The Liturgy and the Trinity and the Heart of Man

St Irenaeus and St Augustine on 'seeing' God Here are two short excerpts taken from the Office of Readings. The first, from St Ireneaus, is from Advent and the second, from St Augustine, is from the Octave of Christmas. Both, it occurs to me, can be read in the light of the following: first is that we are made to see God the Father, in union with Him in heaven. When we  'see' God we know him deeply in the deepest form of knowing which is love. The action of love that draws us into in this mystery is worship of God in the liturgy.  The first reading describes how the Trinity is active in this process. The Spirit draws us into the Son. . Through the personal relationship with the Son, we participate in His personal relationship with the Father. We are part of the mystical body of Christ, the Church, most fully when our actions are liturgicalThis is what liturgy is: the worship of the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.

‘Man does not see God by his own powers; but God of his own will appears to men, to whom he wills, and when he wills and as he wills. For God can do all things: he was seen in former times prophetically through the Spirit, He is seen in the Son by adoption, and he will be seen in the kingdom of heaven as Father. The Spirit prepares man for the Son of God, the Son brings him to the Father, and the Father bestows on him incorruptibility for eternal life, which comes to everyone from his beholding God.’ (St Irenaeus, Against the Heresies. taken from the Office of Readings, Wednesday WkIII of Advent.)

The second reading emphasises that this highest form of knowing is loving. Seeing God is not a spectator sport, is a loving interraction.

‘So the life itself was made manifest in the flesh, because it depended upon “manifestation”, that a reality only perceptible to the heart might also be visible to our eyes, and thus heal our hearts. For the Word is seen only by the heart, but the flesh is seen also by bodily eyes. There was in fact a way in which we could see the Word: the Word became flesh which we could see, in order to heal the heart, the means by which we could see the Word.’ (St Augustine: Commentary on First Letter of St John. Excert from Office of Readings, Feast of Apostle John, December 27th.)

If we think of the heart as the deepest place inside us that represents the person - the vector sum of our thoughts and actions. A pure heart by which we can see God, is a state we experience when there is no inner  conflict in the person and all is in conformity to the will of God: the body is governed by the soul, which is in turn governed by the spirit within it and which is the closest part of us to God. (The spirit referred to here is the spirit of man, an aspect of the soul, not the Holy Spirit. Follow the link through above for more information.) Our purity in this respect has a profound influence of the culture incidentally, for it affects all that we do, even the most mundane. The liturgy is not only the place that this ideal should first be manifested, but also the activity that gives us grace to achieve it. The Liturgy, which has the Word made flesh at its centre, is the most effective activity by which we can grow in love through God's grace and see Him.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God! The model of purity of heart is of course the Sacred Heart of Jesus himself. The two images shown are painted by me. The first, which is more iconographic in style is in the chapel at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts; and the second, which has baroque influences, is in the chapel at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, England.

 

The Nativity, Our Lord, Our Lady and St Joseph

Happy Feast of Christmas. Here is a beautiful modern icon of the Nativity. This is an Eastern image and so I thought I would point out one figure who is portrayed somewhat differently here than in the West, St Joseph. As I understand it, the standard interpretation is that by tradition in the East, St Joseph was a widower before he married Our Lady and so is always portrayed as an older man. He is hunched not just because of age, but also to reveal an inner turmoil. He is in doubt about whether or not he is witnessing a Virgin birth. The figure beside St Joseph, also as a hunched old man but in ragged clothing is the devil tempting him. All is resolved in the end for St Joseph loves his wife and through her prayers resolves this doubt. The physical separation in the icon emphasises also the point that St Joseph played no part in the conception of Our Lord.

My personal reaction to this is that this does not diminish the stature of St Joseph at all, rather it serves to elevate that of Our Lady. St Joseph is a great saint. He is the protector of the Holy Family, foster father and guardian of Our Lord. This demonstrates by contrast with the figure of Our Lady how she is even greater. In this sense St Joseph might be seen as an examplar of all other saints and so Our Lady is greater than all the other saints and angels.

Pictures of the Installation of Christ in Majesty in Thomas More College Chapel

Just before the Christmas break the latest and largest painting was installed in the college chapel. It is Christ in Majesty. In painting this and placing it behind the crucifixion I had in mind two things: first that we are on a pilgrimage from this earthly life to the heavenly. In this life Christ bears our suffering and in the next we partake of his divine nature. We cannot complete this journey in this life, but we can move along the path by degrees by participation in the sacrificial life. 'In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle; we sing a hymn to the Lord's glory with all the warriors of the heavenly army.' [Sacrosanctum Concilium, 8]

Second is to provide a focus during the liturgy of Christ as victim and Christ as King, sitting on his heavenly throne. The words from the Mass are: 'In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.' If you look at the foot of the cross there is a six winged seraph bearing the sacrificial victim up to heaven.

All that we have to do now is change the lights so that we have more discreet spotlamps, rather than the single suspended light.

Fr Anthony, a priest from St Benedict's Abbey, Still River, prepares for Mass

Three Examples of the Geometric Pattern, the Quincunx, in England

Henry III is inspired by Roman patterns to create a two church floors Continuing a theme of traditional floor patterns from a few weeks ago, here are three variations on the quincunx. The quincunx is the name given to an arrangement of five shapes, (usually the same, for example five circles, but not necessarily so) in which four sit around one centrally placed. The first is Roman and is at an ancient site at Hurcott in Somerset. The second and third were both created under the patronage of Henry III during the 13th century. The second is the Westminster Pavement, which is reasonably well known. The third is at Canterbury Cathedral and until I read about it in an article in the Glastonbury Review, here, I was not aware that it existed. This article suggests that Henry, who was patron of two geometric floors, was inspired by seeing Roman patterns. He is shown top left processing with a controversial relic, the precious blood of Christ. All of this is detailed in the Review article.

