's little wonder vulnerable human beings living in the self-induced laser light of public celebrity find life hard to live, hard to bear and inescapably terrifying. Surrounded by those for whom they are a business, living with the demands of popularity and rejection, listening to the verdicts of fans fickle and faithful, suffering chronic emotional overload, living the nightmare and always, but always being the centre of attention, the celebrity becomes product, the person becomes commodity, and a needy human being becomes marketable publicity so that the intense scrutiny and public humiliation reduce the human being to tabloid news item and vicarious sufferer.

So I reflect on what has happened to Amy Winehouse and as a Christian pray for her, and her family, and ask forgiveness for the kind of cultural cruelties that create, encourage and exploit human weakness mixed with talent. Amy Winehouse has been on a spiral downwards for a long time, and what I want to insist upon in all the sentimental and at times hypocritical regret now being expressed, is that this was a human being with real needs, a capacity to love and be loved, a self-destructive urgency in her lifestyle that was both choice and compulsion. Addiction to drugs and alcohol can sometimes be rooted in deeper addictions to fear, anxiety, inner lostness, and the search for love and acceptance.

As a Christian I want to insist on something else too. Somewhere in the frantic brokenness and raging talent and outrageous performances and violent episodes there is a human being made in the image of God. She too was woven and knit together in her mother's womb; she too is one who no matter where she went, perhaps all unknown to her, God was there – yes even in the hells she created or fell into. Made in God's image, yet marred and defaced, but the dignity, worth and value of each person made in the image of God is not erased beyond recovery. Whatever else Calvary means it means that; and whatever we make of the Love of God, and we make far too little of it in our theology, it is power and purpose harnessed to redemption in ways infinitely beyond our moral boundaries and grudging imaginations.

And as a Christian I look at her tragic struggles for freedom and dignity and ask, not in any trivially pious self-concerned moralism, but in genuine compassion, "What would Jesus do for, and say to, and think of, Amy Winehouse"? And you know, I find that an easy set of questions to answer. He would love her, and that love which understands crucifixion and suffering, and mockery and utter loneliness, will do what needs to be done, and say what needs to be heard, and think as Jesus always thought, that with us it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

So what I am looking for in the reporting and the comment are four words that William Blake made into one of the most powerful poems of social compassion in our language. Read it, think of Amy, and think of the God who in Christ comes close to human hearts, and closest to human hearts that are breaking, or broken.

The Divine Image,

William Blake

To Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love

all pray in their distress;

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God, our Father dear,

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine,

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, Turk, or Jew;

Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too.

……………….

Rest in the Love, Mercy, Pity and Peace of God, Amy.

25 July 2011
The Complexities of Trinitarian Theology and the Simplicity of Holiness!

Not suggesting for a moment that what we have in the Tolstoy story quoted below is a comprehensively orthodox account of the Triune relations of Father, Son and Spirit. What we do have is a story that cuts through our speculative hesitations about God and with gentle humour reminds us of the rich relationality that is the life of God and the life of God in communion with created beings like us.

(The painting is by Chagall, the visitors to Abraham and Sarah with the promise of a child, and the same story of course underlies Rublev's icon of the Trinity. Chagall of course was more interested in this foundational story of Jewish faith and identity.)

Three Russian monks lived on a faraway island. The bishop visits them, and is disturbed they don't know how to pray the Lord's Prayer. He devotes all his time to instructing them on the Our Father. When he is leaving in his boat he sees the monks running across the water towards the boat, "Father", they say, "we can't remember the Our Father". Amazed he asked, "Well how do you normally pray". "Well they say, "Dear God, there are three of You and there are three of us, have mercy on us"! The Bishop is struck by the simplicity of their holiness and tells them to go and be at peace.

As I said, not the last or most sophisticated word on Trinitarian realities – but the simplicity of holiness is the way in which we know God as the subject of theology, so that theology becomes doxology, and theologising becomes worship, and theological reflection blends and merges with contemplative prayer and loving discovery.

24 July 2011
When all you can do is “Behold”! – and all you want to say is “Thank You”.

Recent absence from here has been because I have been on a work related visit to Austria on behalf of the University. But there was time for some sightseeing, and my kind hosts arranged for me to visit the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna.

Some of the finest paintings in Europe are held there, and one of them I have wanted to see for a long time. The Madonna of the Meadows is widely recognised as one of the finest paintings by Raphael, and one of the most influential images of Mary for subsequent artists. I've written about it here before, but seeing it is an altogether different experience. John's Gospel uses several different words for seeing, because he recognised there are several different ways of looking, gazing, contemplating – and when he means to see and recognise the truth and reality and beauty of what he says he uses the word we translate into English as "Behold"! And the mood is both imperative and an invitation. Indeed in chapter One of John's Gospel John the Baptist says "Behold the Lamb of God" and Jesus says to Andrew and Peter "Come and see".

This painting does the same, because the two children represent these same two imperatives, Behold, and come and see. But actually it is Raphael who commands attention here. To stand before this painting is to encounter some of the deepest religious truth in Christian tradition, mediated by beauty and depicted as goodness. The three late medieval transcendentals of beauty, truth and goodness are here distilled into a painting of profound and persuasive theological image. The incarnation as infinity diminished to infancy, the red of the flowers complementing the red robe and both reminding of the passion and atonement, in the background the human world of city, land and sea. And dominating yet conjoining sky and earth, the face of Mary, her smile wistful, the face pensive, her eyes looking down the trajectory of the cross to her child, and the face subtle and emotionally ambiguous – there is tenderness, and determination, acceptance and sadness, the surrender and resistance of love shown in two hands that hold her child, while the infant Jesus has one hand on her and one gripping the cross.

But I am not offering analysis – merely finding inadequate words for the fifteen minutes I spent being drawn into a theological world made real by image and symbol, the genius and gift of the artist illustrating a quite different and soul searchingly persuasive articulation of Christian truth that needs no such analysis. The above is not me daring to say what the painting means, but what the painting said as it addressed me and commanded attentiveness and stillness and obedient looking. A painting like this has its own way of announcing great truth with the imperative word, "Behold". So I did.

The Museum allows non flash photography, but it isn't always possible to get the angle right for a photo – maybe the imperfect photo is a recognition that you don't take with you anything other than the photo- the real experience is standing there, beholding, wondering, and praying.

This close-up shows a Renaissance artist's portrait of the Three Transcendentals, Beauty, Truth and Goodness, expressed in the complex miracle of a human face. In the long tradition of honouring Mary as the mother of the Saviour of the World, few approached the vision of Raphael. I'm no authority, but I doubt if anyone surpassed it.

23 July 2011
Art and Contemplative Attentiveness

One of the higlights of the visit to London for my big birthday was half an hour spent in the V&A, gazing at the Raphael Tapestries and Cartoons, particularly the two that show Jesus post-resurrection appearances. They are the most beautiful portrayals of biblical narrative and for me represent one of the high watermarks of imaginative exegesis of the stories of Jesus during the Renaissance.

To read the story of the miraculous catch of fish in John's Gospel, and then to look carefully at Raphael's painting, is to be transported from the slick glitz and technological tyrranny and cultural malaise and economic anxiety and intellectual aridity and spiritual confusion of the world we inhabit, to another world – every bit as challenging. And I suppose it's a nonsense comparison to ask which shows the greatest genius of human achievement – a Rapahel Cartoon or an Ipad, a Sistine Ceiling or a Hubble Telescope. And I do recognise the gross exaggerations in the comparisons I made in the first sentence of this paragraph. But there are times when it just seems right to contemplate beauty and provide an aesthetic critique of what the contemporary mind finds beautiful, humanising, and to be wondered at. Gazing on beauty as a visual form of vespers, evensong and benediction all in the one act of contemplative attentiveness.

19 July 2011
Rowan Williams on Theological Education

This is Rowan Williams at his reflective, discursive and penetrating best. This lecture on theological education is a startling and refreshing apologia for wisdom, holiness and loving God with heart and mind

"…a person who is educated in reading the Bible is a person who, you can say theologically, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, has been brought into that relationship with the God of the Bible which allows them to recognise in the language of the Bible their own faith and their own narrative. And that is something rather different from quarrying the Bible for little bits that happily remind you of how you feel. That is not biblical theology. It may be a useful form of apologetical psychology but it is not particularly theological. But to find in that language, that narrative, that register of exploration, something of the faith that transforms your own life; that I think is to see what biblical understanding is. And it is not a million miles away from what Martin Luther said when claiming that the Christian response to reading the Bible always had to be, if you heard the words, this is about you, datae loquitor, this is about you."

The whole lecture text is here

16 July 2011
Embodying the Christian doctrine of reconciliation

I am doing a lot of thinking, slow pondering and imagining about reconciliation, a theme that lies at the heart of the Christian Gospel. Reconciliation finds varied expressions in forgiveness, conciliation, understanding, compassion, negotiation, self-expenditure, peace-making, bridge-building, and many other attitudes and activities in human healing and wholeness within the heart and within the communities we inhabit.

There are several reasons for this current research interest.

It is a central motif for understanding the meaning of Jesus. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself".

Asked what the mission of the church is, and how to do mission, I default immediately to "God has given to us this ministry of reconciliation" as a theological encapsulation of Jesus words that are both promise and demand, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God".

Then I look on a world fragmented against itself, criss-crossed by dividing walls of hostility and hear that other Pauline echo, the through Christ God purposed "to reconcile to himself all things making peace by the blood of the cross".

Then I reflect on the rise in Christian culture of conflict resolution courses, and reflect on years of experience of Christian communities struggling and straining, at times crumbling and imploding by the inability of Christians to live their communal life as reconciled reconcilers, peaceable peacemakers, forgiven forgivers and merciful receivers of mercy.

And after a number of conversations with experienced pastors, and reflecting on the responses to a questionnaire on what is essential in ministry training, it is confirmed that a major felt need is training in conflict resolution and dealing with difficult people.

There is a not to be missed irony in all this. That Christian communities experience powerful internal tensions which create strain and stress on relationships and structures is not new. Corinth is one of the reassuringly flawed churches of the New Testament – from the start Christians have unabashedly demonstrated pride and self-regard, power hunting and the urge to dominate, judgemental words and argumentative habits, unforgivingness as obstinacy of the closed heart, and much else. And yet.

As Jesus said, the language of empire, government, self-appointed and self-inflated leaders, and of all those who aspire to be first in any queue for handouts of power and status is not the language of the Kingdom of God. Mark 10.42-45 is for me the deal clincher in the arguments about how the life of the Kingdom is expressed in community. And Mark has preserved the tone of Jesus veto "Not so amongst you". Abrupt, uncompromising, comprehensive negation without negotiation – "not so among you."

But it is so. In many Christian communities the cultural drivers for recognition, status, power and possessions are deeply and invidiously installed. Mark 10.45 crucially links "giving himself" with "not to be served but to serve". So a Christian doctrine of reconciliation begins at the cross and ends in the embodied practice of reconciliation through self-giving love.

Conflict resolution for Christians is a process that is traceable to the deepest reality of the universe, the reconciling heart of God.

The painting is Van Gogh's "Pieta".

15 July 2011
Lessons on truth from Spam – Genuine quality replica truth!

"Buy Genuine Quality Rolex Replica".

This was a spam invitation that came in this morning.

Is it a genuine replica or a false one – what does the adjective genuine qualify? Quality or replica?

Or is it a replica of genuine quality?

It isn't a genuine Rolex but it is quality.

Quality what?

Amongst the sins of contemporary culture is our collusion with what is not true, what is verbal sleight of hand, what appeals to vanity so persuasively we opt to be blind to the lie and deaf to the truth.

And if I had a Genuine Quality Rolex replica – who would I be fooling – apart from myself.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity…..

12 July 2011
Cross – stitch theology: “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”.

Just completed the latest tapestry – this time of the triumphant Lamb. It's based on the image of the Lamb on the covers of the recently reprinted volumes of John Howard Yoder. I tried some creative adaptation and intentional uses of colour to enrich and deepen the symbolism. The cross, the eucharistic cup, the bleeding wound and the banner of the Lamb are each christological referents. The ground on which the lamb stands is a God loved world, won by love not conquered by power, the blood of the lamb making peace, and the life of the world renewed by mercy.

The stitch work is a mixture of half cross stitch and goebelin. It's an interesting exercise in contemplative rumination on a Scripture symbol, to work a tapestry that is a combination of received symbol and creative playing with colour, and to dwell with such enriched ideas over a time.

This one is for a friend, for whom the slain lamb is the defining symbol of his spirituality. The primary themes of such spiritual commitment are justice, peace, reconciliation, the confrontation of power with gentleness, the imperative of speaking truth to power, the theological and ethical no to violence and coercion that lies at the heart of the cross, the Lamb as a summons to a different and dissident kind of discipleship.

10 July 2011
An Invitation to prayer for little people!

" Come now, little man, put aside your business for a while, take refuge for a little from your tumultuous thoughts; cast off your cares, and let your burdensome distractions wait. Take some leisure for God; rest awhile in him. Enter into the chamber of your mind; put out everything except God and whatever helps you to seek him; close the door and seek him. Say now to God with all your heart: "I seek thy face O Lord, thy face I seek'."

The words are by Anselm and were important guidelines in the spirituality of Archbishop Michael Ramsey for whom theology and prayer were experiential synonyms.

They read like a distillation of the Christian tradition of contemplative prayer, the deliberate paying attention to God by withdrawing attention from self-concerned, self-centred, and self-referential activity of mind, emotion and body, being still to know that God is God, not us.

They appeal to me because they address me personally, "Come now, little man…… " 🙂

9 July 2011
The News of the World – comment is superfluous, but what the hack!

Quite often I have a fairly opinionated comment to make on some of the happenings and people in the news. The hacking scandal is as big a news story about the news media as has broken in my lifetime. The photo is of someone who seems to just have taken the blinkers off and discovered what has been happening – or maybe they are sunglasses behind which to hide behind – I know about the double adverb, but there has been so much hiding behind going on already.

Victims of the London bombings 5 years ago, and their families; relatives of soldiers killed in action; a young woman found murdered; countless significant figures in politics, show business and other areas of public life; and around 4,000 others. Privacy invaded to sell the news product.

A paper editor gives evidence in a showcase Scottish contempt of court trial, and compromises the judicial process by being directly involved in the goings on of the News of the World. Questioned by Parliament, police and the Scottish Court, innocence was maintained. More difficult to maintain after recent revelations. The same person was communications director for our Prime Minister until earlier pressures of this case forced a resignation 'to clear his name'. Right.

Journalists and police officers set up an information exchange mart! Evidence can be bought, obtained by illegal hacking, exchange hands for upwards of £100,000 pounds over 5 years, and thus the criminal justice system is compromised.

The same institution (the police) believed to be independent of vested interests, carries out an investigation into hacking allegations – 5 years ago – identifies three or four culprits but gives the News of the World otherwise a clean bill ot ethical and legal health. Then the revelations of this week.

The paper is shut down, the CEO keeps her job, hundreds of innocent people lose their jobs on the strength of a mobile phone call from somewhere high up, maybe the chief priest of the current worshippers of the ruthless Gods of money, media, image and information technology. And this will make it all ok then? Right.

I am not qualified to comment on such a convoluted, systemic, chronic,illegal, immoral and repulsive culture of mocking indifference to human rights, human feelings, human suffering and humane standards of respect and justice in the treatment of people.

Another case of comment is superfluous. Why? Because we are not stupid – it doesn't need spelt out. This is evil – unambiguously, and without qualification as wrong as media power, invasive journalism and ruthless news gathering can get.

8 July 2011