Fragments, mosaics, patterns ...

For quite some time I seem to have been dwelling on fragments, fragments of lent and Advent. Bits and pieces, scraps of cloths, small quotes, kennings, beginnings of ideas, theology of fragments, an ecumenism of fragments ...
This evening I went out to supper with a friend and was given a very special box covered in tiny fragments of beautiful wood and precious mother of pearl. I couldn't stop running my hand over it, so pretty, so lovely, Not perfect but simply beautiful.
I talked about the fragments and my friend began to speak about the importance of mosaic in her culture, how it offers a different approach to melting pot multiculturalism. In the culture of the mosaic each shapely fragment is valued because it is used to make up part of the pattern. The fragments are part of a pattern.
In a way I cannot even really put into words I found this deeply meaningful today. It was both reassuring and grace filled as an idea for me. As I try somehow to gather up what I feel is shattered and put it together it is purposeful to feel that these shards of precious life-giving colour may actual produce pattern, pattern that may even be aesthetically pleasing or spiritually meaningful.
The fragments may yet come together in a new whole, that too may of course be shattered. Yet the patterning and the yearning for meaning and beauty will remain.
I realise I have been blessed.
Meanwhile I must try to find more of Henning Luther's writing in the theology of fragments.

More images from Stitching Peace

The Stiching Peace exhibition is going well in the Assembly Hall of the University of the West Indies. Roberta Bacic had to travel back to Ireland today but the exhibiton continues with Mairead and Marlene from Derry. Roberta was really enthusiastic about the experience of this international gathering in Jamaica and has alraedy got several invitations for further exhibtions. Today we had a visit from a group of local quilters here in Kingston, they left some great comments in the visitors book which has praise in many languages for the exhibtion.
The catalogues are also available in four languages and look really great.

The dance of justpeace?

This wonderful sculpture is at the University of the West Indies not far from the staff offices. From a distance it looks almost like a mural, only close up to you begin to get the idea of the wonderful movement and energy in the sculpture.
This truly is a woman in praise and joy:
"Glory to God and Peace on Earth"

Walking on water to journey to peace ... the IEPC begins

This stunning piece of textile art in patchwork and quilting is called "Journey to Peace" and is by Deborah Stockdale. It is the central work commissioned for the Stitching Peace exhibtion which will come to Jamaica as part of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation - the exhibition has itself been on a journey, it was displayed in Geneva for a month earlier in the year. Roberta Bacic who curated the exhibition comes from Chile but lives in Northern Ireland. Many of the pieces are packed in Ireland and waiting to come to Kingston as I write this ...

I arrived in Jamaica just after midnight local time last night. Members of the local committee were waiting to meet us at the airport - it was wonderful when feeling so tired to be welcomed and taken to our accommodation. What was interesting though was that even in this brief meeting at a midnight hour with all of us tired, we were already getting into the theme of "just peace". One of the people arriving at the same time as me was a young person from Syria. As we waited we exchanged perhaps rather superficial comments about the situation in Syria with her. Her response was interesting, "much of what is said is propaganda". Given the late hour and our need for sleep after 24 hours of travelling there wasn't time to have much follow up conversation. I'll admit to wishing I could be a fly on the wall at the youth programme where I am sure that discussion and many others will continue.
Once I was compos mentis enough for some cogent thought again this morning after a few hours sleep, I thought back to our conversation last night. It struck me that "just peace" is definitely not about easy slogans or one-size fits all solutions. It's about having good quality and nuanced information about situations (both of conflict and of reconciliation), but it is also in some way trying to come to a judgement about those situation. Not a judgement for all time but a judgement in the here and now. Syria could be a good case in point, but so are many other countries and situaitons.
To be for justice and for peace will often mean knowing not to take sides in a simplisitc way but knowing rather how to stand up for the (gospel) values of peace and justice as such. Sometimes though to be for justice and peace will mean taking sides, and being prepared to be vilified for taking that stance. Being for a just peace is not something static or set in stone it is very much about being on a journey and sometimes it will mean daring to put our feet on what is not solid ground. Daring to get it wrong.
In Deborah's Journey to Peace this sense of moving towards something is clear but what you can't see so clearly from this image is that there are people in the ecumenical boat, people also walking in the labyrinth of peace which is the IEPC logo of locked hands. There are however also people who have stepped out of the boat and are walking on the water. They really are daring to believe that the journey to just peace will carry them on. Pilgrims of hope borne forwards by hope and belief in water and the word... a beautiful baptismal image.
Here in Jamaica we are surrounded by water, all of us coming here have to cross it in some way or another. As we arrive and as we leave Kingston will we dare to go on walking on water into the future so as to build a just peace?