Those who wish to know more about the quincunx and its place in the Christian tradition of geometric art can read about it here.

The Instrinsic Morality of the Free Economy

Defending the Free Market: the Moral Case for a Free Economy, by Fr Robert Sirico Is commerce and trade instrinsically moral?

Critics of capitalism would say no. Some, who acknowledge that the free market works to a degree when considered in cold economic terms only, argue that it is impersonal and encourages a selfish, individualistic outlook that is contrary to the principle of love that governs properly ordered personal interraction. Therefore, they say, it undermines faith and contains the seeds of its ultimate demise. This view can be reinforced, strangely, by some advocates of capitalism who say that in consideration of the economy, the generation of wealth is the only thing that matters and provided no laws are broken, then all moral considerations are private and for each person to sort out for themselves in isolation. Some Catholics who believe in the free market struggle to reconcile this with some papal encyclicals on Catholic social teaching that are critical of some aspects of capitalism. They do so by saying that in some matters the popes go beyond their authority. They might correctly highlight social injustice, they say, but when they start to analyse the economic causes and recommend economic policies to help, they are misguided and what they say is wrong and will not work.

Fr Sirico in his book does not take the position of any of these camps. He argues for the good of the free market, and does so on two counts. First he emphasises the good of what the market produces, quite fairly in my opinion: the importance of wealth generation, especially for relieving poverty and how it is he most effective way of achieving this aim. Second, he goes further and argues that the basis of trade, the interaction of human persons freely entering into an agreement, is intrinsically moral. In doing so he never neglects the dignity of the human person in his thinking. He establishes his argument for the value of the free market from the basis of a human anthropology that is personal (that is one in which personal relationships are critical) and cites Catholic social teaching as the basis for it. He does not  say that selfishness is a virtue, or greed is good (as some who would expect to disagree with him might expect). Neither does he argue that consideration of what is most profitable entitles anyone to disregard any other aspects of morality. On the contrary he makes that case that consideration of the common good and of others in any transaction is essential if the free markets are to work. And furthermore where this love is greatest, business flourishes the more.  Of course naked selfishness does exist as it does in all spheres of human life, but he makes the point that point that the free market is remarkably efficient in channeling even actions motivated selfishly towards the common good. This is good to know, for which of us is totally absent of selfishness in dealing with others?

In reading this, it struck me that personal freedom, properly understood, is a crucial and vital component to this for it preserves the dignity of the human person in all these interactions. It is this personal freedom that fosters the genuine love for the other in all our interactions and economic interactions are no different. It is this participation in love, properly ordered to an economic interaction, that fosters the creativity which is so much part of an economy flourishing for the common good. The place of the law and regulation in this is robustly to preserve personal freedom. The natural tendency for many in a particular market can be to try to preserve or enhance market share by restricting the access to others. Those with the power to do so will influence government to introduce laws and regulations that stifle competition and so personal freedom. Fr Sirico does not support this form of capitalism and in this regard is in the same camp as some who I have met who consider capitalism wholly bad, because it is the only form of capitalism they know of.

In 1991, John Paul II wrote: 'Can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress? The answer is obviously complex. If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”. But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.’ (Centesimus Annus, 34, 42)

I do not know if JPII created the phrase 'free economy', but Fr Sirico's use of this phrase in the title of the book suggests to me, that he is deliberately making a connection with the encyclical here.

What has this got to do with the Way of Beauty some might ask? If artists are to flourish, they not only have to paint well, but also must be able to sell it. It seems to me that whatever system maximises 'free human creativity in the economic sector', to quote from the paragraph above, is going to be the best to support cultural renewal.

Fr Sirico's book is available from Amazon here. He is the founder of the Acton Institute, www.acton.org, the mission of which is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. This organisation, among other things, publishes books and organises lectures and educational programs. Every year has is four-day residential even which offers many lectures by an excellent faculty called 'Acton University'. residential

Psalm Tones for English - Learn to Sing Them in Half and Hour

Anyone can learn to sing the psalms Following a recent article about us singing Vespers at a local hospital, a number of people have been asking me about the music for the psalm tones that we use when we sing Vespers and Compline for the US Veterans at the VA hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire. In response to this I have put all the tones we have on a newly published page on this blog 'Psalm Tones' (see above). Before I describe what you will find there, I would just like to describe the last time we went to the veteran's hospitial in Manchester, NH. We arrived as usual and were greeted by Fr Boucher in the chapel. Nobody else was there. Fr Boucher thanked us warmly for coming and told us that several veterans had wanted to come but were too ill to go from ward to chapel, and two had died earlier that day. Fr Boucher wanted us to know how important therefore, our prayer was. So we sang Vespers and Compline just as intended and as beautifully as we could for those who could not hear us.

Coming back to the tones: these are so easy to pick up that even I can do it. Just to give you an idea, I am at the level of being able to pick out a tune on the piano with one finger reading notes from a treble clef (bass clef is beyond me).

There is an instructional video and sheet music for all the tones we have developed so far plus about a dozen examples of recorded psalms, most with scrolling score so you can see how the tone is applied to the text.

