maggi dawn

art in cambridge

some local artists, friends of mine, are showing their lovely work at Michaelhouse. Do go along and see it. I shall.

offending people nicely

Another great cartoon from Jon Birch today. Along with Dave Walker, Jon is one of my regular reads in blogland. Jon was really writing about satire, but the context of his site, and the Vicar-like tee-shirt he gave his cartoon character, took me off at another tanget as well... 

There is something inherently "offensive" about the gospel - however much you get to grips with the love and forgiveness and comfort of God, if you are engaging with what it means to live out the gospel, there is still the regular jab in the ribs. The gospel is many good things - exciting, challenging, comforting, fulfilling, forgiving, gracious, merciful... and much more - but one thing it will never be is comfortable, in the sense of being mentally settled down on a sofa never to move again.

As I commented to Jon, there is something about being a minister of the gospel (and this is true in the sense that every Christian is a minister, not just the "professional" thing) that means you should anticipate that you will end up offending people. The TV Vicar is nearly always "nice", to the point of being bland; even the Vicar of Dibley, while not bland, was still "nice" on the whole. A true engagement with faith should certainly make us kind, compassionate and forgiving, and I don't suggest we justify giving unnecessary offence through our own clutziness. But we should never feel obliged to be bland-nice. There's a pressure (perhaps especially on the professional minister?) to be "nice" to everyone, but it can lead you into woeful passive-aggressive behaviour, it's fake, and in any case it doesn't do justice to the fiery, vibrant, exciting character of the Kingdom of God. Goodness and Niceness are not the same thing at all.

summer...

The coming term of revision and exams

and marking and examining will

be stressful for many people. 

I'm hoping for a great summer;

hoping that the slog of exam term

will be broken up by some beautiful

sunny hours in the College gardens.

photo: Robinson College, Summer 2006

Hoping that the summer vacation

will be hot and sunny this year

(not grey and cold like last year)

photo: Brittany 2007

Become a World-Renowned Artist Overnight

I hope Ben Bell is going to do this. Just enter your Christmas Card design and instant fame and fortune will be yours. Anyone else out there a budding Christmas Card artist? Come along, don't be shy. Although you'll have to ascertain, given ambiguous instructions on the website, whether you are supposed to submit the original or a copy. Anglican Communion News Service.

EDIT: the people from the competition have assured me they want a COPY ONLY - don't send them your original artwork!

trees

I love trees. They inspire me, make me feel good to be alive. I love them in winter, when they stand stark against a pale sky. I love them at twilight when they look full of secrets. In the spring when the light yellow green leaves begin, the freshness of that colour seems full of promise and hope. In the summer the sheer abundant lushness of great boughs of green and red and brown is enough to drown in. In california once I lay underneath a grapefruit tree in a friend's garden, and took about a hundred photos all at different angles.

In the park where I take my son to play there are enough different trees to keep a photographer as well as a tree-climbing boy very happy indeed.   

We went over to Burghley the other day, back when the sun was shining, where there is a sculpture garden and the new Garden of Surprises, both of which have astonishing art installations set among trees, making you see the landscape in a completely different way.

The artist who set these strange figures up on a branch must love trees too, I think.

summer

welcome to british summertime

simply botiful

Went to see Christoph Büchel's installation, SImply Botiful on Saturday, It's absolutely brilliant - disconcerting, thought provoking, shocking, personal, political. It won't be on for much longer, and when it's dismantled it won't be reproduced eslewhere. If you are in striking distance of London, you absolutely MUST GO.

BBC - collective - christoph b? simply botiful review plus image gallery.

sunrise, tuesday morning

this is the view I

woke up to

on a clear morning

 

  earlier this week .

angel of the north

My heart falls through my stomach every time I see this emerge over the skyline. 

(Edit:  Ever since the first time I saw it, it has left me gobsmacked not only by its beauty, but by the stunning effect of its location. Driving up from the South, first you see it down in the dip, and register "oh, there he is!" . Then you drive down and around the corner and he disappears again. But the next time you see him he is not down in the dip at all, but up on the skyline, so much bigger and more impressive than you realised at first. 

 

The Angel, according to the artist, has three "functions" - one, to mark the memory of generations of miners who worked down under the ground in the darkness for a couple of hundred hears. Two, to represent a future hope for the area over which he looks. Three, to engage anyone who sees him with their own hopes and fears.

This weekend, for the first time, we not only drove past but stopped and went up close to look at him properly. He is vast, and was warm from the sun. He has an air of hope, stability, and some kind of non-specific spiritual "blessing" about him. )

My son is rather pleased to find that the Angel is the same age as he is. 

church as third place

I love Steve Collins and his thinking on church. I spend a lot of time thinking about Church and space. GO read his latest offering here: catapult magazine.

catapult magazine: unite.learn.serve

london

for any other ex-Londoners who still get a pang of homesickness for the big smoke now and then,  this blog is essential viewing.

The Five Sisters

On our way home from the Harry Potter tour, we stopped for an afternoon in York. I wanted my son to see the Shambles - one of those little winding higgledy piggledy shopping streets that must surely have been the inspiration for Diagon Alley. The Lanes in Brighton has similar features, and there are little spots in every old town in England - Stratford, Durham, Oxford, London, and right here in Cambridge - that could be a little bit of Diagon Alley. Anyway, we went to York. Becuase it was on the way home from Durham of course.

While there we stopped in to look at the Five Sisters - an amazing and enormous set of 13th century grisaille windows in the North Transept of York Minster, and quite the most beautiful thing in the Minster. It was a fine, bright, sunny afternoon, and the little bits of colour in the principally monochrome windows shone like jewels set in pewter. Gorgeous.

my heart is not raised up too high...

My heart is not raised up too high,
my eyes don't search beyond the sky,
I do not seek what can't be known,
nor fret myself over mysteries.

But I have calmed and soothed my soul
like a child at rest in its mother's arms;
like this child sleeping by my side,
my soul in God knows peace and calm.

All you who love and trust your God,
in this God shall you put your hope;
for there you will find unfailing love
from this time forth and forevermore.

Words and music by Maggi Dawn (c) 2006 Kingsway's Thankyou Music 

Art in Cambridge

The Ruskin Gallery is another place to explore if you're at a loose end this holiday...

taking pictures

Visual Voice has posted a how-to section on taking photos. See her FAQs