Sabbatical Blog 12: Transfiguration

Ray Anglesea shares the final installment

My 12^th and last blog. It has been an amazing and wonderful sabbatical. Ki and I have travelled over 20,000 miles and have been away from home for 7 of the 12 weeks. Highlights of the summer have included my granddaughter’s baptism, singing on Broadway, Carnegie Hall and the Great Cathedral Church of St John the Divine, New York, observing beavers in Lake Manatoulin, Ontario, eating maple and walnut ice-cream in downtown Toronto, meeting Russ Thomas, a visit to The Mary Rose, as well having wonderful family meals in the sizzling hot sunshine of Bordeaux. And all this in the context of a remarkable hot summer which embraced The World Cup, the Yorkshire Tour de France, Wimbledon, The Commonwealth Games and the rise of the very talented golfer Rory McIIroy.

I am writing this blog two days after the nation observed the commemorations of the start of the 1^st World War. The 6th August is one of my favourite feast days in the church’s year, the Feast of the Transfiguration. It is a story and picture that brings me back home, to Durham and Tom Denny’s beautiful and startling stained glass window of The Transfiguration in the Cathedral. But alas, the feast day also shares another anniversary, the Enola Gay over Hiroshima. A cloud of dazzling light. The transfiguring in a weapon of mass destruction.

The strange story of the transfiguration reveals a dazzling light, but yet a cloud; there is revelation yet things are hidden; a voice, but we do not know what was truly heard. All very ambiguous – the revealed remains hidden, the extraordinary appears in the ordinary, and like Elijah’s experience, God reveals himself in the silence. The transfiguration story ends when Peter speaks; the end of silence breaks the spell.

As I gather up my final reflection through the thoughts of the blogs I have written for the community at Crook, family and friends, listening has been one of my goals of the summer, listening for God for perhaps a new direction as I start my retirement years, listening on the white sun-kissed Bordeaux beaches, listening in the forest wilderness of Northern Ontario, listening in French chantry chapels. In the words of the famous song we learn to listen to “the sound of silence.” Deep prayer is founded on the discipline of deep listening. As I think of the new building project soon to get underway at Jesmond URC, Newcastle I wonder whether it was really Peter’s intention to interrupt the spectacular and awesome vision of the Transfiguration with a building project – “let us build three booths?” Typical, you might think. To every epiphany or revelation there is someone on hand to turn into a religion. This suggestion is rejected by Jesus – it shows a remarkable lack of understanding by Peter. “Let me enshrine the experience,” says Peter, “let us make a memorial, let me speak, let me build!” But Peter is required to do only one thing: watch and say nothing. Listen. It is interesting, isn’t it, that the moment Peter speaks, “a cloud overshadowed them.” And then Peter spoke only because he didn’t know what to say. The story of the transfiguration is about learning to live with the cloud and the light, and learning that the voice of God comes in quiet ways.

In the stillness and restraint of the sabbatical and with the overall thoughts of these 12 blogs marinating in the background of my mind can I detect the stirrings of God – as I wait so am I directed?   With the first letter of my Christian name in mind here are three “Rs” which as a result of the experiences of this sabbatical I hope will direct my ministry in my retirement years.

First, Relax. Blog 4 again. I am not indispensable! As I think about returning to ministry in a country and a local pastorate where the vast majority of the population continue to affirm their belief in God and then proceed to do very little about it, I have observed there is still a demand for religion that is public, performative and pastoral and that there are thousands of private spiritualities and beliefs that flourish, demonstrating that faith as statistics may reveal otherwise, does not wither and die in our culture. Rather religion mutates and lives on. So churches need to take advantage of this trend, to be open to the world and not closed to it. And in this regard the sacrament of baptism in my local situation must be offered as publicly and freely as possible, the answer to indifference is not restriction; baptism is a point of entry for the church, not the culmination of an education.

Second, Resilience. I believe that the Christian faith is remarkably resilient in the modern age, religion is still in demand. And again the church at the local level must continue to engage with the community offering shape, colour and articulation to the gospel stories. In an age of wars of religion, where religion is turning into the new global politics the church must be there provide comfort, understanding and support to the confused and bewildered.

Thirdly, Respond. The church it seems to me as I think of my local church can respond to the challenge of an apparently faithless age with a confidence in a society that refuses to leave religion alone. We continue to offer a ministry and a faith to a public that wish to relate to religion without necessarily belonging to it. And of course with rare exceptions this is what ministers have had to work with most of the time; it is both an opportunity and a challenge.

So there we have it. Some thoughts then for the future – relax; have faith in the resilience of God and his church; but also respond to the many tests of faith that dominate every age. But above all keep listening in prayer to the whispers of God in the quietness of your soul.

Ray Anglesea

Sabbatical Blog 12: Transfiguration

August 2014

Sabbatical Blog 11: The Mary Rose

Ray Anglesea shares the next installment of his sabbatical experiences

One of the joys of spending a long weekend with dear friends in Portsmouth was a visit to see The Mary Rose; one of Henry VIII’s great ships, now housed in the new Mary Rose Museum located just metres way from Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory and the ships of the modern Royal Navy.

Sometime in the late afternoon on July 19^th 1545, the Mary Rose heeled to starboard and sank whilst engaging a French invasion fleet larger than the Spanish Armada 43 years later. Centuries later the Tudor ship captured the world's imagination when she was raised from the seabed in 1982; the Flagship is the only sixteenth century warship on display anywhere in the world. The excavation and salvage of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology. The surviving section of the ship and 19,000 thousand recovered artifacts are of immeasurable value as a Tudor-era time capsule. 

As fascinating as Henry VIII’s naval war machine was the building in which she is housed in is of considerable architectural interest too. The £27million museum opened in 2012, an elliptical timber-clad building designed by London office Wilkinson Eyre Architects and built over a late18th Century Dry Dock listed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument. It was designed with a stained black exterior, intended to reference traditional English boat sheds of the time, and a disc-shaped metal roof that curves up over its elliptical body.

The new boat-shaped Museum showcases the very best of 21st century architecture and construction, where for the first time visitors can see the starboard section of the ship's hull with its preserving sprays switched off and the final phase of the hull's conservation through internal windows in 3 different stories. The interiors were designed to recreate the dark and claustrophobic atmosphere found below a ship's deck. Spaces feature low ceilings and are kept deliberately dark, with lighting directed only onto exhibits and handrails so that visitors can find their way through the galleries.

Following the painstaking archaeological excavation and recording of the exact location of every find, the project team reunited the original contents - fittings, weaponry, armament and possessions – deck-by-deck. A virtual hull was constructed to represent the missing port side with all the guns on their original gun carriages, cannonballs, gun furniture, stores, chests, rope and rigging. Visitors to the Museum walk in between the conserved starboard section of the hull and the virtual hull on three levels, seeing all the main shipboard material in context as though they are on board the Mary Rose.

The end galleries interpret the context gallery deck-by-deck in more conventional museum display cases.  In them are to be found the most comprehensive collection of Tudor artefacts in the world from personal belongings such as wooden bowls, leather shoes, musical instruments and nit combs complete with 500 year old lice to ship's objects such as longbows and two tonne guns. For the first time, using forensic science, crew members have been brought to life giving visitors the chance to come face-face with the carpenter, cook, archer and even the ship's dog, 'Hatch'!  The complete conservation of the Mary Rose will be finished in 2016, when she will be fully integrated with the new museum environment.

As I walked around this fascinating museum a verse from St. Luke’s gospel came to my mind “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.” Chapter 8 and v17.  The Tudor warship that long lay buried in the silts of the Solent has revealed its secrets. For some the idea of disturbing and investigating a maritime grave might appear distasteful - involving huge risks. To uncover what has been carefully concealed, to exhume what time and forgetting has claimed for its own is to risk bringing to light truths that could comprehensively shatter the peace of the day. The exhumations of human remains are complex archaeological issues. An engraved slab of Welsh slate in Portsmouth Cathedral marks the resting place of an unknown member of the ship’s company, who was interred with respect and dignity and one of the 500 who perished when the ship went down. Every year, on the Sunday before the anniversary of the sinking of the Mary Rose, an act of remembrance including the laying of a wreath is held at the Mary Rose grave.

Whatever the ethics of archaeological investigations out of the Solent’s silent world has come some of the treasures of the Tudor world, the leather shoe, a rosary bead, long bows, bottles, coins and part of the doomed ship itself. The memory of the crew of the Mary Rose has also been brought back to life every time a person views or holds the small treasures that the divers had salvaged. The happenings of that past day in 1545 are now laid bare in a beautiful and inspiring naval museum. Today we re-enter relationships with what has been buried.

The artefacts that are recovered, and the stories that go with them, are memorials to the souls of the dead. In effect, each artefact, becomes a meaningful memorial, a testimony to the reality of the lives of those who sailed aboard the historic ship, the Mary Rose.