Because they are adaptable to any text, you don't need to buy any books or expensive CDs. You can apply them to your psalter - the video tells you how to mark the text so that you can do it. This means also that if you know even just one tone, then you could sing the whole psalter. As you learn more tones you can apply those too to the same text without any changes, you use exactly the same marks for each tone.

If you want sheet music for the harmonised psalm tones that you hear, then contact me direct. If we find that lots of people want them, then we'll put them up on the blog page too.

If you want  further information, sheet music or instructional CDs for the music of Paul Jernberg, including his Mass of St Philip Neri, contact Paul at cathedralchoirschool@gmail.com

Just to give you a feel for one, here is the English version of the Nunc Dimittis.

http://youtu.be/m6tmDQPgRog

And here is a plane tone without harmonisation - Mode 5

http://youtu.be/enPlj4trQ50

Statue of St Nicholas

For the feast of St Nicholas, here is an unusual representation of the saint. It comes from the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts. It is not generally part of the iconographic tradition to have sculpture, although relief carving is common. I am told that statues are not banned in Eastern churches, but it is not part of the tradition. This makes sense to me. The iconographic tradition seeks to portray man partaking of the divine nature in union with God. In accordance with this, icon painters seek to destroy the illusion of depth in icons to represent the heavenly realm which is outside time and space. Sculpture by its nature is three-dimensional so would undermine this convention. Relief carving, is common, however, this is really creating a two-dimensional image in shadow rather than creating three dimensional images; and so is consistent with the iconographic prototype. At the Museum of Russian Icons they have a large collection of Russian St Nicholas statuettes. I am always intrigued by these. They are not fully three-dimensional, but neither are they as flat as a relief carving. They remind me of early gothic sculpture in their degree of three dimensionality and because they are polychrome.  I have explanation as to why these statues were made. Or why it only seems to be in connection with certain saints. St Nicholas is one and at the museum they have a lot of similar statues of another Saint Nil, but only these two.

Send Out the L-Team - Making a Sacrifice of Praise for American Veterans

Recently when I went home to England we had a reunion of old college friends of mine. Most were not believers of any sort - I had known them since I was eighteen and so the friendships pre-date, by a long way, my conversion (I was 31 when was received into the Church and have just turned 50 fyi). It was great to catch up with everyone and see how they were getting on. I was interested by a recent decision of one. She had  given up teaching genetics at Imperial College, London and was now working for a company that would go into investment banks in the City and teach executives how to meditate to help them deal with the stress of the job. She been introduced to meditation when she took up yoga for the physical benefits and then was attracted to the 'spirituality' that is attached to it. In order to convince the executives that there is something to this Eastern meditation, they would be armed with statistics from scientific research. She said that there had been observable improvements in the condition of heart patients in hospitals when people meditated. The research shows, she said, that even if the patients did not meditate with the visitors or even if they were unaware it was happening, just have meditation going on in the building seemed to have a positive effect.

I was happy to believe that she was right and that the research backed her up. However, my reaction was that if anything good was coming out of this, then it was because it was participating in some way in Christian prayer, whether they knew it or not. I would contest that the fullness of what they are doing is in the traditional prayer of the Church and there is every chance that this would be even more powerful if done.

When I got back to the US I contacted local hospitals and asked if they would like a small group of people to come and sing Vespers on a regular basis. What is surprising and some ways dismaying, is that I couldn't find anyone who had ever heard of this being done before. There are Christian prayer groups who visit hospitals, but I don't hear of people making regular commitment (beyond the occasional concert) to pray the liturgy. Shouldn't the liturgy of the hours be one of our most powerful weapons as part of the New Evangelisation?

I didn't expect anyone to welcome us with open arms. All I wanted was for us to be tolerated, so that we could pray the Office for them. If nobody wanted to come we didn't mind, we wanted to pray for them regardless. The point in my mind was to make the personal sacrifice in prayer, praying for the well being of the patients and for the hospital as a community. Having said that, we would make every effort to chant beautifully for God regardless of how many others attend.

I was delighted when the Catholic chaplain at the VA Hospital, the American armed services veterans hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire, invited us to come in every other Monday evening. Fr Boucher is an old friend of mine and the college. Since September, myself and Dr Tom Larson from Thomas More College have been leading a group of male students in Vespers and Compline on Monday evenings. Because we were singing the psalms, we have presented it as ecumenical and administratively this enabled us to fill an available slot in the chapel and it has attracted a few non-Catholics

The veterans at the hospital know that we are there but very few have been able to come each time. Most are too ill or injured even to be able to get up one floor from the ward without someone dressing them and bringing them up and those helpers aren't always available. Even then, I am not fooling myself that large numbers want to come but can't make it. This is an unusual thing. But we are undaunted. A regular group of up to a dozen guys has been going in and singing the psalms. We keep the door open and sing loud enough so that it floats down the corridor for the wards to hear. They are always surprised at the effort we make to sing well on their behalf and in order to praise God. It has been gratifying to hear how readily those who come, many who have never been to any Office before, can sing with us, and want to. We are singing in the vernacular so that any visitor can understand and join in. Nevertheless the tones are modal and have the feel of the plainchant tradition and this I think draws them in. (They were developed for the liturgy at the college).

I am not usually the sort for public prayer. I wouldn't go out and sing in public, in this way if I didn't feel that we have is is beautiful and accessible and fits naturally with the language  I have done processions in public before, cringing with embarrassment at the songs we are singing and having to offer it up as a penance in order to keep doing it. Unlike those, I am happy to sing these in a in the range that is natural to me. They feel vigorous and masculine, yet pious and respectful of God, so we hope promoting the right internal disposition. We are doing this for soldiers after all.

For any who are interested we did some very recordings of what we have been singing (the recordings below). Some are in unison and some are harmonised.

Although I would love to see this tested, I can't comment on whether or not it measurably reduces the stress levels of heart patients, but regardless I am happy that this is benefitting these people and this community in ways that cannot be measured. I make the point to the students who come along, that one thing we can be certain of is that this is a sacrifice that is worth making. We jokingly call ourselves a crack squad from the 'L-team' (L for liturgy!)

I would like to finish by acknowedging how gracious and positive the hospital staff and the priests and ministers of various denominations at the hospital have been towards us, in allowing us to come and offering personal encouragment.

Here is the Our Father we sang (which was originally composed by Paul Jernberg, Thomas More College's Composer in Residence for his St Philip Neri Mass)

http://youtu.be/UC8kqYYbJEc

...and the Magnificat sang:

http://youtu.be/oElTV1jogS8

as you listen to these, try to remember they are not professional recordings. They are recorded on a cell phone by a group of amateurs. One of the great things about Paul's arrangements is that someone who sings as badly as me can learn my part and sing it.

Universality, Noble Accessibility and a Pop Culture that will Save the World

The principle of universality is not something I had considered in any depth at all until recently, when it was mentioned in a talk about sacred music. I have been reflecting on its meaning in other aspects of the culture and what it says to me about how I should approach my own painting. Here are some first thoughts. The word ‘catholic’ means universal. The Catholic Faith is offered to and has meaning for every human person regardless of where and when they live; Catholic culture should always, to some degree be universal too, that is, it should appeal to all peoples in the world;. recently I heard universality in the context of sacred music described in  the following way: something will have universal appeal if it does not exclude anyone from any other culture from appreciating it.

The idea, it seems to me, is an extension of that expressed also by the phrase ‘noble accessibility’ (previously discussed in this column), which says that the music that is meant to be sung by a congregation must be simple enough so that they can; and the music that is more difficult to perform and so realistically can only be sung by a choir, must be easily appreciated by the congregation and not abstruse. At the same time, there must be no compromise on the ‘nobility’ that is the beauty of any piece of music. This principle makes high demands of the composer, but not of the listener. The principle of universality says that music, and by extension all aspects of the culture should portray this noble beauty and be accessible to all people, of all times and all places. To the degree that we are able to think about this it should be there in anything that we do, but most obviously this will always apply in the arts – painting, music, architecture for example.

Some have interpreted this principle of universality as meaning that it does not belong to any place or time at all. They are saying that something is universal only to the degree that it is a-cultural, that is culturally neutral and does not characterize any time or place. As I understand it this is not what is being said at all.

Every general principle, which is understood as an abstract idea, must be manifested in a particular example. By looking at the particulars, we discern the general. Every work of art, every piece of music is a product of its time and place. A work of art that is universal is therefore both timeless and timebound, it is both homeless and planted in a particular place.

We can think of the iconographic tradition in painting to illustrate this. Every painting conveys information through what is painted – content; and how it is painted – style. While the content, for example we might paint Christ on the cross, is proscribed by the tradition, there are other traditions that legitimately portray Christ on the cross, such as the gothic or the baroque. It is the stylistic features of an icon that make it an icon, unite it with the tradition and also differentiate it from other forms of sacred art. Each characteristic element participates in the essential principles that describe an icon. These are timeless and homeless. Nevertheless every icon has a time and a home as well. Each bears the stylistic mark of the person who painted it, and as a product of a time and a place, it bears therefore, some indication of those two factors. They may not be deliberately imposed upon it by the artist, but they will come out naturally as he works. Learned students of the iconographic tradition are able to look to a previously unseen icon and just by observation of the style pin down the geographic region in which it was painted and date it to within about 50 years. Even individual painter styles are recognizable.

The purest forms of universality, I suggest, are those therefore in which every particular speaks of both a general principle and a particular time and place – and, inversely, there is no element that is time or place bound in its form and is not participating in the timeless as well.

In music Pius X isolated several aspects that are essential for music to be sacred and that are best portrayed in Gregorian Chant, which was for him the exemplar of universality in music: The more closely a Church composition approaches Gregorian Chant in movement, inspiration, and feeling, the more holy and liturgical it becomes; and the more it deviates from this supreme model, the less worthy it is of the temple.”

The most powerful manifestation of the culture is when the timeless and time- and place-bound aspects all speak to us. Every traditional aspect of Catholic culture speaks us because of its universality. However usually, because it originates in a different time and different place, part of it seems alien until we become very familiar with it. If we wish to speak instantly and powerfully to modern people then we must strive to compose and create new works of art that are consistent with the tradition but speak to people today. This is why we paint icons now and never rely on the canon of past works. So we should be thinking of composing new Gregorian chant tones for Latin and the vernacular.

There is a tendency today to assume that popular culture is low culture, but if we truly had inspired composers and artist creating new works that are universal, they would outshine the works of the secular culture and create a noble pop culture. It would appeal to the masses, not just the cognoscenti .

Let us hope that today's artists and composers can do this.

(For those who do not know what it means, you can rest assured that you are not one of the cognoscenti: the cognoscenti are the sort of people who know what cognoscenti means!)

Pictures below are of a crucifixion with figures of Our Lady and St John painted in the last two years by David Clayton. They are an early gothic style.

New Icon in the Style of the 12th century St Albans Psalter

Here is a recently completed icon by the British icon painter Peter Murphy which caught my eye. It is an image of the three angels from the account of the Hospitality of Abraham and it is in the style of the St Alban's Psalter. For comparison, the curious may wish to visit the Wikipedia page of the original psalter, which dates from the first part of the 12th century, is here.

I find the images in the Romanesque period psalter very interesting because stylistically they always strike me in the design of the figures and drapery as owing something to earlier Ottonian styles of art; but also some of the faces are in profile, anticipating an element of the future gothic style. Peter has captured all of this in his work very well I think.

It is good to see an artist seeking not only to reproduce works from the period that he loves, but also seeking to produce original designs in that style. Very helpfully for me, it arrived in my Inbox just as I was writing last week's piece about how important creativity in traditional forms is if we re-establish our traditions as living traditions.

For any who wish to contact him, Peter Murphy's email is  murphype@aol.com

Bill Nelson and Be Bop Deluxe

I have not met a mother yet who does not think that her baby is the most beautiful baby there is. When I first heard a mother saying it, I thought perhaps there was some element of irony. All babies are beautiful, I thought, but you don't really believe that yours is the most beautiful do you? I once aired these doubts. I laughed and said to the mother that every mother I had met thought that. Yes, she replied in absolute seriousness, without even a trace of irony: 'Except that my baby really is the most beautiful.' This is how the eyes of love see the beloved. I imagine this might give us insight into how God sees every single one of us. The mother is not blinded by love. Just the opposite - the scales have fallen off her eyes so that she sees the true value of that one small person. It may exist, but I have never seen the same level of devotion from fathers. In men this natural instinct seems to be misdirected and applied to more superficial things. I have seen devotion to fourth rank professional soccer team, Tranmere Rovers (who at this time in the early Eighties were averaging gates of 800 people) so great that when I asked him to explain why his beloved team was languishing at the foot of the table he replied in all seriousness, again no irony whatsoever, that it was all down to a complete season of 'bad refereeing'...nevertheless he was convinced that this wouldn't contintue, that the future held hope and tipped them for promotion the following season. This, I suggest, is blind devotion.

On a similar level of superficiality, guys have a blindness to the awfulness of the rock or pop music they grew up with. There is nothing worse than listening to somebody else's greatest hits collection on their iPod; and nothing better than listening to your own. Especially when its a 50 year old man and everything dates from the strictly delineated time period of 1973-1988, after which time all pop music 'went downhill' so demonstrating that the youth of today listen to tuneless, raucous, inane rubbish barely meriting the categorization of music (so different to what we used to listen to). After 1988 this typical man started to branch out into jazz and classical and maybe now listens to chant and polyphony. But he still won't let go of all of the rock music he grew up with, and is convinced that it has genuine artistic merit.

I might say that this hypothetical example described above applied to me...except that the music I have downloaded onto my iShuffle really is the best from a golden age of popular culture when there was genuine musicianship and that everybody should be able to appreciate it!

And to prove it here is a video of the singer/songwriter from one of my favourite groups from the late 1970s, Bill Nelson whose group was Be Bop Deluxe. When I was surfing around the net one day, I was amazed to come across this old interview with him in which he does describe the process of inspiration as something that comes from God. This is all I need, I thought, reference to God will justify its inclusion in this blog....

Joking aside, regardless of what you think of my taste for out-of-date pop music (which is probably slightly worse than I think it is), I would love to see a new popular music appear as part of the New Evangelisation. It is an assumption of many people today that what sells appeals to the lowest common denominator and can never raise people's souls to God. I do not agree. However, the answer is not, repeat not, Christian rock as we hear it today (which is just a pale version of the forms) which no self-respecting rock fan would every really listen to. Rather, it is up to Christians to find music that is entertaining and accessible, that is powerful and beautiful. If what is good appeals to something that is ordered in us, it will always have a greater appeal than that which appeals to what is disordered in us. This will involve consideration of harmonic forms as well as the words and might well include also modern developments in rhythm and electrical manipulation of sound. Just like any aspect of the culture, provided it is employed discerningly it can be transformed into something good.

I do not know what such music will sound like. While I think it is unlikely that it could convert, it can begin to open the door to something better. The groups that I gravitated to when I was listening, I found out afterwards, were often those who avoided the rock'n'roll blues scales and harmonies, and used more conventional harmony and counterpoint. It may be a surprise to some that such groups did exist and I know of one or two trying to do this now. George Sarah in California is one. This stimulated a desire for something more that took me to classical music and ultimately liturgical.

So for any whose interest persists, here is some music by the 'fastest guitarist in Wakefield' Bill Nelson. Some from their heyday in the Seventies and a recent recording of him playing the 1975 song Maid in Heaven, now 63 and still very sharp and clear in voice and instrumental technique. The first one is the interview of him after this in the 1980s when he became more art-house in his approach. In regard to this it is interesting that even in guitar playing he describes how important, just as in the training of painting, the imitation of great masters was in helping him to learn (in this case the Old Masters were his boyhood guitar heroes!)

Interview from the 1980s

Kiss of Light

Surreal Estate

Maid in Heaven - 2012

Vatican Congregation Restructured to Emphasis the Importance of Sacred Art and Music

In a very hopeful move the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments will be restructured to focus much more strongly on art and music in the liturgy. This follows directly an moto proprio issued by the Pope in September. The full article in the CNA here (h/t Sara Kitzinger). We all keep our fingers crossed. Whether or not this has a good effect depends upon how standards are judged by those involved and how they are communicated through the Church. One of the great shapers of my sense of liturgical art and the form that is appropriate for the liturgy is the small, but rich, passage about sacred art in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy. If we see this understanding permeating what is done, then it could be very powerful.

We can't take it for granted, however. I have seen enough initiatives involving art historians and experts, some even started by Pope Benedict in which he then had little direct involvement. The result was  that although the words about beauty and liturgy at its inception sound good, when I saw the form of the art that they felt embodied it, it was disappointing and puzzling, to say the least.

St Luke and Our Lady, pray for us.

The image below is by an unknown Russian icon painter, of St Luke painting the icon of the Mother of God Hodegetria

Bringing Traditional Proportion into the Design of a Rock Garden

Traditional proportion can be incorporated into the design of just about anything once you know how. Here is an example a rockery (as we say in England) or 'rock garden', as I think Americans refer to it. It is part of the developing garden at the Thomas More College future campus at Groton, Massachusetts. We placed rocks into a steep bank in three tiers. The relationship between the three lines is based upon traditional proportion in which the first relates to the second as the second relates to the third. The spacing and change of angle is intuitively applied. Top left are three lines I have painted in watercolour on paper to illustrate. The designers of the basic shape of the arrangement of rocks in the garden were three students at Thomas More College in( alphabetical order!) - Cecilia Black, Nicole Martin and Erin Monfils. Once three walls had been put in, it was clear that they were unstable. We get heavy snow in the winter and it was likely that the snow would collapse each little wall. So without straying from the basic shape I stepped each wall into the bank in such a way that it imitates natural outcrops of stratified rock (or that was the idea anyway - I'm just a beginner and this is as about as close as I can get what I remember in my parents' garden).

I also introduced some deviations from the simple original shape so that while still following the general form, it looked less rigidly applied. So occasionally the line twists in a concave rather than convex way. In doing this I was trying to remember what I had seen my dad do in the rockeries at home. He was using sandstone (the natural rock of the Wirral peninsula in Cheshire, England). The photographs below show the gradual progression.

First, the bed is full of giant and old lilac plants. These were removed.

Then our gang turned their attention to putting the stones in the steep bank you see at the back of the above picture. You can see also how we have gradually planted it out with perennials. The hope is that next year these will come back more strongly and fill in the gaps. I don't feeling like another season of constant weeding.

Above, the three 'walls' and below after they have been stepped and softened.

Creativity and Fun with Substance

Dudley Moore parodying Beethoven piano sonato and Schuber lieder ('Die Flabberghast') I saw the first video below on Damien Thompson's blog on The Daily Telegraph website. It is Dudley Moore playing his own composition, a parody of a Beethoven piano sonato based on the melody of Colonel Bogey (or if you prefer the tune from the Bridge Over the River Kwai). It is recorded in the Sixties. I have spoken about how important creativity within a tradition is for keeping it alive and opening the door that leads to the timeless principles that are at its core for modern audiences. In the context of sacred music, I described this a need for composers whose work has the quality of noble accessibility, see here.

This is not sacred music, but it is just the sort of creativity that will open the door to the real thing, drawing people in through more than just he music. I find it brilliantly funny.

Moore was organ scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford. After university he achieved national prominence as  jazz pianist and then as part of the Beyond the Fringe comedy quartet with Alan Bennet, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook. Jonathan Miller, who went on to become a famous opera director (among other things) is the figure opening the piano lid for him before he performs. Alan Bennet and Peter Cook especially also became household names in Britain. Bennet is a playwright and Cook a comedian with whom Moore eventually formed a famous duo.

All were at Oxford University. This creativity is encouraged by the form of education that exists at Oxford and in form (if not so much in substance any more) is based upon the medieval university. I am always amazed that more educational institutions do not copy this given the success of the two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, that bear the mark of the medieval university today. All those in continental Europe were destroyed by Napoleon and re founded on a different organisational model. American universities and colleges, even the Catholic ones, are almost all based upon this later, German model. I have written about this here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GazlqD4mLvw

Here is another video, this time Moore's parody of a Schubert Lieder 'Die Flabberghast'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idBZPteNJxs&feature=related

Podcast for 'Catholic Vitamins' about Icons

I was recently interviewed by Tom Fox of the Catholic Vitamins website (www.catholicvitamins.com). He wanted to talk about icons and this came under the heading of O for Orans, You can hear the interview here. I have to admit I had forgotten when doing the interview that the connection that had sparked off the interview was the orans prayer position - in which the person is standing with arms raised - because Tom associated it with icons that he had seen. As a result I was caught off guard at he end of the interview when he asked me about it and wasn't able to say very much. I hope he will forgive me.

So, about two weeks too late, I will pass on a little bit more. This ancient prayer posture is indeed seen in icons - left is an icon I painted of St Victoria; and below of the Mother of God (not by me). One of the things that always strikes me when I go to Eastern Rite churches is the way that they pray standing and especially if addressing a saint, will face the icon with an open posture. Hands will often be down by their side. I remember now that when I asked my teacher Aidan about this he told me that they always pray standing because it emphasises that we are raised up to the divine - we 'partake of the divine nature' - and so enter into a personal relationship with the Father , through the Son, in the Spirit. This is the dynamic of the liturgy. this posture and that of the orans prayer position, which is similar, does emphasise the enhanced status of man. It makes him on the same level, in a manner of speaking, as God.

Western posture in prayer tends to emphasise as well humility and our absolute need for God through kneeling. We do pray standing as well. During the Mass, for example, the priest says, 'let us pray' and at that point the congregation stands for the prayers. Aidan told me that Orthodox Christians, unlike Roman Rite Catholics would not pray kneeling at all. There were no pews or kneelers in the Orthodox churches that I have attended.

Quoting the Eminently Quotable - Newman on the Veneration of Images

I am currently reading a new book on Newman which has recently come to my notice. It is The Quotable Newman - Definitive Guide to His Central Thoughts and Ideas. Published by Sophia Press it is compiled by Dave Armstrong with a forward written by Joseph Pearce.

It is arranged by topic in alphabetical order, over 100 of them taken from 40 different documents, and under each topic, for example, Original Sin, the Fall of Man there are a series of quotations, usually up to a couple of paragraphs long on each topic. To someone like me who does not know the full body of Newman's well (to put it mildly) this arrangement is helpful.  It seems to me that I can access directly and quickly what Newman actually said and then if I wish to investigate further, seek elsewhere the document in full via the reference. This is otherwise difficult because the titles of the documents do not always tell you what he is speaking about eg Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.

So, from the section Images, Use and Veneration Of, I have a couple of things that caught my eye: 'In England Catholics pray before images, not to them. I wonder whether as many as a dozen pray to them, but they will be the best Catholics, not ordinary ones. The truth is that sort of affectionate fervour which leads one to confuse an object with its representation, is skin-deep in the South and argues nothing for a worshipper's faith, hope and charity, whereas in a Northern race like ours, with whom ardent devotional feeling is not common, it may be the mark of great spirituality. As to the nature of the feeling itself, and its absolute incongruity with any intellectual intention of addressing the image as an image, I think that it is not difficult for anyone with an ordinary human heart to understand it. Do we not love the pictures we have of friends departed?... Will not a husband wear in his bosom and kiss the miniature of his wife? Cannot you fancy a man addressing himself to it, as it were reality?' [p191, taken from Letter to William Robert Brownlow, 25 October, 1863]

I cannot comment on the differences between northern and southern Catholics, but I think his observation about many of the Catholics I see is still very true today. The contrast between how Eastern Catholics, such as the Melkites, engage with the images of the saints as they pray to them, struck me long ago. The Easterners tend to turn and facing them as though the person was there and addressing the saint by looking at his face - this becomes part of the activity of liturgical worship. Whereas, in the Roman Rite churches, even if beautifully adorned, there is much less obvious direct engagement with the image. Even if Mary's image is there, I don't see people looking at her as they pray and when she is addressed by name in the same way. It isn't the only way to pray of course and there are devotions in which the image is an integral part, such as the Stations of the Cross; but the general lack is telling, I think. This is something that I think has a profound effect on the culture. The the more our senses, including the visual, are engaged directly during prayer with beauty that supports and intensifies our prayer, not only will it encourage the right interior disposition, but it profoundly forms our taste and sense of the beautiful, so changing what we choose and delight in outside the church. This, I believe, is how the culture of faith and wider culture can be powerfully connected again. In the Spirit of the Liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI talks of this separation of the two cultures and how serious this is. He says that this happened by the 19th century, when Newman lived.

A talk in Madison, Wisconsin

For those who are within striking distance of Madison, Wisconsin, I am giving a talk on Saturday (November 3rd) at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison as part of a series of events to support a travelling exhibition of works belonging to the Uffizi gallery of Florence, Italy. It is a great honour to be asked to give this presentation and to share the platform with the curator of paintings at the Chazen Museum of Art, Maria Saffiotti Dale. More details of the museum and the exhibition - Offering of the Angels: Paintings and Tapestries from the Uffizi Gallery -  can be found here. There is one gothic painting and the others are Renaissance or Baroque. There are 45 rarely seen paintings from the great Florentine gallery, including works by Lorenzo Monaco, Botticelli, Tintoretto and Titian. In my talk I will discuss how the style of these periods is influenced by Christian theology and philosophy with particular reference to some of the paintings in the exhibition.

  Luca Giordano (1634–1705), The Ascent to Calvary, 1685–1686

The Treasury of Ornament - Pattern in the Decorative Arts, by Heinrich Dometsch.

Here is a book worth considering for students of traditional patterned art. The series is the Library of Design and the title is Treasury of Ornament - Pattern in the Decorative Arts by Heinrich Dolmetsch.  This and a number of similar books by the author are available here. I came to it by way of one of the freshman students at Thomas More College, Meg Berger, who has a personal interest in these traditions. It is a recent publication of a book first produced around the turn of the last century in Germany, the first English edition coming out in 1908. Each plate is an arrangement of up to 15 or so different patterns from different original sources in each classification discussed. He covers both 'hard' geometric patterns and 'soft', more calligraphic forms in ancient non-Christian and Christian traditions, East and West. Particular examples are numerous plates in each category of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, Japanese, Arabian, Turkish, Persian and Indian. Two thirds of 85 plates are Christian covering Celtic, Western 'medieval', Byzantine, and Renaissance styles.

