< " In the beginning...what does that phrase call to mind ?..." In the beginning...a scientific formula... ?... or... the first few wordsof the Bible.../... the opening words of St John's Gospel...?

today we celebrate the life of St John the gospel writer... but he kept himself carefully anonymous in the Gospel... "the other disciple"... then much later "the beloved disciple"... which sounds rather odd to our ears, but maybe was quite ok in his own culture ? after all,it does seem that he was very close to Jesus ( being requested by Peter to just lean back and ask who was going to betray him...clearly expecting the response could easily be quietly whispered to him as he was so near : John 13 v 21 - 25 ) and he is theonly Gospel writer who claims to have been an eye-witness...eg John 19 v 35 & also John 21 v 20f... so, although we know little about whohe was... except through glimpses and hints& guesses intheGospels... maybe this is the important thing to celebrate today... that we have aneyewitness who wrote down, or morelikely dictated to a scribe, what he had actually seen of the life of Jesus, and the impact itmade on him... we can celebrate and read his Gospel in a new light... realising that here we have an eyewitness... * and if youdoubt this, and have been taught that this Gospel was written much later...then do look at "The Priority of John" by John Robinson (1984) and read the narrative parts of John's Gospel, and see foryourself... yes, he gives us a different angle on things than St Mark... and remember that Matthe & Luke are following Mark's account & not giving us independent eyewitness versions that happen to agree with his version of events... so maybe Jesus did spend much more time with individuals, as John suggests, and had at least three years before being arrested, ratherthanthe ratherhurried single year suggested by Mark...enjoy reading St Hohn's Gospel & take the life of Jesus at a slower, moremeditative pace... let it bring tears to your eyes... notice things... look at Jesus himself through the eyes of someone who was very close to him... and celebrate the life of this remarkable writer...enjoy :)

Thursday : Wind

 I love painting sailing boats... the way the wind takes their sails...

sudden jybe, Pyfleet races: c. Janet Driver

on the wings of the morning : c. Janet Driver

...as a child I remember learning this poem about wind... with a long drawn-out Whooooo   :)

Who has seen the wind? 

Neither I nor you: 

But when the leaves hang trembling, 

The wind is passing through. 

Who has seen the wind? 

Neither you nor I: 

But when the trees bow down their heads, 

The wind is passing by.                                  Christina Rossetti

..then, years later, this struck me :  

 “the wind blows wherever it pleases;

you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going...

that is how it is with all who are born of the spirit...”

                                                                           St John 3, v 8

Sunday : St John 14 v 1 ...

Thomas said to him: We do not know where you are going...how can we know the way ?

Thomas was often dismissed as ‘doubting Thomas’ yet it seems he is more accurately a questioner... a thinker...and Jesus accepts this... :)

Sunday : St John 10 v 1 - 10

Jesus the good shepherd : c Jesusmafa : Cameroun

“The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.”                                     John 10 v 2-4 (NIV version)

Catacomb painting 

Christ the Good Shepherd was a very popular image in early Christian art... and again today

found on Pinterest /  Isaiah 40 v 11

artist : Yongsung Kim

Tuesday

You may remember on Easter Day 2 of my paintings were oddly removed & random others also gone

this seems to have happened to other blogs as well, though Blogger has said they are trying to fix it

Today I‘ve decided to put up the sequence again: based on Mary Magdalene’s reaction on finding the empty tomb early on that Sunday morning after the crucifixion...while it was still dark...St John 20...

Mary Magdalene weeping outside the tomb

“Rabbouni”

Mary goes to tell the disciples who are behind locked doors

over the years I have painted a whole series on Mary Magdalene... only 3 will fit onto this page...

Sundays in Lent

Every 3 years we have these wonderful Gospel readings from St John ... beginning with Nicodemus, an important Pharisee, coming very circumspectly at night to have a private conversation with Jesus.

Crijn Hendricksz :Jesus & Nicodemus

St John 3 v 1-8

Hendricksz depicts him as a wealthy Jew of his day (17th Cent )... wearing a stylish turban, fashionable slashed sleeves & expensive fur jacket. Did he come expecting an academic discussion...as all the pointing fingers & reference books suggest... Is that what the gospel writer portrays?  Or does Jesus choose a less cerebral, more spiritual direction ? Read it for yourself, and see...

What happened to Nicodemus ?  

We come across him again ( ch 7 v 50f ) after there has been so much controversy against Jesus that the Sanhedrin is firmly set against him... Nicodemus speaks out in his defence, asking whether it is lawful to condemn a man without first giving him a fair hearing...
then later, after the crucifixion, Nicodemus joins Joseph of Arimathea to bury Jesus with a vast quantity of spices. (Jn 19 v 38-42 )

Michelangelo pieta

Michelangelo sculpted this pieta near the end of his life... Did he portray Nicodemus, orJoseph of Arimathea..?. this face is very similar to a self-portrait sketch... was he deliberately thinking of himself in their role ?

"Come and see..."

 A meditative series on St John's Gospel

 April 2016

 We shall be looking at Jesus' encounters with various different people though the eyes of the author of Johns Gospel, and the eyes of artists who have sometimes spent months or even years in meditation before communicating their insight with us...

Two Disciples a the Empty Tomb: Henry Ossawa Tanner   

Like Henry Tanner, who painted this defining moment for the author of John’s Gospel, 

"He saw & he believed”    John 20 v 1-8

When I first saw this painting it made me stop and think more deeply about Peter & the "other disciple"... Peter, as yet unsure what to make of the empty tomb, and his companion bathed in resurrection light.

At the end of his Gospel, this enigmatic "unknown disciple" tells us:

 “there were many other things Jesus did; if all were written down, the world itself, I suppose, would not hold all the books that would have to be written !”  [ John 21 v 25 ]

 I have only chosen a few out of hundreds of paintings for these meditations... 

...paintings that follow his meditative style of writing... 

...contemporary paintings from artists around the world, as well as more classical paintings...

...so that we might stop, look, and take time

 to meditate upon

 some of the events recorded in this Gospel

Interested ?

then please email for details :  janet@janetdriver.co.uk


we shall be a small housegroup, so early booking is essential !

"Come and see..."

 

Glimpses of Jesus in St John’s Gospel

With paintings by artists around the world

to give new insight and lead us into silence

by Jyoti Sahi...cp John 1 v 14

the more you look at some paintings, the more you see...

....and the same could be said of St John's Gospel...

especially if you look for hints of the portrait the author paints of Jesus

We shall spend time looking especially at Jesus' encounters with people like Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well and several others, as recounted in John's Gospel and highlighted through the eyes of artists who communicate fresh insight from their own cultural background. 

This will not be an academic theological or art history discourse !

I will merely be like a prompter... giving you plenty of silence to look at each painting, with just a little background, quoting from the Gospel, and allowing time for meditation.

Five Thursday Evenings : April 7^th, 14^th, 21^st, 28^th & May 12^th.

a small group at our home in Wivenhoe

please email: janet@janetdriver.co.uk  

if you are interested in booking a place: the number we can comfortably fit into our room is naturally limited...

 advance booking is essential.

added Jan 21st 2016:

something else you might be interested in...click here to read a BBC article about the Lampedusa Cross...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35360682

Mary of Magdala...over the years...

I've just read an article about an artist who has been going into her studio each year on Good Friday to work on something from the passion of Christ...and once an idea forms, she will begin..."the subject chooses you; you don't choose the subject. You have to remain vulnerable to what happens to you in life... You're not in control...its something other." Maggie Hambling, quoted in "Good Friday - looking east", an article by Malcolm Doney :

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/3-april/features/features/good-friday-looking-east

For me it is not so much Good Friday as Easter Day..
.I rarely have the luxury of being able to go into my studio on Easter Day itself...but around this time of year I am drawn towards John 20...the empty tomb and Mary of Magdala... 
and over the years a series has emerged...

One year, being struck by how disturbing and frightening it was to discover that the tomb was empty ... in the darkness before dawn...

  I looked more closely at Mary of Magdala and her fear that Jesus' tomb had been desecrated, 

and that this blinded her to everything except trying to find the body and bring it back for decent burial... 

I painted her distraught and weeping outside the tomb

Later on, I was struck by her courage in daring to look back inside the tomb again;

though still with the refrain going around and around in her mind: "they have taken him away, and I don't know where they have put him" 

 Another year I imagined her turning around, coming back up out of the tomb and being blinded by the brilliant light of dawn after becoming accustomed to the darkness...
.hearing someone she supposed to be the gardener...
 and here I found myself trying to convey the Risen Christ waiting with deep concern for Mary, asking why she was weeping, and waiting for the right moment to cut through her panic by simply calling her by name: "Mary"... so that she could finally recognize his voice... and in John's Gospel she immediately recognised him, saying: "Rabbouni"...

It was some months before I dared try this painting...
but eventually I knew it was being mysteriously "given" to me...

all these paintings have had that same quality...of needing to wait... sometimes to try making rough sketches to enable them to emerge from somewhere deep within...until eventually there comes a glimmer of "ah...yes... thats how I must begin..." and then, step by step...layer by layer... they have been painted...sometimes needing to wait for several days before further inspiration came...always being vulnerable, and having to "let go".

Of course this isn't the end of the story... and I am still being drawn to paint, trying to convey Mary Magdalen running to tell the disciples... and of their response...