Ray Anglesea

Sabbatical Blog 11: The Mary Rose, Portsmouth.

June 2014

Sabbatical Blog 10: Le Pain

Ray Anglesea shares the next installment of his sabbatical experiences

One of the joys of holidaying in France is the early morning walk, to the boulangierie, the bread shop to collect baguettes - a wand or baton of long crusty bread, made from wheat flour, water, yeast, and common salt.  As part of the traditional continental breakfast in France, slices of baguette are spread with butter and jam and dunked in bowls of coffee or hot chocolate. Delicious!

Although baguettes are closely connected to France they are today made around the world. In France, not all long loaves are baguettes; for example, a short, almost rugby ball shaped loaf is a batard (literally, bastard), or a "torpedo loaf" in English.  Another tubular shaped loaf is known as a flute. Flûtes closely resemble baguettes and weigh more or less than these, depending on the region. A thinner loaf is called a ficelle (string). A short baguette is sometimes known as a baton (stick), or even referred to using the English translation French stick.  

                       

At the boulangerie I also buy croissants; buttery flaky viennoiserie pastry named for its well-known crescent  shape. Croissants and other viennoiserie are made of a layered yeast yeast-leavened dough. The dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, in a technique called laminating. The process results in a layered, flaky texture, similar to a puff pastry. Crescent-shaped food breads have been made since the Middle Ages, and crescent-shaped cakes possibly since antiquity.

The morning lectionary readings around the pool on Sunday 27 July (7^th Sunday after Pentecost) were the many kingdom parables found in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 13:31-33, 44-52 - yeast being one of them. Jesus suggests that the Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that is mixed in with bread. It is what makes the wine and beer, it makes the dough to rise to make the bread. It is the tiny insignificant catalyst for our basic commodities and the formation of our communities; it is the leaven in the lump; the difference between bread and dough; juice and wine, refreshment and celebration. Yeast is the ingredient that turns the passive into active; the flat into flavoursome; the ordinary into the extraordinary.

When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God as yeast – and our ministers too – he is not advocating the concentrate in a jar: yeast for the sake of yeast. No, in Jesus imagination, we are invited to get lost. To loose ourselves into something bigger. But not pointlessly. Rather, in “dying” to our context, we activate it. We become the catalyst that brings flavour, strength, depth, potency and growth. Without yeast, there is no loaf, just dough. Literally we die to ourselves for growth: we are what makes bread for the world.

John Paul Lederach, Professor of International Peace building at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, offers a rich meditation on our calling to be yeast. Consider this. The most common ingredients for making bread are water, flour, salt, sugar and yeast. Of these, yeast is the smallest in quantity, but the only one that makes a substantial change to all the other ingredients. Lederach says you only need a few people to change a lot of things. Quality changes quantity. Size does not matter very much. It is quality that counts, not quantity. Small things then make a difference. Tiny spores of yeast change the mass. So yeast, to be useful needs to move from its incubation and be mixed into the process – out of the church buildings into ever day life.  Yeast reminds us that God can do some very promising things with the apparently negligible. This is where God sees potential and hope.

We can be the yeast that is kneaded in to make the bread, that we may all become one. But we must let God set the pace, the bread rises in time; the wine matures only when it is ready.

A few years ago I was privileged to visit Somewhere Else, the Liverpool Bread Church to meet the founder of the project, the Revd Dr Barbara Glasson, a Methodist minister. Somewhere Else in Liverpool's City Centre is a response to the belief that there is a life-giving message in this gospel story. The “church” gathers as a faith community around the making and sharing of bread. While the bread was rising, the conversation would turn to the important issues of life, shared in the warm kitchen. People would read from the Bible, pray for one another. They became companions (= cum panis, with bread). Bread reaches across cultural and social divides enabling those who knead and shape it to explore their experience. A constant flow of visitors to this community has ensured that ripples from the 'bread church" are reaching ever further and wider, locally, nationally and internationally. All are encouraged to bake two loaves: one for themselves and one to share as they feel led. Dr Gleeson stated:

“Making bread has taught us so much – the process of baking mirrors so much in life: the pummelling and proving is about how we engage with one another, the waiting for the dough to rise is about how we give each other time. Churches generally are a bit obsessed with numbers and outcomes. But the bread makes us wait … it needs to rest, to rise. In the waiting time the smell of the bread triggers memories and facilitates story so that people quite naturally talk to each other. And every loaf we make is different. Bread is a sign to the world.

Ray Anglesea

Sabbatical Blog 10: Le Pain, France 

August 2014