40 Days of Darkness

At the Holy Biscuit

As part of a programme of events to mark the UN International Year of Light, the Holy Biscuit's spring exhibition is inspired by a short (4 minute) film ‘Return of the Sun’ (on Vimeo here).

This documentary by Glen Milner looks at an Inuit community in Northern Greenland, who spend 40 days of their winter in complete darkness. 

To tie this in with the 40 day season of lent, they have curated an exhibition designed to encourage people to imagine what it would feel like to live in darkness, waiting for the moment when the sun rises for the first time. 

Local artists have been invited to reflect on their personal experiences of how creativity can help us journey through dark places, or bring us out of them.

40 Days in the Dark
will run from
12 March at 6pm to
2 April at 4pm
open to all 
10am to 4pm, 
Tuesday to Saturday
here

 

Seeing clearly in Lent

My Ash Wednesday sermon was one sentence:

Lent is a time to see clearly.

(Alright, I padded it a bit, but not much.)

It was suggested by reading a poem by Jean  M. Watt in Janet Morley's book the heart's time: a poem a day for Lent and Easter.

Lent 

Lent is a tree without blossom, without leaf,
Barer than blackthorn in its winter sleep,
All unadorned. Unlike Christmas which decrees
The setting-up, the dressing-up of trees,
lent is a taking down, a stripping bare,
A starkness after all has been withdrawn
Of surplus and superfluous,
Leaving no hiding-place, only an emptiness
Between black branches, a most precious space
Before the leaf, before the time of flowers,
Lest we should see only the leaf, the flower,
lest we should miss the stars.

In the quiet mornings through Lent, and in other ways, this will be a bit of a theme: learning to look for and at Jesus  with clear (or, at least, clearer) eyes.

Note:
Janet Morley's book is available from all good booksellers  (as they used to say).

But on a quick search I was unable to discover much at all about Jean M Watt, though this poem has been appreciated and used by several  others.

Encountering Jesus in Lent

Encountering Jesus

There will be four Quiet Saturdays in Lent on the theme of encountering Jesus.

These will provide an opportunity for members and anyone who cares to join us to deepen faith, personally and together and, if desired, to explore new patterns of prayer and devotion.

There will be a progression through the four Saturdays. However you are welcome to come as many as you can or wish to.

The themes will be:

• 28 February: Calling disciples: Support, community
• 7 March Meeting outsiders: Openness, change
• 14 March Addressing enemies: Trust, risk, assurance
• 28 March Approaching the cross: Power, violence, subversion

The days will begin at 9.30am and conclude at 12.30pm, with the opportunity to bring lunch and to eat together afterwards.

These will be linked with Study Groups held in the vicarage on Wednesdays. If  you'd like to join us you would be very welcome - no need to book, though if you'd like more details feel free to email St Hilda: st.hildamarden@gmail.com

Advent 2, 2014

For this Advent we have four different preachers who are all part of St Hilda's Church. There was no specific theme or brief beyond, of course, 'Advent' itself.

Advent 2 

Advent is a spiritual journey:

• John the Baptist's journey was from the settled community into the desert, where (like the prophets of old) he met God. 
• Jesus travelled in the opposite direction. After 40 days in the wilderness he journeyed around the area before setting out for the city, Jerusalem. More specifically he travelled into the heart of God's city, to the holiest place on earth: God's temple set on his holy mountain.
• Our journey is different again: to see a little baby. To see God in the smallest, most vulnerable, most dependant person. Our spiritual journey is to be born again, and to become like a little child. 

Paul Bagshaw
----------------
We'll post brief notes of the sermons each week, just to give a flavour. As the weeks go by and Christmas comes closer we'll link each post to the others.

Advent 1: November 30th - Revd Michael Bass
Advent 2: December 7th - Revd Paul Bagshaw
Advent 3: December 14th - Carol Ann Shields
Advent 4: December 21st - Revd Jon Goode

Advent 1, 2014

For this Advent we have four different preachers who are all part of St Hilda's Church.

There was no specific theme or brief beyond, of course, 'Advent' itself.

We'll post brief notes of the sermons each week, just to give a flavour.  As the weeks go by and Christmas comes closer we'll link each post to the others. 