                                                                                              and then that is only the beginning !

welcome to 2015

another unfinished painting... portraying the flip-side of last night's unfinished picture of someone running towards a firmly locked door
  Here I imagine that door being opened from within
 A heavy wooden door, firmly locked by a crossbeam, taking quite an effort to open.
But as it gradually opens, even just a crack, the brilliant morning light floods in
 to dispel the darkness.
The beginning of something new...

Short Christmas Meditation

Madonna & Child,  no 5.

 from:   http://www.taize.fr/en_article75.html

      

26 DECEMBER

Not knowing how to make himself understood, God came to earth himself, poor and humble. If Christ Jesus had not lived among us, God would remain far off, inaccessible. Jesus allows us to see God shining through his life. (5)  

5. John 14:9

Lent Meditations: 1. Glimpses of Jesus in St John's Gospel

This year we have a wonderful gift, 

with all the Sunday Readings during Lent from St John’s Gospel.

Reading St John’s Gospel again, right the way through in a few days was a real eye-opener.

 I had difficulty at first as I kept wanting to look something up / delve into a commentary, but resisting the temptation and just allowing the writer to tell his story made me notice all sorts of things I had forgotten or just missed out on before.

...Ah...no... I think you need to find out by reading it through for yourself !

WEEK 1:  A few Glimpses of Jesus in St John’s Gospel

John 20 v 1-8     The defining moment for the author : v 8 “He saw & he believed “

Now & then you discover a painting where the artist really speaks to you. With this one, by Henry Tanner,

 it slowly dawned on me how well the artist encapsulated Peter’s character revealed in John’s Gospel...of his running straight into the tomb & then feeling stunned & unsure of himself, while the brilliant light on the other disciple reveals how deeply he begins to see ...

 I am also reminded of how sensitive this other disciple is in writing his last two chapters...and the picture he gives us of the Risen Christ who respects each individual’s needs, revealing himself in different ways to each one. Surely an Easter meditation on these would be very moving


Two paintings people really enjoyed were by the Indian artist, Jyoti Sahi, who began an art ashram where artists may meditate and paint.

Both paintings are very meditative, and the more you look at them, the more you see,

rather like St John's Gospel

The glimpse of Jesus bending down & writing in the dust, defusing the antagonism of the angry mob with the adulterous woman was painted by a French artist in collaboration with the Mafa people in the Cameroon who acted out the scenes that were to be painted.
 Over the past few years a great variety of New Testament scenes have been painted in an African setting, and are available to be purchased as prints & cards. 
click on this link:  www.jesusmafa.com


If you would like some very readable background on St John's Gospel, try this slim paperback:

Another look at St John’s Gospel : Ivan Clutterbuck

[ Publ: 2007  Gracewing  ISBN 978-0-85244-496-2 ]

“This is a small book for a large subject. However, I hope to tempt those who do not have very much time for reading to take another look at St John’s Gospel.” (from the Introduction )

 This paperback is just what it says; and gives a quick overview of theories on date & authorship together with other interesting background eg on fishing / fish merchants on the Sea of Galilee.

Next Wednesday : 7 pm  Nicodemus  John ch 3

Glimpses of Jesus in St John's Gospel : 6 Visual Meditations : March 12th - April 16th 2014

     

            Wednesdays 7 pm  @ St James Church, Brightlingsea

                                with paintings of Christ by artists around the world

                                             to aid reflection and lead into silence

                                                                     
for venue details click this link :  http://www.allsaintswithstjamesb-sea.co.uk/

week 1:  Glimpses of Christ in John's Gospel  : 12th March

This picture is from the frontispiece of a 13th Century MSS


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:God-Architect.jpg

I wonder, is this meant to represent God measuring out & creating the world,
or was it inspired by the beginning of St John's Gospel ?

Epiphany

"In the beginning was the Word...the Word was the true light that enlightens all humankind... John 1 v 1-18

Maybe one year I will be inspired to paint the Maji daring to follow the star... however, some years ago I followed my 'star' / vision / intuition: to try and communicate the beginning of John's Gospel : his poetic Prologue... and over the years I have painted several versions, hoping each time to go more deeply into this mystery.

click this link for my website: www.janetdriver.co.uk

One Christmas I asked : If Christ were born these days, where would we be most likely to find him ?  Of course I could have painted any baby, anywhere, for surely each one of us reveals a glimpse of God's likeness in some way or another? But at the time the TV news was full of the Sudan refugee crisis, and showing starving mothers & young children flooding into refugee camps, and in order to pray for them I began drawing ... and decided to paint a Madonna & Child based  on these images, as a prayer painting.  I share this painting here

in the hope that within our darkest night Christ comes among us in some hidden way.

"In the beginning was the word..."

This is perhaps my best known oil painting since it was chosen as a Christmas Card in the C of E collection a few years ago and sent greetings all over the world!

To see more of my artwork click on this link