Un Coeur Gross

[To finish on Joseph]


: extract from journal - 12.04.09 :


Easter Sunday - Vers L'église church.

A most surprising experience. Simple, protestant celebration in a beautiful, small church, all in french. I caught enough of the sermon to gather what was being shared – Joseph of Arimathea. The vicar spoke of Joseph's big heart, and how his heart was like the tomb from which Jesus was 'ressucité' – resurrected. He contained both death and life in his heart, with HOPE for the Kingdom of God to come. (Luke 23:51).

The vicar began his sermon by placing his hand on his heart, feeling for his own heartbeat.

"Le coeur symbolisé la vie, et la mort. C'est un cadeau, chaque jour. Joseph de Arimathea avait un coeur gross...," and he stressed the word 'big' with his hands as if he was growing into it.

So, as I pondered yesterday, he says Joseph symbolises our hope for life, even in death.

That these thoughts of yesterday were followed with a clear reiteration is too bare-faced to be meaningless.

•

A calling to stand in the shadows with a torchbeam is tough, and can feel very bleak. If this is you, you are in very good company. Our response to this call has to be a work in progress, heartened by knowing the greater your experience of suffering, the greater your capacity to love. You learn gradually that hope will always have the last word.

Hang in. Hang in.


{Today's soundtrack: me & my guitar}

More About Joseph

[Fearing the last post turned sober thought into trite meandering.]


: extract from journal - 11.04.09 :


Easter Saturday – Switzerland, Sur le Buis

Today is the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It is a day of rest. We rest with the difficulty of things, and the challenge of situations unresolved.

When Joseph [of Arimathea] came to take Jesus' body down from the cross, wrap it up and bury Jesus, he carried in his arms the deadweight of a strong man. The effort it would take to do this is one of fierce will, the sort of effort that is possible when the end goal–the ultimate vision–is clear in heart and mind. If I run a long race, the vision that gets me through the most gruelling parts is that of crossing the finish line and enjoying the victory of achievement at the end. For Joseph, he must have had some vision of the ultimate achievement beyond today in order to physically carry Jesus' body off the cross and into its tomb.

Joseph was the only man on the council who opposed the sentencing of Jesus. He was 'a voice of one calling in the desert'. How would his protestations have been received at council, and what would observers have made of his behaviour at the cross after Jesus died?

Joseph displayed a tenacity that relied solely on his hope for redemption, and yet what he carried of that hope was a deadweight, bloody carcass. For us, there are equivalents everyday – smaller, quieter echoes.

Today–Easter Saturday–is often, for me, the most difficult day of Easter. It is the liminal space where decisions or events determine a separation from the old, familiar way, and where the new way is not yet known or established. The new way is not even glimpsed, but we hope for it with all our hearts because one thing is sure: it would be a difficulty too far to live with the nothingness–the inconclusiveness–of things as they stand today. It is not even about being satisfied, complete or whole, but experiencing the powerful hand of redemption at work. That is what we hope for with Joseph.


Luke 23:51 "... he was waiting for the kingdom of God."


{that day's soundtrack: melting snow}

Dreamer

This image is from a little medieval church in a tiny village somewhere in the Swiss Alps. I sat there last Easter and pondered hope in the face of everything against it, as demonstrated by the big heart of Joseph of Arimathea. He carried the bloody corpse of Jesus in his arms and tended to it, because he believed death was not the final word. This is what I was thinking about when I found a big, red felt heart on the seat in front of me, and these pew-ends seemed to me to be the shape of encouraging angels, so I photographed them to remember being so moved by a story of hope in the face of death.

For a person blessed with imagination and thought, the physical world around you is only a starting point. There are–metaphysically–things not yet existing which will indeed come to pass. How do I know? Because this is what we persistently translate into music, brushstrokes, sculptural form and lyrical adventure, and keep doing because it keeps unlocking things for people. This is how we take a scribble of thought and sweep it into a beautifully crafted line with form and expression, assembled into a compelling vision.

Some questions:

Why are we compelled by art and music?
Because the thoughts and visions they contain can resonate with our most inexplicable longings and articulate hope.