The deep consolation, the laughter and tearfulness of reading poetry

For the past few days I've been reading the wonderful poems in Neil Astley and Pamela Robinson-Pearce's great anthology of hope Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds.
It is a read that is a voyage of discovery: moving, funny, profound there is real food and hope for starved souls in the 150 pages. We are so saturated and stuffed with images and music, yet here simple well-honed lines keep bringing us back to essentials. Few of the poems are long, many are very short.
I'm grateful for the many poems in translation that are included, opening up not only other languages (truth called "he" rather than "she" or "it") and cultures, but also completely different ways of structuring thoughts, poetry and hope itself.
Dr B even found one to read aloud to me last night, this by the fabulous Carol Ann Duffy, only a Radio 4 listener or a sailor would understand the final line!

Prayer
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 minims1 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.

copyright Carol Ann Duffy

Meanwhile I have this evening been entranced by some poems by Jane Kenyon, in particular the one called Happiness below. It seems quite right that a poet who struggled all her life against depression should write on such a theme. Now I shall have to track down some of the works she translated. I'm always interested in poets who also translate.

Happiness There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone. No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair. It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night. It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine. copyright Jane Kenyon

Anyway, although reading poetry might seem to resolve nothing, it does offer a structure that might be called joy or understanding, consolation or perhaps even hope. Gradually words are beginning to put me back together again, perhaps that is resolution of a kind ...

Remembering: passion, betrayal, resurrection and ... painting

Today I taught KT on my own and turned up to spend time with the young people with some paint brushes and a clear idea that we would read the passion narrative together.

We began by doing about half an hour of remembering the passion story. To help with this I put on the table some branches of hazel - a bowl, a towel, a jug of water, one of the communion chalices and the communion patten. The more I use the remembered Bible method the more I realise how affiriming of people's inner Bibles it is. It was great with the young people today because the two less academic ones actually know the Bible stories much better. One thing that struck me as we were remembering together was how time is concertina-d - you go forwards backwards and sideways - and of course you're dealing with four gospels at the same time too so there's lots going on and amazing how details get remembered - one girl today remembered the ear being chopped off.

After our remembering we started reading Luke's gospel, aloud, sitting peaceably around the table. We began with the entry into Jerusalem - the branches on the table were to prompt thoughts of this. Palm Sunday is called "branches Sunday" in French. It is branches rather than palm crosses which are blessed and taken home from Roman Catholic churches. We ended with Jesus being laid in the tomb. It was qutie extraordinary sitting there on a wonderful sunny spring day with a group of adolescents remembering and reading the Bible. After reading we wrote prayers of thanksgiving for Christ's witness for the way he had chosen. Each of us tried to focus on three things. All of us wrote powerful words. I could tell that the group were completely engaged with the story. We also read the footwashing from John's gospel ... and we talked about prisoners of conscience and the work of Amnesty International and Christian Action Against Torture, and we prayed. We talked about violence, their experiences of it at school and in daily life.

After lunch we read the story of the resurrection in Luke's gospel, the Emmaus story right on through to the ascension. And we talked about hope and life, the meaning and gift of resurrection. And then we painted and they just took over and the act of painting became part of our remembering and understanding. They created a sort of Jackson Pollock like fabulous mess in the centre of the paper, then surrounded it with images of flowers and smiley faces hearts and points of colour and their names and words of hope. What was brilliant was listening to how they came to an agreement about what to do and then seeing their pure glee in all starting to paint together and throw the paint around. Wonderful energy. I think I was moved that they wanted to put their own names as part of the resurrection framework for the painting.
Now I just have to hope that they become friends with me on Facebook so that I get to see the photos of our work of art - yes I took my paintbrushes but forgot to take my camera so we'll have to wait a while for some pictures.

Pretty little books by Elisabeth Ivanovsky

I managed to resist the first time I saw these lovely mini books by Elisabeth Ivanovsky but when in Paris last week I gave in and bought myself these 25 tiny little books, which are beautiful reproductions of books first published in the 1940s.
For me they are very evocative of the drawings and commentaries that my aunt used to do first in Berlin and then in London at the same period. Here books of drawing were bigger than these but have a similar flavour, Ivanovsky, like my aunt, was also a migrant. Perhaps that's part of what this style evokes for me.
Anyway, these really are books as works of art and I treasure them and love them. Tiny, pretty, pointless books that speak to me of fun, beauty, attention to detail, poetry and art. Looking at them makes me happy.

In memory of her ... loose threads sewn up ...

Something shocking and beautiful and wonderful happened to me today. I came home from work and Dr B mentioned in passing that there was a package waiting for me - I assumed this meant I had to go to the post office and pick something up later in the week. Then as I went into the kitchen I came across a small box and saw it came from Deborah Stockdale in Ireland. (Deborah is the artist who made "journey to peace" for the WCC and which is part of our stiching peace exhibition - it is stunning, but more of that soon!)

So I unwrapped the small box and inside found the stunning quilt you can see in the photo here - actually it is much more stunning than this mobile phone photo taken late in the evening allows for. I have already christened this piece "In memory of her ..."
Nine years ago I went to a quilting shop with a friend and bought the material you can see in this quilt. I had never made a quilt in my life (I still have not) but I spent money - quite alot of money - buying the lovely material. I knew I needed rainbow colours for the idea I had and I felt fairly sure I ought to be able to design something that would just about work and make a Huguenot cross out of patchwork, the rainbow colours being the symbol of God's covenant.
On Mondays in early 2002 I would go round to my friend's house and make desultory attempts to sew - mainly she would sew and I would chat and admire her creations. Her name was Rowena Reamonn, she was a brilliant artist in patchwork, embroidery and quilting.
That winter and early spring she was preparing to die, giving away quilting books, handing over things and fabrics, asking me to take her funeral. And as part of that I picked up needle and thread while she was alive, but really I just listened and laughed and heard her anger. She was about 18 months older than I am now.
I took her funeral on my first official day of work at the World Council of Churches ... as we hung the Stitching Peace exhibition I realised that the last time quilts had hung in the Centre was probably at her funeral. The gospel text she chose was the woman who anoints Jesus with perfume - of whom the Christ says "in memory of her ..." (pace Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza)
For Stitching Peace we needed fabric and an activity for the launch so I searched out material from the bottom of the deep drawers in my grandparent's bookcase. I had no real idea what was still there but I knew there was part of the fabric and quilt we had pinned together at Rowena's funeral and that I had a lot of material from abandoned dress-making and other projects. I bundled it all together and with Deborah discovered that part of it had even begun to be sewn together by me. Deborah took these bits back to Ireland with her - I didn't realise she had discovered the whole quilt I had actually cut out and stuffed in a bag!
I felt extraordinarily blessed today, to see something that I had imagined almost a decade ago, looking just like I had hoped, yet more so, more beautiful, more finished and so vivid.

I have been weeping too much in recent months and weeks, the reasons are too boring to mention - other people's pain is so often like that: depression, rage, incompression, grief, lack of self worth ... yet tonight I shed tears of joy and incomprehension. Feeling utterly blessed that someone I hardly know could do something so wonderfully generous as give her time for me and do this. It is SO lovely and something I shall treasure always and today I realised powerfully that this was exactly the right time for it to be finished.
Threads are being tied up.
In memory of her ...
Gratitude, colour, thread and tears ...
And for me an experience of pure grace.

Remembering the Bible - stubbornly

The Ecumenical Centre chapel is housing the wonderful Stitching Peace exhibition until March 18 - here is a picture of the amazing Roberta Bacic who curated the exhibition for the WCC, showing some of the young stewards from central committee around the exhibtion. I'll be writing more about that in coming weeks.

Each morning this week we have remembered a Bible text at morning prayer and then gone and visited one of the pieces of textile art hanging in the chapel.
Yesterday morning we remembered the plagues of Israel and then went and looked at an arpillera which showed how a village responded when under Pinochet the water to the houses was cut off - by coming together and making sure their village looked well kept for despite the terribly added pressure of not having water.
As we tried together to remember the plagues one person said that the thing that she was thinking most about was the stubbornness of Pharaoh. Insistent at holding on to power. In the end only able to forge fowards to destruction of himself and his army because of that - how much pain and suffering could have been avoided if he had allowed compassion and understanding into his heart. We never did manage to remember together the ten plagues of Israel but somehow we did remember this essence of the story ...

Afghan quilt - girls in Germany and Afghanistan stitch together relationships, meaning and hope

So here is an image of the wonderful quilt which was hung at the brilliant Verbal Arts Centre in Derry on Monday. The motto of the Verbal Arts Centre is "tell your story" (more about that later) and this quilt tells a powerful one. Young girls in Afghanistan embroider squares which they then sell in order to be able to pay for their schooling. Each of the squares of this quilt has one of those embroidered squares at its centre but the quilt was made by schoolgirls in a very multicultural part of Germany - each square has the name of a different country or of a German region sewn in writing onto it.
The quilt represents cooperation, learning and solidarity across borders. It also represents the possibility of building relationships in adversity. Young women helping one another without even knowing each other. Stitching a different future and offering all of us hope that things are already changing simply because of small and beautiful initiatives like this.

Cast lead ... bullets, bombs and blood ...

These are photos of the extraordinary textile art work by a German artist Heidi Drahota which is part of the Human cost of war exhibition in Derry. It's called gegossenes Blei - Cast Lead. This was the name given to an Israeli led action action against Gaza. Casting lead is of course also a game played at new year when molten lead is poured into water and you interpret the shapes. So we interpret the shapes of this poured lead ...
Those pretty hanging threads in this textile art are traces of bullets cast into bodies and houses.
Before knowing the story of this piece I was struck by it apparent beauty and technical accomplishment and then you begin to understand the reason for the metal in the red, the bloody mess of war and destruction - the human cost ... the human cost.

You can find the full catalogue of the exhibition here.

The Exhibition is curated by Roberta Bacic who has been organising major textile exhibitions of pieces of popular and professional work which tell a story both in Derry and internationally since 2007.

Bits and pieces ...

This is a photo of part of a small part of the wonderful stained glass windows that surround two walls of the chapel of the ecumenical centre in Geneva. This weekend I have have tried to put myself on a rapid Wordpress learning curve to create a blog for the Ecumenical Centre worship committee. Images of the stained glass windows will be part of that.

One of the things that sustains and inspires me about these beautiful windows which I see nearly every working day is that in every combination of four small windows they create beautiful images of the cross. I keep intending to make systematic photos of the different images that occur as a result of that but have not yet got around to it. the play of colours and light each day is simply wonderful, calming and inspiring.

The image here is the outer edge of the rising and setting sun which is clearly depicted in the windows on the western wall. It's not the whole image just part of it, you have to guess at the rest. What I like about the way the windows are conceieved is that each little square is lovely, coloured and light-filled, in and of itself, yet each is a piece of the much larger picture. Somehow this idea helps me achieve perspective - on life and much else besides.

Soup, soupistes and the art of mixing

Thanks to Sophie Verbeek, my wonderfully talented erstwhile calligraphy teacher I get the occasional cultural email and this one really took my fancy because it's such a great play on words.
Sophie will be one of the artists exhibiting at the Robertsau in Rumilly. The Robertsau styles itself as a "mixer of contemporary art" offering exhibition space and space for artists to "mix" with one another and with the public.
Rumilly is in the next door département of upper Savoy, not far from Annecy.
Meanwhile the "soupistes" are a grouping of artists in our part of the world, the Pays de Gex. They say that soupism - the philosophy they espouse - is without form just like a bowl of potage but that one thing is fur sure, it's meant for sharing!
So the mixeur and the soupistes get together for what looks as if it will be a very eclectic but fun exhibition in Rumilly. The whole philosophy the Robertsau looks great - a free space for artists and public to mix and talk and encounter in. A curated space.

Now of course to make soup you need a mixer - if you're making that kind of soup. But you also need friends to share it with, which is what we did with the delicious pumpkin and red pepper soup we ate last night.
Anyway I hope we make it to Rumilly before the end of November. First though we pack to head to the Languedoc.

du 26 septembre au 28 novembre 2010

Jane Le Besque - Christophe Jacquemet
Fanny Gagliardini - Rachel Nisbet - Mike Layland
Yvette David - Sophie Verbeek - Jean Deprez - Catherine Jacquet
installation, photographie, volume, peinture, bijoux, point croisés,livre d'artistes...
Une association invite une autre association...
La Robertsau, le mixeur d'art contemporain de Rumilly, nouvelle mise en marche de la machine
pour "les soupistes", un club d'artistes en tous genre du pays de Gex.
Soupism: la philosophie derrière le soupiste est aussi informe que le potage
mais quelle que soit sa saveur, elle est faite pour être partagée.

Dance and language as sculpture ...

Coming out of the Picasso exhibition at the Tate Liverpool yesterday we made our way around the "this is sculpture" exhibitions on the other floors which were wonderfully exciting and great fun. You can explore the exhibition here.
The first hall I explored was curated by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and called the sculpture of language. It was dedicated to the memory of the wonderful Adrian Henri and explored

ways in which artists have deployed, dissected and engaged with language, by making reference to literature, by exploring inscription and typography, and not least by using words to convey meaning or by creating works that are metaphors for communication itself ... As a contribution to the display, Carol Ann Duffy has written a new sonnet entitled POETRY that is integrated within the exhibition and has devised an installation that invites the audience to re-arrange and alter her sonnet with additional words to create an original and unlimited poem.

