“Dear Friends, Isn’t it amazing that each one of us, and all creation, is unique and special to God. With my love and prayers, Joyce”
This latest Picture Tweet from Joyce, with the quotation from Margaret Mead, is saying something very simple and very profound.
You don’t need me to tell you that our world is in a mess right now. There are huge problems Internationally and more locally. The News is generally depressing and it’s easy to feel dispirited and overwhelmed.
So, all the more reason to look at the uniqueness of creation and all the wonderful things that are happening as Spring reveals itself once again. We are all a significant part of that revealing so we can contribute uniquely to a new direction for our world. A friend, Bishop Jack Nichols, commenting on the state of things, prays: ‘God Bless this Mess’. We do that best if we are ourselves a blessing to the world. We are such a blessing because of what Joyce reminds us about our being special and unique to God. But don’t rely on what I say, or what Joyce says. Much more importantly believe what God says. Believe it and live out its truth in your life. In Isaiah 43 verse 1, we read.
But now, thus says the Lord, He who created you … He who formed you … Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, You are Mine !!!
I call this ‘Broken Music’. It is by the Afghan street artist Shamsiah Hassani. She did much to inspire women in Kabul to be empowered and confident in a male dominated society. After the Taliban took over, she moved away from Afghanistan and her work now has a global perspective. One of her recent paintings, Damn the War, was addressed to the people of the Ukraine. I have chosen this one to illustrate a poem I wrote on International Piano Day.
A poem on International Piano day
Play the piano for me. I wish to hear music. Play notes to calm my fears, Soothing my soul from anxiety.
I live in a world ripped apart by sounds gurgling up from the bowels of hell. Bombs, missiles, bullets, Angry tanks, guttural sounds of soldiers. Many are far from home, tired too, hungry. bewildered. Sucked in by masters whose only language is hatred. Their words a cacophony of crashing disharmony mixed with disillusionment. Such cankered and disfigured hearts, no longer at one with the music that created them.
Buildings shake and discard the rubble of their former life. Incessant noise, unceasing ruin. No symphony. No sympathy.
Wars begin in hearts crumpled by demonic blackness. Is this hell? Despair. The concerto of annihilation.
But, if you play music to us, We may find a way out of all this. Your sound of note caressing note, sprinkles kindness over us , and love; showing us where we need to be.
As the piano music lifts my heart, I hear it’s tune – There is more than hell on earth. There is earth raised up to heaven.
Mr G. 29.3.2022
Please look at the work of Shasiah Hassani either on Instagram or by Googling her name. There are a number of interesting and informative articles about her,
My friend Joyce has sent me this lovely picture tweet. She writes, This sleepy wood pigeon is enjoying the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the blossom before it is blown away.With my love and prayers. God bless, Joyce
There is a call to stillness as nature and the natural world bring forth the joy of creation. The blossom heralds Spring and, though fleeting, it is a sign of hope.
We all know that there is so much darkness and despair right now. Ukraine weighs heavily on our hearts and other places are unsettled. The girls denied an education this week in Afghanistan are only part of the problem there, as children and families suffer increasingly from malnutrition.
We need to remain aware, too, that there are many in Russia who oppose the war at their peril and yet are brave enough to speak out. They too need our prayerful support.
So whilst all around us there is destruction and fragility, it is good to be reminded that the earth still blossoms with beauty and the promise of new life.
Two years ago we went into the first Lockdown against Covid. That virus in differing forms is still with us. I myself am battling it at the moment, as are about a million others in the UK alone. Maybe we didn’t really learn the lessons. Maybe we should have taken up the opportunities of a new way of living and so developed new values by which to be truly human and truly at one with each other and creation.
At the time of the first lockdown, the artist, David Hockney, painted a series of paintings. Alongside them he said, Do remember, they can’t cancel the Spring! Maybe, in the midst of all that is besetting and destroying humanity in a maelstrom of the demonic, we need to pray and work for that truth.
Spring is God’s time of renewal and re-birth. To give us that gift, however, he had to take on the demonic of evil by dying on the Cross. It was the triumph of love and light against evil and darkness and, in the words of the poet T.S.Eliot, it cost God not less than everything. For Ukraine and other places of suffering, that is a personal reality for many right now, not least their inspirational and dedicated President, Volodymyr Zelensky. It is costing the Ukrainian Nation not less than everything.
Many of us are deeply humbled by the people of Ukraine and by the multitude of people who are receiving the victims of the war by opening their countries, their hearts and their homes with a generosity, compassion and love which is rapidly enfolding those for whom life has changed so deeply. In such hospitality the demonic is being confronted and in many ways defeated by love. God is enthusing and empowering that love.
Our little wood pigeon surrounded by blue sky and gorgeous blossom is, in its own way, a reminder that not only has spring not been cancelled but also, neither has love. It may be very fragile but it cannot be broken.
Fra Angelicoshows us something of the message that Gabriel brought from God to Mary.
I have never been a great artist, despite all the best efforts of my art teacher at grammar school. He did, however, inspire me to appreciate art and that has become an important part of my life. Amongst the paintings we studied was Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation, painted about 1450. It is a fresco painting in the Convent of San Marco in Florence. Fra Angelico was a Dominican monk who was a master of Renaissance art but his purpose was always to teach. His paintings were always to illustrate the message of God.
Fra Angelico’s painting of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary (the feast day we celebrate today) is one of the most moving and well-known of this event in St. Luke’s Gospel. There is a quiet stillness and a sense of gentle conversation and attentiveness; of revelation and eventual acceptance of God’s plan for the salvation of the world. A plan which needed Mary’s ‘Yes’. Though Fra Angelco’s scene captures very little of the surprise and turmoil the Angel’s message brought to Mary there is a sense that something deeply significant is going on in the quietness of the scene.
We are told by St. Luke that she was deeply troubled and like many who are called by God to some action and service, she thought of reasons this could not be. After reassurance by God through the angel, she then offered herself to God’s plan. This was not the submissive meekness usually associated with this moment.
It is significant, perhaps, that Luke begins his Passion story with a similar struggle leading to an acceptance. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus too tried desperately to avoid His Crucifixion. Out of His anguish, his sweat fell like ‘drops of blood,’ yet, as with His Mother he finally allowed The Divine Plan to go forward with His ‘Yet your wil, not mine be done.’
In both cases, Son and Mother gave themselves fuly and completely to the work of claiming the world back to God. For both it was a real giving requiring from them an active sharing in the Plan of God.
In painting his Annunciation, I see Fra Angelico choosing to paint that moment after Mary’s acceptance,just before the angel left her. The vocation, or call, of God to Mary had been made and acceptance eventually given and after that, as is so often the case when we have strggled with God’s will and our own, a godly peace descends.
I like to think that Fra Angelico wanted to show that. He wanted those who looked at his painting to know that when we meld our wills with God’s there is an amazing outpouring of Grace. That’s when real vocations happen. It is not surprising therefore that we might say, Hail Mary, full of Grace…
Almighty God, so fill us with your grace that we may accept you will in all things and with the Virgin Mary, full of grace rejoice in your salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Mr G's Ponderings 