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Advent in Art 09

Advent in Art No. 1 (2009) Untitled, by Lance Pearce. Presented by Peter Skilling The image I’m going to talk about today (and my talk itself) kind of extends some of the tensions that we’ve seen in the service already. We’ve sung and heard about the bliss and peace and joy that can be associated with the coming of God into the world. But we’ve also responsively prayed about the griefs and difficulties that can be associated with this time of year. The image I’ll be talking about is a bit on the dark side. It is not obviously about unlimited joy and peace. And, if you care to flick through the advent images that have been created this year by other Citysiders, you might note that this becomes a recurring theme. This is interesting. Even if you associate Christmas with joy and celebration, you might want to note that some of your fellow Citysiders associate other things with it as well. There’s a bit of a cliché out there that goes that “writing about music is like singing about architecture”. I find this a bit of a silly thing to say, because I’ve personally got a lot of enjoyment and insight out of music writing. On the other hand, though, it’s quite true: if writing (or reading) about music takes the place of a direct experience of music – if it mediates it for you - then you’re in trouble. Music needs to come alive for the listener in an active, engaged, experience. And art, I suspect, is the same. Against my convictions and commitments, I find it hard to resist being one of those art-gallery-goers who religiously reads all the little cards beside the paintings, looks serious and nods. For some reason I find it easier to read a summary of an art thing than to engage with the thing itself. And so this morning I’m conscious that I don’t want my talk to distract you from being with the image itself. I will, of course, say some things. But I hope that what I say will help ease your transition from life to church service to art engagement. If it starts to sound superfluous or distracting – if it starts to sound like I’m telling you what to think - there’s probably not too much harm in ignoring me altogether. So… Here is an image. It includes a photograph, some acrylic paint, some masking tape, some words, some of which are crossed out. There’s quite a lot of black. It was made by Lance. If we limit our approach to it by noting that it is here today as the first of the Advent-in-Art images, we could note that it is not your typical Advent-in-Art image. It does not have very much gold. No-one seems particularly peaceful or joyful. (btw, if you skim forward through your pack of Advent-in-Art cards you might note that this is a bit of a theme this year. And this is interesting, I think.) We sometimes feel compelled, when we approach Christmas, to be happy. To remind (or persuade?) ourselves of Christ as the perfect gift, Christ the smiling baby (although he appears to have the wisdom and serenity of the aged). Christ as the miracle incarnation who will make things alright. And to think of Christmas as the time that will bring us peace and joy and balance at the end of years that might have been long, draining, filled with griefs and trials of every kind. If this image expresses joy unto you and peace on earth, it suggests that they might come in unexpected and hard-won ways. It’s OK to feel slightly disgruntled or cross at this image. How dare it refuse to meet our expectations (or our psychic needs)? We need some surety of joy at Christmas and we’re not getting it here. Allow me to play for now with the hypothesis that this image is a weird sort of infant-Jesus-and-mother-Mary shot. At the risk of labouring the point, here are (visually) some things that the image is not like. It does not look like this or this or this. The child in our image does not look cherubic, radiant, authoritative, clearly God. This is remember, an Advent in Art series. The image, we presume, must have some relationship to advent – to the incarnation of God in the world. But if it does, it defies these preconceptions. Preconceptions that are reinforced in our Christmas songs: “Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”; “Christian children all must be...” These images and such lyrics go together for me. When I see them I hear pipe organs, the odd soaring trumpet, choirs, prepubescent choirboys. I hear tranquillity and certainty and, yes, joy and peace and I think “God has come into the world”. God has come and made everything right. God knows that we need such moments. But I wonder if sometimes they seduce us with an easy-fuzzy-feeling happiness that doesn’t serve us too well when our world is not suffused with cherubic joy and peace. Or, to put it better, perhaps there are other ways of reminding ourselves of God in the world. Ways that do not require us to strengthen the dichotomy between sinful world and smiling pure God. The thing, perhaps, with these traditional images and associations, is that they make it all seem like a bit of a cheat somehow. If the infant Jesus was all mildness, obedience, goodness and non-cryingness, did he really become human? These images suggest nothing so much as a very little (but kind-of-old looking) God parachuted into our world to check things out before parachuting out again. This image is not that. If this is indeed an image evoking the Christ child, this is a Christ child dealing with the world-as-it-is, and dealing with it as a human being – vulnerable, scared, easily overpowered. Let us note that the central part of the image is filled with a child’s torso. His gesture is open, but not relaxed. Is he scared? His head is not included (neither is his navel, or anything below.) the absence of a face heightens my fear for his safety. I certainly fear for those who have been made faceless, anonymous, who are unable to be recognised, who can be more easily dehumanised. The boy is recoiling from an adult’s touch, although there is nothing obviously hostile about the touch. But look at how big the hand is. There’s a power imbalance. Is he scared? Here, just briefly, are some things that this image did remind me of. And if this all seems a bit dark, if you’d prefer to stay with the image of the Christmas story and God-in-the-world making everything OK, I can empathise. But you might want to read Matthew’s nativity narrative again. Luke’s account does seem to accentuate Jesus’ innate Godness – a litany of prophecies fulfilled and divine signs. But read Matthew. Once you’ve waded through the genealogy-part, we’re with the Magi in the stable. In verse 11 they give the gifts. From verse 12 – 15 both they and the family are warned in dreams to flee. And in verse 16 the massacre of the innocents begins. (is this image of an innocent?) Talking of the gifts of the magi (and developing this theme that Jesus’ incarnation did not separate out the human experience of birth, life, suffering and death but lived with them all together), you’ll recall that one of the three gifts was myrrh. And here in the image is the word myrrh. In a picture that might be about the Word made flesh, myrrh is the only legible word. Myrrh, in case you’re interested, is a bitter, aromatic gum resin. It used to be an important ingredient, used for perfumes, incense and medicinally. Myrrh is a bitter resin figuratively associated with sweetness, a balm that soothes heals and preserves.Think of Jesus as a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterness and strife, but able to soothe, heal and preserve. You might know that myrrh turns up in Jesus’ life three times. Most famously as the gift for a king at the beginning of it all, but also twice at the end – offered with wine (but refused) to relieve pain on the cross, and used in the burial process afterwards. Myrrh, if you like, ties together the majesty and the suffering of Jesus. Those are some thoughts but they’re not very coherent thoughts. They don’t have a conclusion. They don’t provide any answers. The closest I’d want to go is to suggest that this image could help us to reflect, as we approach Christmas, on a few important questions. This image, as I’ve said, unsettles in me any conception of Christmas as a story of God bounding majestically into the world (once) and setting things to rights. Perhaps Jesus’ birth is not the miracle that can solve all your problems. Perhaps it is a challenge and encouragement to leave behind the easy and the comfortable, to embrace life-as-it-is and to live courageously and truthfully where you find yourself. NKJV John 1:3-5: In him was life; and this life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. You might want to reflect on the life and the light that we see in Jesus. Light after all is useful, if you need to see something. But light is profoundly annoying and embarrassing if you’d prefer not to see things, or have others not see them. Light tends to make things obvious. The question might be: how do we respond to the light of Christ? So with all of these loose ends and strands that don’t match up neatly, maybe we could close with some brief lectio divina: Same passage as above (beginning of John) from a different version. (NRSV): "What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it… He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not … And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us … full of grace and truth."

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Kath Taylor-Kemp, Double-Edged Sword, Collage.Interview by Evelyn Cornes.  [Transcription: Andrew Rockell] Evelyn: This is Kath Taylor-Kemp. Kath has been part of Cityside for six or seven years . . . She [says] that for the last couple of years she hasn’t been here much and her spiritual journey has been very challenging. And you might hear about that as she talks. She trained as an elementary and intermediate [school] teacher. She probably should have done fine arts, she said. So, this is Kath’s Advent [piece]. Kath: So, I’ll just pop in here. I, right after the service I have to race to the airport to see somebody for lunch. I’m not ‘escaping.’ [laughter] If you’ve got questions, you’re very welcome to contact me by email, which Brenda or Evelyn will have. Evelyn: OK. To start off Kath, can you tell us about your piece - how you made it; its various elements; and what each element depicts? Kath: OK. I started with a quick email to Lauren, who is my niece, a wonderful photographer, as you all know. And said ‘Have you got any photos of a pregnant woman? Nearly nude. Or as nude as doesn’t make any difference.’ And she did indeed. And she got permission from the friend, whose photo it was. And we decided . . . One of the questions on the [back of the Advent] card [Sunday 6 December 2009] is ‘We can’t see her eyes,’ which might be something interesting to reflect upon. But we really did that so she wouldn’t be identifiable. So that was a practical thing. Somebody else mentioned that, um, do I think it’s erotic? Well, I suppose for almost half of humanity, a barely clothed woman’s body, even fully pregnant, is erotic. But seeing as I’m not of that half . . . [laughter] I’d say that wouldn’t be my main point of using a naked body. Ok, so, I wanted a nearly nude, fully pregnant woman to represent Mary as she’s considering giving birth. Just because the female body fully pregnant is so abundant, it’s so fecund, it’s so full of promise, it’s full of life and food and everything that is about bringing forth life. There’s a wonderful line in that prayer, peace prayer we just said about how the Christ was pushed through pain and into poverty. And I thought it was quite ironic. We’ve got a slightly elongated version here [on the data-projection] in which the earth is oval, which is quite fine, because most of our heads are that shape, when we’re emerging. Anyway. So I started with a photo-print. And I chose a fresco texture for it. And sepia, maybe for the ‘age’ of the story. And I always knew I wanted to superimpose on it a photograph of the earth, from space. And I was delighted to be able to find one in which the Middle East was the focus of it. Very hard, actually, to find that view. And I superimposed it slightly onto this very - I thought when I finished I thought, ‘Hm, did I make it too big? ‘Cos it almost takes over the whole picture. But then that’s maybe what it’s about. I love . . . I decided that my medium of choice is collage. I love different textures and layers. I love this ribbed cardboard. The wave just is a wonderful, round, encompassing shape. It also refers to the Biblical meaning of the ocean, which is the earth. The seas, the oceans, represent the earth, in Biblical mythology and metaphor. And I don’t know if you, you probably haven’t looked at it close enough, but when I cut the wave out, I had this little tear shape. And I looked at it and I said, that’s a tear. And I thought that was very appropriate - in my presentation of the piece as a whole, which I called A Double-Edged Sword, and - shall we go into that more? Evelyn: Yep. Kath: Oh, and I finished it with a ribbon, because it needed a little more colour, and it was a Christmas gift. Evelyn: What in the Advent story inspired you? Kath: Well, obviously, the story of Mary. And just actually the fact that ah - this was a really, amazingly difficult thing for a very young woman to do. In fact, a girl, probably. Based on historical precedent and even today in the developing world, many, many girls are married at fourteen, or fifteen. So she was very young. And I’ve always seen it as a ‘double-edged sword,’ this story, you know? In spite of the ‘rah, rah, mother of the Messiah, this is going to change the earth, you are the chosen one,’ that whole thing that goes on off over top. And I’ll just read you a couple of verses, from Luke. And I just read it again last night for the first time in ages. And underlined all of the complications in about, in one paragraph. Alright? So there’s Mary, we don’t know what she’s doing. Maybe sleeping, maybe working around the house. And calmly the account says, ‘The angel went to her.’ You know? Who was this being? And you‘d think it was a friendly, a positive greeting? “You are highly favoured, the Lord is with you.” But I love that Mary was a thinker. “Mary was greatly troubled at these words.” ‘God is here? And I’m in his good books? Why . . . ?’ “And she wondered what kind of greeting this was, might be.” Right? It wasn’t simple. But the angel said to her “Don’t be afraid.” So she was afraid. “You have found favour with God.” There it is again. “You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great. And be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the House of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end,” and on and on. And Mary . . . cuts to the chase: “Um - How? I’m a virgin.” Alright? And I love that. I just love that. And for us I think maybe the story has lost its power. Her question has lost its power. We believe if we’re Christians that it was God who impregnated her. We know from the after-story that Joseph did the good thing and married her and accepted her son. In her culture and in most of the world today, it was an offense worthy of murder to be pregnant outside of marriage. That’s what she was facing. You know, we think of honour killings and murder killings that are going on today, even today, as being part of another faith. But in the Book of Deuteronomy [22.20-21] it says that if a man complains that his woman wasn’t a virgin when he married her they can take her to the door of her father’s house and stone her. So Mary was maybe thinking a little bit of that when she got this ‘favour.’ Evelyn: When Kath and I met to talk about this, Kath spent a lot of time telling me about the other influences and pretty much, we didn’t talk about the painting for quite a while. So Kath, can you tell us about those other thoughts and influences that have informed the concept behind your piece? Kath: Well I think you know I’m well along the path there. I think that Mary did an amazing thing if we look at it as an historical story. And even if you only look at it as a spiritual myth, even at that level, it’s a pretty amazing story, that she went for that. You know, she had the courage to do it. She didn’t know what Joseph was going to say. She had no idea. I’ve always thought, being brought up in the Protestant tradition, that she’s been a little hard done by, in our faith. You know I remember my Dad assuring me with all his heart that she was ‘just an ordinary woman, like any other woman.’ I thought to myself ‘I wonder if I said that about your Mum, what you’d think?’ You know? And yet that was his reaction to maybe a Catholic perception which Protestants feel has been . . . exaggerated, if you like. Evelyn: Do want to read us - or is that coming up? Kath: No, I think I’ll leave that, for now. Evelyn: OK. Sure. You talked just a little bit just here now about the impact of your family dynamics and the religious milieu when you were growing up. Can you tell us a bit more about that and how your background has engendered empathy for women in different circumstances? Kath: Yeah, I grew up in a very conservative Protestant home. I was very fortunate to have loving parents, both of them, at the same time. My father loved unconditionally. I am so blessed by that. And he honoured and loved my mother and I amazingly. And I never felt in any way, shape or form that I was less than my brother. Except when we went to church. Suddenly the whole thing turned on its head. We had to be quiet. We had to cover our heads. What is this thing about women’s hair? [laughter] Anyway, we had to remain silent. As they believed St. Paul commanded. And for me it was a just complete - I couldn’t understand it. As those who know me can imagine, I asked questions about this from the minute I was walking and talking, really. You know, ‘Well if Paul says there’s no male and female in Christ, how come I have to sit there and shut up when I’ve got something good to say? [laughter] And the fact of the matter is, all my father could do was fall back on the words, and fall back on the words. Because his life was lived other ways, other-wise, if you see what I mean. And more recently, when I’ve been, in the last ten years, when my spiritual path, as I’ve said, has taken some real turns and bends, I’ve come to the same thing with my brother, you know, who always respected me, honoured me and treated me as his equal. And has had to admit that if it was up to him, men wouldn’t rule in the church. And my jaw just dropped. I said, ‘So you’re more evolved than God.’ [laughter] You know? So these issues have always been there. Alright? And so, yeah. I have a real burden for my sisters. And there are one huyndred and seven million of them missing, today. Girls, who’ve been done away with, because they are girls. And I think that all relates into this story of Mary and what she did and what she took on. It’s still going on. The double-edged sword still stands. I think for me it’s profound, that the tiny child that was in Mary was indeed as big as the world. And was not hers. Think of all those statements the angel made, even as he met her. King of kings, the power shall be his, whatever. She no longer had the word that he was coming but that he was gone. Right? In another place in Luke chapter two where it says, the sword will bruise and enter your heart. Right? There’s the sword again. Evelyn: 'Next question', as the Dalai Lama says. Is the story you’ve depicted special, or is it universal, recurring and mundane? Kath: Good question. I’ve been thinking about it all week. I think it is special. Whether you believe it’s history, that each of these things happened factually, or whether you believe it’s a great spiritual story and metaphor, it’s definitely special. Just the fact that there are shadows or reflections of it in many other cultures, says that to me. It’s also universal, you know? The joy and pain - of having a child, of carrying a child, of bearing a child. I’m among those who are so blessed to have greeted with joy pregnancy. And have had a husband who loved me and supported me in that, and helped me bear it. But it’s a long, it’s a life of giving . . . Where was I going with that? [laughter] Evelyn: The special and the mundane. Kath: Oh, right . . . So, I don’t think it’s ever mundane. [laughs] It’s pretty hard-core and earthy, when you’re giving birth. But that’s not mundane. I think it’s always special and amazing and miraculous. And this story does set it apart. Evelyn: Epidural, or not? [laughter] Kath: Natural, all the way, four times. [laughs] Evelyn: So . . . we’ve clarified it [the picture]’s not porn. [laughter] As an artist and thinker, what avenues of thought or practice do you hope to follow from here? Kath: One of the reasons, even though I haven’t been at Cityside much recently, that I love doing art for Cityside occasions, is because it requires me to think. And to exercise my artistic brain, if you like. And I think this is quite significant for me, right now. I mean, the whole woman thing, with the place of women in the world, Mary’s place in the Christmas story, the whole mothering, birthing thing, that’s been important to me at different times during my life and it is again right now. And I think this will be a real springing off point for me. And I’ve had the opportunity - this isn’t an ad, except that I want you to read it - I’ve discovered this wonderful, wonderful book called Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide [Knopf: September 2009]. It’s by a married couple Nicholas Kristof and Cheryl Wudunn, who are Pullitzer Prize-winning journalists. And it could be a terrible, terrible book and it’s full of hope and future and practicality. So, I’ve read this book. And it’s got a huge appendix of things I or anyone could do to contribute to changing things that are happening in the world today. And yeah, with doing the art and finding this book it’s given me a real goal and a purpose for something I can do to help with things like this. Evelyn: [ . . . ] Kath, if we were to follow the chain of thought that inspired this piece to its very tip, your train of thought, what are we left thinking, that is what are you left thinking? And how is it resolved? Or if not resolved, how is that thought left hanging? Kath: Well, the whole thing I think, is left hanging, in a sense. I mean, going back to my cynical youth once again. I remember asking a friend how, two thousand years after the fact, ‘Behold I come quickly’ makes sense? Notwithstanding the explanation that it means ‘it will happen quickly’? It’s a story that’s left hanging, isn’t it? We talked about it today. We prayed for peace and yet the world is more torn apart than it ever was. We have hope, that one day it’ll come to fruition, and faith. I think that there are three billion people in the world, most of whom - and I’m talking about the female half of humanity - don’t really have much hope or life. That’s not exaggerated. And that Mary, the story of Mary, accepting this amazing challenge, and making this complete sacrifice, should encourage each one of us to help make our world a better place for the mothers and the mothers to be. And the girls who are murdered at their fathers’ door, for things they may not have done. And I think it’s, really, I think, the crux of the Christmas story. Really comes down to Mary. If she’d said No, what would have happened?

Advent in Art 09:  Kirsten’s Seeking the Dancing StarI’d like to tell you about a person who is part of our community of Cityside. She is however not someone whom you’ll ever meet in this building, although she did come here to church quite a few times, and although her name will never be written in the Cityside directory and she’ll never sit with one of the Children’s Space groups, for me there will always be a space where she should be. This person is my youngest daughter. Her life with us was very short. She had a rare, non-inherited genetic disorder called trisomy 15, a condition which meant major organs like her heart did not develop properly. She died in August. She was the fifth wee baby I have miscarried in the past 18 months. This art work was done in the weeks immediately after she died. I really didn’t want to do this picture, and initially withdrew from the Advent in Art project. I couldn’t see how I could do anything creative, particularly when the theme was sparkly, twinkly new-baby Christmas. I didn’t want to publish what had been a relatively private pain, or to be the dark spot in all of your advents. I was in a gray and horrible place. My usual approach is to smother pain, to build internal walls around it to keep it private and within, barely acknowledged, protected by a facade of busyness and competence. But this time was different. The hurt was great, both physical and emotional, and was compounded by my previous losses, and the place where I’d squashed all my earlier hurts was too full. I was barely able to function at all, let alone with competence. So instead of my usual practices, I have been trying approaches that go against the grain for me. I have talked with others about what has happened, including, for the first time in my life, a counsellor.I was tired of listening to my own thoughts going in circles, so I have tried to make time for centering prayer more regularly, to make spaces for God in the nanosecond between the time I say my sacred word and when a new thought whisks me away elsewhere.I used the Welcoming Prayer to attempt a process to help me to feel, to sit with and to accept some of the huge emotions that had me.And I decided that amongst other rituals to process grief, I would do this art piece as a meditative practice, and that I would talk about it now. I chose to work on it at times when I was alone and in silence, rather than distracted with music or company. Usually when I look at an art work I’ve done, I can hear echoes of the music I listened to while doing it, and can sense, smell, and picture the place and people I was surrounded by. Instead, this piece simply resonates with my thoughts during August and September. I find it hard to look at.I want you to know though, that this picture is not intended to be about gloom and despair. It’s themes are seeking, journeying, and hope, and it aligns with the part in the Nativity story where the wise men follow the star to find Jesus, the baby in whom so much hope was placed. I don’t want you to feel you have to look at this picture and feel sorry for me. Rather, I hope that you might be able to engage with some of the themes in it and relate them to parts of your own journey. Hope is most useful when you’re in life’s dark places. The hope that I held onto was that I would not be in the same place I was in August by the time I came to Advent. I sought to be able to look back and see that some journeying had been made. I didn’t expect that any particular destination would have been arrived at, but that a bit of a shift might have happened. If I had to have pain, I wanted it to be a catalyst for growth, and to be something that helped me to be present in my own life, instead of just being something to endure. The title of this piece ‘Seeking the Dancing Star’ is derived from a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star’. The chaos in this picture is represented by the tilting buildings – the off-balance disequilibrium of your world in times of shock, and how that affects every aspect of your life. When relating this to the Nativity story, I wonder if there was a pre-curser event that triggered such a long journey in search of something. It has always seemed strange to me that three people would make such an expedition, and I am intrigued about what their reasons might have been for making it. The ultrasound scan picture that represents the nativity star is of my youngest daughter. They can scan an embryo when it is only four weeks old to see if it has a heartbeat. If you see a heartbeat, there is a 95% chance that that embryo will continue through to full-term. An ultrasound scan is difficult for a non-medical person like me to make sense of – it mostly looks like swooping shapes and swirling speckles. It reminds me of Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. And when they find the 4 week-old embryo’s heart beat, it looks like a pulsating point of light. That star of light carries a lot of hope. I wonder what the wise men were hoping to find, really, when they travelled all that way following a star. What were they expecting from the king they followed a star to find? And did they find what they were expecting, or did it take a while for them to come to terms with what they found? What did they take away from the experience, once they returned home, and the adventure was all over? The baby at the bottom is the 19 week scan picture of my second daughter, Mahalia. This part represents hope realised, albeit currently a bit squashed by the skewed buildings. This was a picture I focused on a lot before Mahalia was born – it reminded me that there was a beautiful wee person in there, despite having been told that she maybe had a syndrome involving brain and kidney damage and webbed hands and feet. The hopes that we have held and realised in the past give us reason to hope again, and they are part of the foundations our journeys rest upon. The mountain represents a liminal place, a thin place between us and God – close to the star, away from the distracting clutter of the buildings. The volcanoes of Auckland are sacred spaces for me. Anytime something significant has happened to me over the past twenty years, I have headed up my local volcano to process it, in the open spaces, above the everyday busyness and clutter of my daily life. The figure of the woman in this picture is on a journey. It looks like she’s heading away from the star, but actually she’s heading up the road to the mountain, to her sacred space, which will bring her closer to that which she seeks. The fact that that place is pretty much where she started perhaps eludes her for now. This picture is set here at the top of Mt Eden Road, looking towards Maungawhau. I find it interesting to ponder how the Nativity might look if set in my environment, in my time and place. What would change? What would stay the same? The woman is surrounded by familiar buildings. There aren’t any other people in the picture, because I wanted to convey a lonely, uphill journey. But at the same time I meant those buildings as evidence of the community that encircles her. I want to take this opportunity to express my very deep appreciation of Mark, my family, Brenda, Megan and the staff at the Recurrent Pregnancy Loss clinic, Helen, and all my Cityside friends who have been such present and loving support over so many months to me. The love that Jesus taught and embodied has been alive for me in you, and I thank each of you for being alongside me. My hope was that I would not be in the same place now that I was when I did this picture. And I’m grateful to be able to say that I am not. The grief is still there, but it’s not raw and off-balancing and it doesn’t gray my entire life. I have resilience and energy again. I hope that I’ve put in place some strategies that will serve me well the next time I’m in one of life’s hard places. And this wee daughter, I will always carry her with me, but the weight of daily care and responsibility for her I have managed to give to God. I’d like to give you some space to sit with what I’ve spoken of and to engage with the art work and the nativity story in other ways, if you’d like to. There are some options to choose from: The chapel out in the foyer is for people who would like a space for silent reflection or prayer. There are candles to light and stones to place if you would like to as symbols of your thoughts and prayer.There are two activity based stations: This Sunday is World Child Remembrance Day, when many people light a candle at 7pm to remember a child or children who, for whatever reason, are with us only in our hearts, imagination or memories. I like the thought that here in New Zealand, we are at the start of a wave of candlelight flowing around the world. The activity here is a chance to prepare a candle for tonight by writing or drawing on the label. You may prefer to light your candle for some other purpose instead.The other activity station is here, and it’s for you to think about how you might inhabit this picture – where do you feel you are? Are you on a journey? In a safe place? A scary place? Mountain top? Are you alongside others? Or in one of the buildings? You could draw a wee figure and glue it on. It would be nice to have some company in there.You might feel like talking about some of the reflective questions on the back of the card – we’ll make a wee gathering spot over by the piano for those who wish to bounce ideas off others.And if you’d prefer to just stay put in your seat, there will be a slideshow playing with some things to ponder (see below for the silent, web sized version)The music is ten minutes long: the first piece is Mark Laurent and Brenda Liddiard playing, and the second one is Nina Simone’s ‘Here Comes The Sun’ – so when you hear that one, you’ll know the time is nearly up.

The Annunciation  —a painting by Alister Kitchen Presented by Derek McCormack Alister, says he put the idea and shape of the painting together in one go, in a single sketch, pretty much as we see it now – which, without being flippant, I take to mean that we are looking at an inspired vision. The painting is similar in style and rendering to a lot of Alister’s work: painted on an old piece of a house – in this case a piece of the wooden ceiling from his house where he’d done some remodelling. There’s still the hole in the middle where a light cord ran through. Often you can read a bit of the past life of the substrate for one of Alister’s paintings; some reference to it is typically left visible. In other works you can find, for instance, a saw cut running through the painting, or a sizable notch out of a corner, or the door handle still there. And in keeping with the building materials, the paints and colours are from the Resene house paint pallet. Alister is after all an architect when he isn’t an artist. So there are these Alister things. But there are also many traditional elements and references to the work. The Marionite symbols, the Latin header and footer, and there is, from the Renaissance, the tradition of painting bibilical events into the settings and dress and customs of the artisit’s contemporary world. Which is why, now, many Western Christians often think of Jesus as a flowing-haired blondish slender chap, of the type that you might have found knocking around Northern Italy at the height of the Renaissance looking for a job as a artist’s model during that great flourishing of religious painting that we still revere today. In the tradition of contemporary settings for historical religious events, Alister has a figure which we are to think of as Mary of the Advent, lying on the slopes of Maungawhau, dressed in the androgynous bohemian fashions of the Cityside crowd, with the dark threatening shadows of Auckland the super-city waving uncertainly perhaps threateningly in the background, the SkyTower thrust up like a claw, and in the mid-ground Cityside lit up for our attention, and the beautiful green hills of Taamaki Makaurau and the sea of the Waitemata surrounding everything. The most eye-catching part of the painting is the motif in the upper centre - not representational but still contextualised to our world – the bird descending with wings in dive position with a strange yet familiar cluster of emblems with it. They look very much like a tattoo – it’s what they most remind me of anyway. The bird is the kereru, the New Zealand pigeon. Maui the demigod of Maori legend was able to assume the shapes of other beings and the kereru was a favourite. Here the bird might be the form that the semi-divine angel bringing the message has taken. Or as our most dove-like native bird it could be a local manifestation of the Holy Spirit – which of course plays a miraculous part in the events close to those that are rendered here which are the Annunciation, or the Announcement to Mary by the Angel that she will bear a son. The bird has with it – its not physically carrying them in beak or law – traditional symbols of Mariology – they are the cluster that looks like a tattoo. There is the lily, the piereced heart, and the circlet of five roses. The lily is a common symbol related to Jesus – there are numerous biblical references to the Saviour as the lily of the valley – and also a symbol taken up much later than biblical times with Mary. White lilies are among the most ancient of cultivated flowers. They appear on the wall decorations and in the carvings of many ancient civilisations – Crete, Assyrian, Egyptian, Roman – and it was the Romans that spread their cultivation throughout Europe. A popular name of the white lily is the Madonna Lily – that comes from the Victorians but they take it from hundreds of years of association with Mary. The Sienese painter Duccio gave an early example of the when in the 1300’s he placed a vase of white lilies next to Mary to identify her and symbolise her purity. In Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting of the annunciation the angel holds out a white lily, which is for Da Vinci a treble symbol – 1) of Mary’s virginity, 2) that she will bear the Saviour, and also 3) of his home base, Florence, for which the lily was the official emblem. Perhaps the Angel is giving Florence to the Madonna in devotion and into her care. From these times, we have a vigorous tradition associating Mary and the lily, particularly at the annunciation, a tradition that’s lasted until now – in fact right now and right here in Alister’s painting. And what of the Five roses around the heart? there is a 15th Century English song that sets out the meaning of this symbol. The song, still sung by some, goes – paraphrased heavily here: Of a rose, of a rose is all my song Five branches of that rose there been Which be both fair and sheen The rose is called Mary, Heaven’s Queen Out of her bosom and blossom sprang   The first branch was great honour, That blest Mary bear the flower [that’s the lily] There came an angel from heaven’s tower   The second was of great might That sprang on Christmas night The star that shone over Blethlehem bright   The third did spring and spread Three kings then the branch gan led Unto our Lady in her child-bed   The fourth branch sprang to hell The devil’s power to fell   The fifth branch is so sweet it sprang To heaven both crop and root Therein to dwell and be our bote [that’s salvation] So blessedly it sprang   Of course, the roses around the heart are like a crown of roses – which is what rosary literally means – crown of roses – and the rosary prayer is traditionally grouped into sets of five mysteries or other fives   A dagger through the heart represents the sorrows of May as a Mother. In Mariology she might be described as Mater Dolorosa, Mother of Sorrows, and depicted with a pierced heart. There are traditionally seven sorrows, and often in the images of the mature Mary there are seven daggers or swords through her heart. Gruesome! Though rendered very tastefully. The seven sorrows are events in the life of Mary as a mother. One is the flight to Egypt to escape King Herod who was bent on killing her new child. Another is the loss of the child on the return journey from the pilgrimage to the Temple when Jesus is twelve. Another is the meeting of Jesus and Mary along the way of the Cross. Then the Crucifixion, where Mary stands at the foot of the Cross. The Descent from the Cross, where Mary receives the dead body of Jesus in her arms. The burial of Jesus. And these are all truly awful sorrows for a mother; to know that someone powerful is trying to murder your baby; to lose your child in a crowd or to have him go off and not come back – many of us know the deep anxiety and terror that produces; and then the terrible events of the Crucifixion, and finally to bury your own child. But I have only mentioned six sorrows. The seventh is actually the first in time. It is the prophecy of Simeon over the infant Jesus – and it is from this that the swords or daggers are derived. We read in Luke chapter 2 verse 25 on: And, behold, there was a devout man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; he was waiting for the salvation of Israel; and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Christ. And he was led by the Spirit into the temple: and when Jesus’ parents brought Him to do what was required by the law Simeon took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said, Lord now let Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word: for I have seen Your Salvation, which You prepared before all people; a light to the Gentiles and the glory of Your people Israel. Joseph and Mary marvelled at all the things which were spoken of the Child. Simeon blessed them and said to Mary; Behold this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and to be a sign which shall be spoken against; truly a sword shall pierce through your own heart also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. So here the one sword is faithfully representing the prophecy of Simeon to Mary over her new born son. It is part of the gift of the angel and the Holy the Spirit. The words that cap and toe the painting are like the words of the angel at the annunciation. ‘Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with you.’ Apparently, Mary is not in the original – it just reads something like – Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you. It is almost a cry from the heavenly messenger to anyone full of the grace of God who would hear it – and Mary heard. And the Christmas message is woven around people who heard call of the announcement that was broadcast and answered it: the shepherds who heard the Angels and went ‘to see this thing that is come to pass’; the foreigners who read the message of the stars in the East and came to worship the Child; Joseph in a different way, who heard something in a dream and changed his plans; and Mary who heard the Angel’s Hail! and answered: ‘let it be with me as your have announced’. The words are also the beginning of the Rosary prayer – Ave Maria - Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of they womb, Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Latin is the language of the Roman expression of the Christian church and so the words are familiar in Latin as they are rendered here. And it is the Roman Catholic tradition that is most noted for its veneration of Mary – mostly shunned along with the other Saints by the Protestants. The presence of the Latin words rings a different note to the contemporisation and familiarisation evident in the rest of the painting. This ancient language plainly connects us with the far-flung and the far-then – with the familiar sounding (we’ve all heard words like this) yet mysterious (what does ‘Te Cum’ mean? you might ask) – with otherness, with not-quite-apparentness, with not-yet-understoodness. The Latin words mark out the deep dark at the top and bottom of the painting – the unknowable dark from which the images descend and the unknowable dark on which they rest. Otherwise, the elements of the Annunciation traditions are moved in space and time to be familiar to us, comprehensible, accessible, perhaps we might say, immanent. The heart of the Mater Dolorosa is rendered like a tattoo parlour image – as it might actually appear on a person as a physical reality. The angel of the annunciation – or perhaps the Holy Spirit - is the beautiful pigeon of our land Aotearoa that we might be lucky enough to see from time to time. And here is Mary set in our city – in our part of town – just up the road from our own church on the slopes of its nearest hill, Maungawhau, in this city of hills. The slopes of Maungawhau are important in another of Alister’s paintings ‘The Transfiguration of the Appliances’, in which, in an unusual way, Maungawhau is marked out as a holy place in the contemporary materialist Auckland. Maungawhau is the highest mountain in Taamaki Makaurau and the nearest to us here at Cityside. A mountain is where in the biblical and ancient world one comes close to God. Moses goes up to Mount Sinai to receive the Law from God. The Bible refers to the Mountain of the Lord, to Mount Zion. Jesus went up to a mountain to pray and it was on a mountain that the transfiguration occurred – where He appeared to Peter the Disciple as a Heavenly being with the prophets. That mountain was the Mount of Olives. Maungawhau means the mount of the whau trees, which is a nice parallel. Of course, we Anglo people call it Mount Eden. And that used to be the name of our church, Mount Eden Baptist. So we might see Mary here on the Mountain of our Church. The name Eden reminds us of the paradise, the garden made for Adam; a garden with a fascinating forbidden tree; the place of human beginnings and of the start of all human dreams; where a woman, in fact the woman, hears a voice that says, eat of the tree and you will not die, you will become like God. Eden is the place from where the great human journey that flows from that dream begins. It occurs to me that the strangest twist of the first Eden is reversed by the Advent. In the Garden of Eden, the woman came out of the man, out of Adam, with no part played by a woman, but by the work of God. And on this Eden, here painted, we see the contemplation of the reversal of that twist in which a man – whom the Apostle Paul calls the Second Adam – comes out of a woman in the normal way for humans except for the fact that there is no part played by a man; it is by the work of God. Anyway, here we have Mary day-dreaming on the slopes of the mountain. I like the way that her hair flicks up. It might be lying on the bank behind her as she drops her head back; but, it suggests to me that it is in the wind, or the Spirit, or in an attitude of insouciance – Mary still untroubled by many things – or perhaps in a transport of deep thoughts that are flying out beyond as well as delving deep within. She’s lying back in a relaxed and confident attitude with her hands clasped behind her head, which is not looking at anything in particular, facing out of the painting somewhere, which is why I say she is day-dreaming. Religious art typically depicts Mary with great reverence for her womanliness, her purity, and her gravity. So she is often young and beautiful, unmarked and untouched, or otherworldly, or regal in royal robes. Her colours are usually white for purity, blue for royalty and heaven – she is the queen of heaven to some – and red for the blood of her humanity that this miraculous conception has mysteriously combined with divinity. But, importantly, here she is not royal or otherworldly or beautiful or even identifiable. She has no features at all on her face. She is any woman. In fact, I understand that it is only by the intervention of Alister’s wife, Adee, that she is woman at all. She was originally rendered as absolutely anyone. Apparently, according to Adee, at first Mary looked so awful that she encouraged Alister to repaint her with breasts to make it clear that she was female at least. Though still, here in the painting, she is just ordinary. Not like the usual presentation of Mary. A woman. Any woman. Any person. Just one of us. Just you or me. In our setting. In our place. Caught in a moment of transport, of contemplation, of rapture, or just day-dreaming. If we refer to the biblical story, we might imagine that she is in the moment that the Holy Spirit shall come upon her. Perhaps already knowing the message of the Angel – for the Angel said, ‘the Holy Spirit shall come upon you’. Perhaps she is day-dreaming about what she has been told; already pondering all these things in her heart – the Heart of Mary with its crown of roses and a sword piercing its soul. Or perhaps she is just in a moment of pure being, before she knows anything of the announcement that will be made to her. Just being herself, open to the possibilities of life, in a day-dream - or if you prefer, a reverie. In this painting of Mary and the Annunciation we find put together the legendary with the ordinary, the miraculous and extraordinary with the everyday and the everyone. We are caught in a dilemma by it – which way to go? There is a cognitive dissonance, in which two sets of ideas don’t go together. The great Mary, Queen of Heaven, one of a kind for ever and always, and the girl Mary of Nazareth or Mt Eden or wherever, whenever. The hearts and roses, the songs, the veneration of our lady, the virgin, Mary mother of our Lord, Mother of us all, is understandable, but perhaps obscures a spiritual truth that this painting – for me anyway – puts back into the foreground. The truth, that when ‘love came down at Christmas’ – as the carol goes – it was not only to be with us – but also to be through us. Here with and through us wherever we are, in our ordinary time (don’t just think back then), in our ordinary places (don’t just think way over there), in our ordinary towns with our ordinary day-to-day and the ordinary shadows and doubts and fears still lurking there behind the angel’s presence and the pure heavenly sky; to be with and through us, whoever we are (don’t just think perfect holy purity), whatever we are doing. And who are we to receive this and be the vehicle for this? Isaiah the prophet says, on behalf of God: The bruised reed I will not break and the smouldering wick I will not snuff out. God is patient, waiting for the dreamer on the slopes of Mt Eden, or in the Cityside building, or in the dark city behind, or in the backyards, with the family on Christmas day, with the happy or the sad, with whatever inadequacy, but with the human dream that goodness and love would be in the world somehow right now. God’s patiently waiting for that smouldering wick to burst into bright flame and shed a bright light. The smouldering wick is here in the image of the young woman day-dreaming on the mountainside. It is as the carol says: ‘Lo he abhors not the virgin’s womb’. As the gospel writer says: ‘with God, nothing is impossible’. The Mary of the Bible is unheard of in her world, possibly not even in the line of King David as is claimed – not genetically anyway, that royal claim having been put in the gospel for spiritual reasons according to some commentators. Mary from the backblocks of a Roman-occupied Judea, from Nazareth, a village so insignificant that it is not mentioned in any historical documents of the time other than the gospels. Mary who will soon proclaim, according to the gospel, that she rejoices because God has lifted up the lowly and the rich, the great, the powerful he has sent empty away. Perhaps what we see in this painting is the message that we are all able, wherever we are, whoever we are, to give birth, like Mary, to the second Adam into our world, to the God with us, to the Immanuel, to the object of the human dream that love comes down among us, the dream that we remember most at Christmas-time with abundance and goodwill and gifts and charity and childlike wonder and lights and happiness and comfort and joy and families united and welcoming to strangers and music and laughter and life – at least that’s the dream. Perhaps we see that we are all reclining near that hole in the ceiling that represents that what’s above can get through to what’s below and vice versa, that hole where the light comes through – the light that as another carol prays might ‘be born in us today’. Do we see here that it might not only be born in us but born through us into the places, the situations, the families, the communities, the worlds that we inhabit? Perhaps we might all hear the angel call, ‘Hail, full of grace. The Lord is with you’. Hail, full of grace, all of you, whoever you are, wherever you are. For we are all full of the grace of God.