Jameswoodward’s Weblog

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

William Butler Yeats, When You Are Old

The art critic Roger Fry, writing in 1919, discussed two lands of seeing – or, rather, as he put it, the difference between seeing and looking. Seeing is a useful skill that nature has given us. It has to do with the use that appearances have for the business of living. In other words it is functional. We extract key information as rapidly as possible from this kind of seeing.

Looking, on the other hand, seems less obviously to have any utility value. It is what appreciative viewers of art do, and the non-utilitarian character of such looking leads Fry to say that ‘biologically speaking, art is a blasphemy. Why might the making and sharing of art be an offence against biology? For Fry  it is because it serves no obvious purpose. Looking, writes Fry, is a type of vision that is ‘quite distinct from the practical vision of our instinctive life’. When we look, our vision ‘dwells much more consciously and deliberately’ upon the object in front of us.

Fry thinks children have a special capacity for this, because they have not yet fully learnt the more defensive techniques of mere ‘seeing’. They look at things, he says, with ^cpassion’.

Ten outstanding high achievers were asked to sum up their particular approach to leadership – the core message that they wanted to share with others and this is what emerged:

the images might ground the snippets!

1. The great don’t need to play games

2.Leadership comes through respect

3.Go for the people, not the position

4. If you don’t enjoy it, don’t do it

5. Know what makes your workers tick

6 Do what you enjoy.  Don’t plan.  Be flexible

7. Life doesn’t make sense if you don’t love what you do

8. Self-belief and an ability to think differently are vital

9. Don’t just go for the money

10. Weather the criticism, share the bouquets

Perhaps I am too busy trying

to love other people instead of

learning to love myself.

When I can do that

I might begin to understand

how great God’s

love is.

When I go through

darkness, heaviness and anxiety,

it is God’s invitation for me to stop

looking outwards and start looking

inwards and be loving and gentle

with myself.

I am called to minister for my own joy.

When my joy diminishes, so does my ministry.

When I have fun and enjoy myself God does!

Then I am most like God – – who is joy!

Edwina Gately

let us lie upon the sky

and look upon the grass

where the rain drops grow

and the dew drops listen

on the newly mown clouds

falls the shadow of the hills

where the white flowers fly

and the black birds blossom

the roots of the apple tree are waving in the breeze

whilst the twigs and branches flutter through the dull brown earth

an enterprising slug writes his name up on the sky

and an aeroplane trails slime upon an upturned rock

upside down and downside up

inside out and outside in

let the birdsong pause and the silence call

for you’ve not seen nothing till you’ve seen it all

deirdre burton

The essay was originally published in 1933. The English translation was published in 1977.

Much shorter than the author’s novels, this book is a small meditative work of 73 pages, of which 59 are the essay itself.

The essay consists of 16 sections that discuss traditional Japanese aesthetics in contrast with change. Comparisons of light with darkness are used to contrast Western and Asian cultures. The West, in its striving for progress, is presented as continuously searching for light and clarity, while the subtle and subdued forms of oriental art and literature are seen by Tanizaki to represent an appreciation of shadow and subtlety. In places the work is strongly metaphorical. In addition to contrasting light and dark, Tanizaki further considers the layered tones of various kinds of shadows and their power to reflect low sheen materials like gold embroidery, patina and cloudy crystals. In addition, he distinguishes between the values of gleam and shine.

The text presents personal reflections on topics as diverse as architecture and its fittings, crafts, finishes, jade, food, cosmetics and mono no aware (the art of impermanence).

Tanizaki explores in close description the use of space in buildings, lacquerware by candlelight, monastery toilets and women in the dark of a brothel. The essay acts as “a classic description of the collision between the shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age.

All the others translate: the painter sketches

A visible world to love or reject;

Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches

The images out that hurt and connect.

From Life to Art by painstaking adaption

Relying on us to cover the rift;

Only your notes are pure contraption,

Only your song is an absolute gift.

Pour out your presence, O delight, cascading

The falls of the knee and the weirs of the spine,

Our climate of silence and doubt invading;

You, alone, alone, O imaginary song,

Are unable to say an existence is wrong,

And pour out your forgiveness like a wine.

W.H.Auden, Composer

we stumble through the pain of every day

knotted with need to get things done

doing the clown walk, like a walking swan.

and death, our falling off

the earth we walk on every day

is the swan’s apprehensive flop

into the water that is his home. It takes him to itself

so lovingly, a supporting strong embrace,

as he with endless calm and poise

the expert ruler of his world

entrusts himself completely to the new.

Rilke

ACTS 2:1-21
Our Reading Today is taken from the Book of The Acts of
The Apostles.  It records how God’s Spirit – which gave new life
to Israel when they were in captivity – was poured out upon the
church – in accordance with the promise of the prophet Joel and
our Lord Jesus Christ…

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one
place.  And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush
of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were
sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a
tongue of fire rested on each of them.  All of them were filled
with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the
Spirit gave them ability.  Now there were devout Jews from every
nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.  And at this sound the
crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them
speaking in the native language of each.  Amazed and astonished,
they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?  And how
is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and
Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the
parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both
Jews and proselytes,  Cretans and Arabs–in our own languages we
hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does
this mean?”  But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new
wine.  But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and
addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let
this be known to you, and listen to what I say.  Indeed, these are
not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the
morning.  No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In
the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my
Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men
shall dream dreams.  Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in
those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.  And
I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth
below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.  The sun shall be turned to
darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s
great and glorious day.  Then everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord shall be saved.’

PROFESSION OF FAITH: A NEW CREED
We are not alone, we live in God’s world.
We believe in God: who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make us new,
who works in us and others by the Spirit.
We trust in God.
We are called to be the Church,
to celebrate God’s presence,
to live with respect in creation
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our Judge and our Hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.
We are not alone.  Thanks be to God.

PRAYERS OF PETITION AND INTERCESSION
Let us pray — We have heard your word, O God, the word as “of
the Lord to these dry bones”.  We have heard your word and we
have felt the entry of your breath within us.  We have felt the
wonder of your life come to fullness within us – and we celebrate
it today.  What we have seen with our eyes and heard with our
ears, what our hands have touched – this we proclaim – that you
are the most High God, the Maker of all things, the one who is
able to bring all things out of nothing, to bring life out of
utter death.

Visit this awakening in our minds and upon our hearts, we pray.
Enable us to grasp its truth, to take ownership of this reality –
for the sake of our life as a community and as a church.  Help us
address the decay and death that is within us and around us with
a faithful heart.  Make rivers of living water well up within us
and pour forth from us that bone many come unto bone, that sinew
and flesh may cover that which is naked – and that the breath of
live may be in all.

O God – we pray for the blowing of your Holy Spirit upon everyone
of us.  For the rescue of those who are dead in hope and in heart
for those who deny the power of your hand and the goodness of
your will, and for the enlightenment of those who fail to
understand.

Hear these prayers for ourselves and for others – and hear too
all that we ask now for our world, for our nation, for our
community, for our church, and for our neighbours…..  Lord hear
our prayer……. Amen.

Lord God – you have opened your hands and poured out upon us many
blessings.  You watch over us and protect and guide us in the way
we should go.  We offer now before you these gifts – that your name
may be glorified in us and your work of salvation extended through
us to all the world.  Receive them and use them and us in your
service – we ask it in Jesus’s name.  Amen.

If loving means going out to things, and knowing means taking things in, then there is “a circle in the acts of the soul,” as Aquinas says, there is a knowing that comes of loving and there is a loving that comes of knowing.

It is like the great circle of love coming from God and returning to God.

In fact, as loving becomes knowing and knowing becomes loving, the circle of the soul becomes in us the great circle of the love of God.

It is true, the peaceful feeling that comes with gazing at mountains seems very different from the troubled feeling that comes with love, and especially with unrequited love.

If there is a circle here nonetheless in the acts of the soul, then perhaps the troubles of love can lead into the peace of wisdom and the roving eye can become the quiet eye. Here is the climb to the vantage point of vision.

Love has to become free and untroubled.