Advent 1

Advent and love

Advent is about the coming of love. 

We are all interested in the future but are often not sure what it will bring. Looking at the calendar we know that Christmas comes on 25th December. So we need to prepare. 

Despite the commercial pressures we have four weeks to get ready in our hearts and minds for the gift of love. 

We are preparing for the birth of Jesus Christ, Son of God, and Saviour of the world. 

We need to prepare a place for Christ to be born in our hearts.  

We need to seek forgiveness of our sins so that we are pure to receive God's gift of love. 

Here are two statements to think about as you prepare.

1. Love is the only rational option

1. Love wins: love always wins.

Michael Bass
----------------------
The posts in this series:

Advent 1: November 30th - Revd Michael Bass
Advent 2: December 7th - Revd Paul Bagshaw
Advent 3: December 14th - Carol Ann Shields
Advent 4: December 21st - Revd Jon Goode

Reflection: Judgement: scale and perspective

Some thoughts triggered by Isaiah 40 and 41: 

The Last Judgement. Jean Cousin the Younger, The Louvre.

Judgement has been a bit of a theme in the weeks leading up to the end of the liturgical year,

We all judge others much of the time. It's a key way in which. as social animals, we locate ourselves in relation to other people. It is a continuous, instinctive  and potentially emotional process.

But Christians use the term in other ways, not least to know oneself (or to place oneself) over against God. This shifts the frame of reference from other people to God who is beyond us.

Secular judgement
In our secular society judgement too has been secularized.

In part this is a conscious rejection of earlier Christian teaching which equated divine judgement with a question of morality: was our behaviour - and our intent - acceptable to God?

There is nothing wrong with this question in itself. The false step was to seek to answer it for other people. Those who had power in the Church assumed that such power meant that they were able to speak and judge on God's behalf. And all too often they equated their grasp of God's judgement with the condemnation of others. They forgot first, that none of us can speak for God and, second, that the Christian God is a God of love with a presumption in favour of compassion and forgiveness.

We are known utterly by God, and  loved.

In our secular judgement we try not to use irrelevant criteria (skin colour, for example) but we're quite happy to use money - wealth and income - as a basis for (and evidence of) public judgement.

It's easier to see this by reversing the telescope: it's the poor that get's the blame. Those who have a little look down on those who have less. Housing, for example, could be a fundamental human right. Instead those who become homeless are regarded with disdain.

This is a very secular form of judgement which says little or nothing about morality and everything about material gain.

Our secular judgements give us ways to know who we are in relation to others in part - whether we like it or not - by 'irrelevant' dimensions (gender, ethnicity, disability, age etc.) and in part by where we locate ourselves on the scales of wealth and income.

Divine judgement

We are utterly insignificant in the universe
and precious in God's sight.

But if we place ourselves over against God we inherently judge ourselves very differently. After all, money is irrelevant to God.

First, God, who is perfection, puts all of us in the shade.

We are, so to speak, spiritually turned inside out: the public and personal skin by which we protect ourselves from others is stripped away and we are known to our core.

Our smallness, inadequacy, self-centredness is exposed to our own sight.

This has to be a scary place. All our instincts are to protect ourselves, to assert our own worth and our value to others, to construct a 'self' comfortable to ourself and to others. Our skin is there for good reason: to protect what is vulnerable.

Scale and perspective
It is very easy in both public and personal judgement to get everything out of perspective: to only condemn (ourselves and others) or to only excuse.

What I took from Isaiah 40 was to hold together first the greatness of God and the tininess of humanity - not least the self-important:

He [God] brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff. (40: 23, 24, NIV)

And, the second thing was to hold together both judgement and forgiveness, condemnation and affirmation.

I said, ‘You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (41: 9b, 10, NIV)

If we don't hold the opposites together - God's overwhelming greatness and his affirming love for each one us - our collective and personal failure and inadequacy and acceptance that we are forgiven and loved - then we distort and diminish both God and ourselves.

To know that we are judged and forgiven by God is to step out of the secular frame of judgement (at least for a while) and to set our selves in a different, spiritual, framework by which we know who we are in ourselves and in the world.

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying