Remember...November...

from ppu.org.uk

Do click on the link above, which is for the Peace Pledge Union website.  The first person I met when  
we visited Wivenhoe some years go was an elderly lady standing stoically in the icy wind and drizzling November rain selling white peace poppies... I remember her this year, together with many others who have worked for peace & reconciliation around the world...and...
I happened to see this intriguing photo whilst searching for Isaiah 2 v 4... :)

from  www.levantium.com

“..they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks....

Mary Magdalene

This film was indeed “intensely moving”...

Friday 1 November at 7.00pm

Introduction and Q&A by Prof Dr Joan Taylor

Dr Joan Taylor was historical consultant to the film and is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London.

www.stmaryswivenhoe.org

Many thanks to Dr Joan Taylor, who faced a very eclectic audience!

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for more on Mary Magdalene please scroll down the labels on the right and click on an earlier blog page on Mary Magdalene [22 July 2018 ]

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Climate Change

Wasn’t it a former UK PM who gave such an emotional speech at the Paris Climate Change meeting, asking what he / we would say to our children & grandchildren if we failed to act on Climate Change ...?

... and then what happened ?  Subsidies cut for Solar panels & the R Severn tidal project !

what was the point ? several start - up solar panel businesses had to close down...Why nip solar power in the bud just as people were beginning to put precious savings into rooftop solar panels?
And why stop progress on the R. Severn project, when we are an island nation surrounded by potential for tidal power?

Look at our children... 

Listen to them...

Now we have the technology...lets do far more !

I am so thankful for Greta Thunberg and her silent vigils.

I am glad she persuaded our politicians to declare a Climate Emergency.

But what has happened since then ?

Seeing it differently : activities in Norwich Cathedral

https://www.cathedral.org.uk/whats-on/events/detail/2019/08/08/default-calendar/seeing-it-differently

I’ve just seen photos of the helter-skelter in Norwich Cathedral in today’s Church Times...
wondering what it is all about, I found the Norwich Cathedral webpage above... only to discover these interesting events only have 2 days still to run !
so...get your skates on...  its only 2 hours by train to Norwich... & there might be better weather tomorrow ...  and you might glimpse the roof bosses from the top of the helter-skelter...like this one...

Praying through art @ Tate 20th June 2020 ...& in Wivenhoe

Two very different images...   which do you prefer ?

the photo just ‘jumped out at me’ from ‘ pathwaystogod.org ‘

I don’t know who took this photo, but it was advertising a workshop on praying through art at Tate Britain: 20th June 2020... copied from pathwaystogod.org

“Our day at Tate Britain will provide such opportunities to ‘stand and stare’, to allow a painting or sculpture to speak to our deepest selves and, in opening ourselves to the infinite, allow God to speak to us through that process of pondering. Simply by bringing our contemplative awareness of God in all things, and of God speaking to us through our deepest desires and appreciation of beauty, we hope to open ourselves to the touch of the Divine Artist and to realise our own potential as ‘God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it’ (Ephesians 2:10)

No particular knowledge of art is required – just an openness to God’s gifts.” 
Interested ? for details & booking : 
https://www.pathwaystogod.org/courses-events-retreats/praying-art-tate-britain-2

The other image is not attention-grabbing...  more fragile...Its one of a series of acid-etched glass panels which I made a few years ago, based on one of my sketches together with vivid memories of working in East Africa many more years ago...where grasses shimmer in the heat, leaves act as clever camouflage...
trying to give hints of ...well, What is it ?

...and now?... as I spend time looking at the light shining through these fragile painted, stained and etched glass panels... now...?  they speak to me more of climate change...  of the fragile beauty of our planet...
of what is already being destroyed through climate change... and yet of the hope we may be able to do something to save it...if only we act quickly... 

 “ Ngorongoro Mirage”: a series of 3 glass panels : c. janet driver.

Waiting...

I have been waiting for weeks... watching as these seeds germinated and grew taller and taller into a feathery miniature jungle, full of tight buds that seemed they would never open...

...but today...finally...there is one beautiful “love in the mist”.

in our day of silent prayer last Saturday there was a sense of waiting

...awaiting...

in which many of us felt a deep sense of peace

 why not join us on Nov 2nd for our next Silent Day

or drop into the church anytime during the day on 20th June

details : stmaryswivenhoe.org  

Emmaus...from another angle

The Servant Girl at Emmaus

... C17th Painting by Velázquez

C20th Poem based on this painting...

She listens, listens, holding

her breath. Surely that voice

is his—the one

who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,

as no one ever had looked?

Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?

Surely those hands were his,

taking the platter of bread from hers just now?

Hands he'd laid on the dying and made them well?

Surely that face—?

The man they'd crucified for sedition and blasphemy.

The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.

The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table

don't recognize yet with whom they sit.

But she in the kitchen, absently touching

           the winejug she's to take in,

a young Black servant intently listening,

swings round and sees

the light around him

and is sure.

Denise Levertov

from : www.journey with jesus.net

Emmaus: Diego Velazquez