"So we are faced with the alternative of being free and living dangerously,
or renouncing a life of our own and being in bondage.
And there can be no doubt about the choice to which we are challenged in scripture -
the person who loves life loves liberty, and will say 'yes' to living, in spite of all their own limitations and fears.
True security is to be found, not in the renunciation of freedom, but only in freedom's (true) foundation". Jurgen Moltmann - The Spirit of Life.
Balance. Model: Katy T
Sometimes life comes at you head on.
This week, for example, amidst a range of questions from a correspondent from America, came this one - how do you justify that the Song of Songs is included in the Bible?
We'd been discussing how the faith and scripture brings genuine fruition in our lives, but he was truly puzzled why something so earthy would be deemed or viewed as divinely inspired.
It's an all too common problem. As Moltmann notes in his work quoted above, 'the Western divide between spirit and body, spirituality and sensuousness, is so deeply rooted that we must redress this by opening the true union given and restored by God".
The misreading of Christian theology has so often caused many to place anything and everything to do with 'the flesh' (our life in the here and now) into the category of evil and therefore beyond aid and of no value.
The reality, of course, is very different - it is this world (creation) which, redeemed from sin and death, is being reconciled to God in Christ, and it is in these bodies, redeemed, sanctified and glorified, that you and I shall one day see creation made whole. The issues raised by Christianity, then, are anything but dualistic in nature - they are strikingly fleshly, which is where art can help us.
All of life is meant to be a means of re-connection to what has been lost, a true journey of coming home. When we find ways and means of engaging our passion for life once more to facilitate that reality for ourselves and grant an enriching of others, then we catch a scent, or experience a foretaste of what redemption is all about - the complete renewal of all good things.
Serenity. Model: Magenta.
C S Lewis notes at the end of his Abolition of Man essay that genuine connection to the world is not reducing everything to a point of meaninglessness, but, like sitting at a window before a garden, having the means (a transparent material in this case) to allow us to truly see and value what is there. Art, when it is sourced from our passion to truly participate with our home (the earth) is just such a means, and that should be, indeed must be the case when it comes to the temple of the human body.
The reason why the Song of Songs, a gorgeously erotic love poem, is part of scripture, is because it affirms God's delight as well as our own in the passionate, in the sensual and in the marvellous aspects of bodily love and adoration. None of these gifts are evil, it is only the abuse of these by demeaning ourselves and others, our 'priesthood' and theirs, which is wrong. The love of God (agape), allows us to rightly love each other (philia) and this is often expressed in the most 'earthy' (eros) of ways, not just in sexual union between husband and wife, but in our valued social inter-actions which facilitate a realm of good (hence, the statue of Eros on the Shaftsbury memorial in Piccadilly Circus in London).
The image of Eden shows us that genuine spirituality is entirely natural. The temple is a garden. The priests of creation are Adam and Eve, naked and unashamed, tending the realm they inhabit, and fellowship with God is as natural as a conversation as we walk together with Him in the cool of the day. As Jesus hangs upon the cross, carrying our sin and shame, He tells the needy thief who trusts upon Him that this very day, He would be in such a place... that is the entire aim of redemption.
I hope that my correspondence with my American friend will, amongst other things, help him to look at the Song of Solomon in a fresh way, and I hope that some of my photography will delight some in the discovery of the true wonder of these living temples that God has given to us. Yes, we are often twisted and broken, but even amidst such travail, we sometimes see a reflection of the glory that is to come, and that helps to affirm the value of our days, our confidence in the promise of His redeeming love.
Aliento. Model: Joceline.