Why are we not–even after everything–immune to hoping?
The answers to our hope (mine at least) often interrupt my straining at the leash by arriving from a totally alien direction with a gust of new, unbelievable life. This has taken me quite by surprise a number of times and captivates me into hope proper, believing not only that anything could happen, but occasionally does.

If hope is your greatest strength, is it also your greatest weakness?
Say, for example, you spied a handsome stranger one day as you stood by a tea urn backstage somewhere, and you sensed he spied you, and then as quickly and without a word passing, he disappears because he has a life to live that bears no relation to the fantasy you have suddenly created. Hope says he's not married, or doesn't prefer boys, and that its possible he could be your prince, and proceeds to colour in the pictures for you. Irresistably irrational, you are helpless in Hope's arms.

Hmm, angels on my pew...

...a voyage into the fairytale wilderness it is then with nothing but a pencil box for company.


{Today's Soundtrack: Bethany Dillon - The Acoustic Sessions}

Adrift

For a while, I've been captivated and swept up in an ocean of progression, harmonies and new beginnings. Music has been my only way. Words simply weren't enough–using them implied understanding, which would have been misleading–and photographs would not be caught.

It started with a single note back on February 8th (I remember clearly), then a chord, and a progression which escalated and diminished, and was then sustained. There has been a significant interruption in the rhythm of wave against shore, but this is the nature of shifting sands. So, I somehow found myself in the middle of this swilling ocean clinging to my guitar with nothing but a voice, and nothing making much sense. Let it come, was the advice, so I did just that, as I cast adrift.

I'm on another shore now–one which I couldn't see or imagine the last time I was here. For all the bewilderment, grief and disorientation in change, music has been everything – my ship. That's not such great news for this space (at least short term) whose life is about photographs and words, and I'm sorry about that! But music teaches me that not everything can be held on to, or pointed at, and if you cling too hard to pictures your scenery can never change, as it must.


{Today's Soundtrack: Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago}

Unfolding

"I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding."

Chatting today with a new friend, we mused about different seasons in life, mourning the loss of those past while grasping the purpose in those current. He asked me what season I was in now, and without too much hesitation I answered, "Spring". I was trying to remember this quote and got the words all mixed up, so regret stumbling my way through a potentially eloquent moment!

Hopeful spring, it's impossible to detail precisely how the plants will grow or what shape the flowers or fruit will be. And so it is that we are–like the river–surprised by the unfolding, captivated and compelled to keep moving forward. It's the nature of growth.

As occasionally happens, I am sorry for such lengthy absence. I could say I've been busy (true) or have been frozen in Winter (also true) with nothing going in and nothing coming out. Either way, I hope the arrival of Spring will cause some fresh unfolding.


{Today's Soundtrack: A student's seranade}

Something Gentle

Do you have about eight and a half minutes to watch a short clip? If you do, you will probably, after about the first two minutes, find yourself leaning on your elbows, fists propping your cheeks up with a sweet grin appearing on your face feeling like nothing really matters quite as much as you thought, except those things which you thought didn't matter.

It's absolutely delightful.

Elizabeth Cotten - Freight Train


{That was today's soundtrack}

Like a Child

I've been reading some interesting thoughts from Desmond Tutu on how much faith it takes to walk on a pavement, whether or not you believe in God. The point was that–even if you are an atheist–life cannot be lived without faith. It takes faith to drive your car and believe that everyone else is going to drive sensibly. It takes faith to put food in your mouth and trust it will not poison you, and faith to step onto the street believing that the ground will remain firm beneath you.

If you do not believe in God, you are still a person of faith.

With this in mind, can anyone tell me why the word 'faith' has become such a dirty word? Sometimes it's all we've got. It's not weakness to admit this, it's beyond strength and takes courage. It turns you into a child again, which isn't wrong, but it does go against the grain when you've spent your adult life working out the sense in, say, evolution, only to discover it forces you to make an off-putting case for oppressors, the sort that suck away all the world's resources for themselves, or systematically murder off people living on land they want. What stops people doing those things? Faith, that this rubbish is not the final word.

Faith tempers the arrogance of the fool.