This will be of interest, I think, to those who are seeking to re-establish (or perhaps one might say at the very least reinvigourate) the Christian tradition of geometric and patterned art. While one does not want to look exclusively at Christian traditions now any more than those who formed these traditions in the first place did, one must look discerningly at the art of non-Christian cultures. The principle of universality is very important in this process of discernment. (though not the only one). The task, therefore in studying the art of other cultures is to try to separate out the universal qualities from the parochial. This is not absolutely straightforward. We might look for visual elements that are common to all of course. That is helpful, but also restricting because as every general principle is manifested through the creation of a particular example it might cut out some forms that are worthy of consideration even though unique.That is because principles are unchanging, but their application is not. We might have two distinct forms that neverthless participate fully in one governing principle. In other words the idea behind two things that look quite different, might be the same. It is that idea that we are trying to discern.

A way of looking at universality was described to me recently by Thomas More College's Composer i Residence, Paul Jernberg. As a composer he is always trying to create new applications of the general principles that define sacred music. He talks of particular forms, with plainchant being the best exemplar, that might characterise a time and place, but nevertheless are accessible to people who are not from either. Universality, is therefore, another way of describing this noble accessibility.

In the context of art, a lot of this will be a judgement call on the part of the artists. We cannot always define precisely what it is we are looking for, but that does not mean we should not try. If we ask the question, at least, will this appeal across different cultures, then we are more likely to get a satisfactory result.

The images below are, from the top: Byzantine, Chinese, French Renaissance, Italian Renaissance, Arabic-Moorish, and Italian Renaissance pottery.

Parkgate: a Victorian Sea Front and a Late 20th Century Bird Reserve

Is a bird reserve created by heavy industry  a natural or an unnatural landscape? I grew up in a place called Neston, within a mile from my home there is the old seaside resort of Parkgate. It is on the estuary of the River Dee on the border between northwest England and north Wales. (Directly over the estuary on the Welsh side is the town of Holywell feartured last week.) I took these photographs during the visit earlier this year. I thought that readers will find the elegant Victorian seafront buildings interesting, but would be puzzled as to why they would build it on a marsh? This is an interesting story I think. A hundred years ago this was a thriving seaside resort with a promenade with a wall and railings and stone steps, made out of the local red sandstone, going down to the beach. The estuary here was tidal and the waters came up to the sea wall at high tide and then retreat miles at low tide, revealing a huge expanse of sand. When my family came to live closeby in the 1960s it was still there and Parkgate was known in the wider area for a shop that sells homemade ice cream. There was even a tide-filled seawater swimming pool open to the public. Then gradually the beach began to be overgrown with a natural hybrid grass called spartina. One of the things that allowed this grass to grow was that a steel company, some miles further down the estuary, took the river waters for its industrial processes. In order to do this they change the course of the river and the tides didn't cover the sand as often - only at the very high spring tides, about twice a year.

At first, people were unhappy with this. Here was heavy industry messing with the natural landscape. I can remember as a boy going to lecture about the threat of spartina grass and the speaker asking for volunteers to go and pull it out of the muddy sand and keep the estuary clear. It was a forlorn task and people soon gave up. Then something started to happen. The new wetland terrain that was created started to attract birds and birdwatchers flocked to the area to sea rare waders and shore birds such as Marsh Harriers and Hen Harriers. Now, 40 years later it is an award winning bird reserve that is listed as an area of outstanding natural beauty on the RSPB website.

The steelworks, at Shotton in Wales, has changed hands several times since I was a boy and is now owned by Tata Steel, the Indian steel company. As far as I know its future and so that of the Parkgate Marsh Harriers are secure for the moment. But no company lasts forever and so one wonders, what will the environmentalists do if the steel company were to close? Would they let the river resume its natural course, so submerging the wetlands and destroying the manmade habitat of the birds? Or would they campaign for the preservation of the steel plant for the sake of the birds? For the Christian, there is no such dilemma. Man is as natural as as Marsh Harrier and making steel is a natural activity for man.  So faced with a choice of keeping a manmade environment or one that is less affected by man, I would just choose the one I preferred. I this case, I'm not sure I could make up my mind, although as a boy I always wished that the swimming baths had stayed open. Either way, events will take their course; but should the steel company ever face closure (which I hope is a long way off) if we wanted to save it we would have to face the fact that man is as much part of the ecosystem as the black-tailed godwit. Would the plight of the Meadow Pipin push the Shotton steel plant into the category of being 'too big to fail', along with companies such as Barclay's Bank and Bank of America?... I wonder.

It was a rainy day when I visited, so you'll have to imagine the sunny seaside scene. In case you are interested, the ice cream shop survives to this day. I was only able to download one photograph of the old Parkgate, so I refer to a site, here, that has photographs of these sites in 1939, when it was a seaside resort. Thank you to the Francis Frith collection for the photo above.

Below we have what remains of the old swimming baths.

And just in case anyone makes the trip. The ice cream shop is on the right, below.

Floor Tiles from Cleve Abbey in Somerset, England

Here are some pictures of 13th century tiles from Cleeve Abbey in England. They are a combination of geometric and pictorial designs. The latter employing heraldic and literary themes rather than scriptural. The form will be familiar to some through the Victorian neo-gothic tiles that are more common today, and which were based on designs from this period. I am admirer of the later forms as well, incidentally. I view as an authentic re-establishment of a past tradition and worth looking at not only for the architecture and tiles of the period, but also as case study on how to look to the past in a constructive way. Thanks to Deacon Iacono of the Fra Angelico Institute of Sacred Art who brought them to my attention by referring me to an historical account given in the L'Historien Errant blog.

Above: the abbey church floor; and below: the refectory floor. The others are details of the refectory.