I liked discovering the very eclectic displays - from a sculpture by Anthony Gormley called Toast (in which an impression of a person was like the eaten out filling between mouldy bread) to a splendidly titled piece called "Débricollage" by Jean Tinguely. for a woman who loves words this was all very satisfying.

The next gallery involved going into a sculpture gallery which had been revamped as a dance hall with mirror ball and headphones for all visitors and a choice of DJ mixes on the A or B channels. The sculptures were interpretations of the human form and you bopped around looking at the displays, moving to the music on your headphones your own human form was reflected back at you in mirrors - the kind that make you look rather thinner than you are! We became our own idealised sculptures. It was funky and envigorating!
It also gave me lots of ideas about how to "curate" things for worship as well ...

Of Picasso, peace pigeons, scapegoats and skulls,

We have had a brilliant day pottering around the Albert Dock in glorious sunshine and bracing wind. Mainly we've spent the day at the Tate Liverpool. We went to see the special Picasso Peace and Freedom exhibition which is on until the end of the month. It was very good. Great fun to read the old issues of the French communist newspaper l'Humanité which formed part of the focus on Picasso and peace.
I was intrigued and shocked by the obsession with death and sex in many of the images, but given the experience of war, the occupation and the Spanish civil war this is not surprising. The dead cocks representing France, the goats heads and skulls, the skulls, bodies lying in disarray, the destruction and in justice of war ...
And then the doves, all of these pretty doves - though I rather liked a quote from Picasso himself saying why are these birds symbols of peace when they are so vicious. Yet these symbolic drawings, and there were many, many of them - became as much part of his legacy as the iconic cubist work. Fascinating as the exhibition was I felt the focus on peace and freedom seemed to make the curators put on rose-tinted specs when it came to some of the more questionable sides of the great artist's life - especially his treatment of women.
Anyway, we enjoyed looking at the Picasso designs for the various peace conferences and also the way he reworked other artist's work - Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe for instance.
So many striking images and much thought-provoking content and I left wondering - perhaps a little cynically - whether an artist who courts publicity can be truly free ...
Find out more here.

Enjoying the great street art in Liverppol

I loved this great house mural in Liverpool - and think it's fabulous that it is for a beauty salon. Great Scouse humour!

Leon Ferrari - photo from our cycling correspondent

This photo was taken yesterday in Arles by my brother Richard who has been cycling from Montélimar to friends in Lunel Viel over the past few days.
The piece is a famous one by Argentine artist Leon Ferrari, whose work is being exhibited in a former Roman Catholic Church during the Arles cultural festival.

You can find out more about the exhibition here.

The presence of a Léon Ferrari retrospective in a church is a paradox verging on the miraculous: here we have a famous, ninety-year-old artist who has devoted a large part of his working life to studying and implacably criticising the Catholic Church from its origins up to the present day.

Ferrari’s œuvre foregrounds the contradictions of the human condition: the abuses of power and the intolerance, sexual repression, racism, violence and authoritarianism that characterise different kinds of organisations in contemporary society. Mixing humour and sarcasm in ongoing reinterpretations of history, Ferrari confronts us with all the ambiguity, cruelty and stupidity human beings are capable of, citing as examples the horrors of the Inquisition, the Nazi concentration camps, America’s impositions of military hegemony, the dictatorship in Argentina, and the multiple forms in which such abominations can resurface ...

His mythic piece La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana (Western Christian Civilisation)—an assemblage of an American war plane and a crucified Christ, censored in the Argentina of the 1960s—will be shown in the very special setting of the Chapelle Sainte-Anne. Never in its entire history has this remarkable work been exhibited in such a significantly relevant venue.

Simply beautiful ...

I simply like these two paintings - both have meaning and movement - one more minimalist the other more filled and geometric. The artists worked outdoors, slowly and quietly, interrupted by our noisy visits from time to time.

Simply beautiful.

A beloved wife's name, a labyrinth of love, a scroll of peace and so much more besides

Action and reflection spiral with two ways of looking at things

I think the artist of this piece came from Indonesia. The spiral is the increasing action reflection spiral of his life, encountering joy and pain on the way. Then there are two beautifully executed faces which look upwards and downwards at the whole, different perspectives from afar and close up - what do we see?