Say a prayer, go on, don't be shy.




{Today's soundtrack: Pete Seeger - Oh, had I a golden thread}

{ extra soundtrack }

A special new year kick, I heard this on the radio on my way home from climbing the other night–it summed things up and made me clench my teeth and fists a bit firmer! It's been out since December so don't know why it's not being broadcast from rooftops everywhere with the volume up to 11, drowning out some of those miserable journalists.

{Florence and the Machine - Dog Days Are Over}

Blue Doors

So, winter time, here we are. It's all a bit frozen with nothing coming in and nothing going out, isn't it? At least that's how it feels much of the time. It takes a lot of grit to insist that there really are little streams trickling in–hidden as they are under layers of ice. However, after reading the Jan18th post on this page, I'm reminded that winter time is all about life being very still, necessarily so in preparation for the seasons ahead. And it will always be!

Standing at doorways like these I feel a curiosity about what lies concealed, ahead or around the corner. This is how my winter view feels, but I know there's something special in the waiting and dreaming that is intentionally so. Perhaps this desire is what shapes life when it does come pouring in again.

With this in mind, let's try not to lose heart over a freezing economy, lack of sunlight hours, society in hibernation or seemingly unanswered prayers. Friends, hold your nerve! These times feel hard relatively speaking, but there's nothing happening now that you can't deal with. It's winter, and rightly so before spring presses up its shoots...

...such as a black man elected American president while those looking on remember being disallowed from travelling on a bus in the 1960s because of their colour.

Anything is possible, but Winter has to come before Spring.





{Today's soundtrack: Fleet Foxes}

Light : 03

The 'stinky back alley' I referred to in last post. I thought this photograph was lost in the robbery (almost two years ago now) but holding my nose and diving in to a cluttered inbox for some long overdue filing under 'b', there it was, thank goodness, as if to prove a point that in the midst of rubbish out shines beauty.

In tandem to this post, the extraordinary–yet–humble story which occurred as I knelt in a flowerbed surrounded by empty bottles of Lambrini is now up on news. With thorny plants catching my jeans, it struck me what a very strange throne this was as I observed such a momentous occasion as the Angels landing. But it is fitting, as this whole story has been one of good things coming out of darkness. The first phonecall I received to come on board with the project came 2 days after that robbery, which cleaned me out in more ways than can be imagined.


{Today's soundtrack: The Shins}

Light : 02

When was the last time a beam of light caught your eye? No, I mean really stopped you mid-track, so that for a second you forgot what else you were doing.

I remember ages ago walking down a stinky back alley on the way home, tired and miserable. The sunset bounced off windows at the end of the street and made golden pools all along the alley and it has been my little street of reminder ever since – a reminder that gorgeous things come out of rubbish.

Taking photographs, (as I discussed a while ago in my first post about light) it is difficult to avoid the 'exquisite light' moments that happen upon us occasionally, and even for the most quiet, humble soul it is very hard to resist the poetic temptation to make them mean something other than just basic physics at play.

Whether these moments are meaningful in themselves depends on who you are and what's going on for you at that time, don't you think? Whether you need a 'Damascus' moment or just some help picking out the shape of things in a shadow, we are nowhere without light. It doesn't need to be earth shattering, as these photographs from today show – humble, regular, straight in front of you. But I fear we ignore light and take it for granted, some even pretending it doesn't matter.

It's often after or during a storm that the best light moments happen, beams bouncing around off wet surfaces in the most brilliant ways. Don't tell me this is mere physics and without metaphor. Silver linings, and all that. Consider this, that maybe the best light beams are saved for when you need them the most.

(There is an extraordinary story about light and the angels from this week, but I'll save this for your delight tomorrow on news.)

Go outside! Get out from your lightless places!


{Today's soundtrack: Band of Horses - Cease To Begin}

Be Calm

Just stay calm. Sit on your hands. Coffee won't help, neither will that chocolate you're being offered. Breath in and out. Remember, you are the same person you were yesterday and will be tomorrow. Walking still requires one foot in front of the other.

But, my goodness, this is exciting...


(more on news)


{Today's soundtrack: Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocalypse}