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Space for God takes place in Week 5 of every term. It’s organised by the chaplains to give students an opportunity to make time for God in the middle of a busy term. We asked an entirely random selection of people to give their views on the week:
Listen to the silence; if you did you’d surely see that God cannot be reduced to an ideology.
The words belong to Bruce Cockburn (one of my favourite singer/songwriters), from his song The Gospel of Bondage. I’ve often found it ironic that many of the practices, traditions and doctrines which we (as Christians) cling to can not only be divisive, but also restrictive in terms of our relationships with others (both Christians and non-Christians), and also with our relationship with God. Very often, too much time is spent on heated debates about how we should evangelise properly (or at all), about how various bits of the Bible should be translated (one man’s heresy is another’s truth — the Bible often seems to be a very messy piece of work, inspired by God but written by humans), about how we should worship (or whether we should worship at all). Before we know it we find ourselves in a gruelling schedule of meetings, debates, praise sessions etc. etc. Is it any wonder that within such a heavy schedule it becomes easy to lose sight of God and his people? If we’re not careful we can turn a gospel of love and liberation into a “gospel of bondage”. This is true of all traditions, particularly ones which exercise manipulative forms of “spreading the gospel”, and which view people as “potential converts” rather than individuals with their own failings, hurts, desires and hopes — let you who are without sin cast the first stone!
How often do we spend time, in the silence, getting to know the God who loves us? Who through pain (both his and our own) taught us the beauty of compassion — the true road to salvation. How often do we meditate on the hurt, the love, the beauty of God and creation? How often do we cast aside the busy-ness of our lives in order to let the Spirit speak, to breathe in the essence of God which is all around us? In the words of trendy counsellors, do we have enough ‘quality time’ with Daddy?
During Week 5 of this term, the Chaplaincy allocated time for students (and staff) to do exactly this, to explore for themselves what it is to be in communion with God, to explore God’s nature, their own nature and the nature of nature. I remember going to a particular meditation session and falling asleep in the warmth of the unusually hot sun as it shone through the windows, but that didn’t matter because I was aware of God’s presence within me, God’s love, as I rested in the Spirit. God’s like that, he’s nice! And for the first time in a long while I felt at peace, and it didn’t matter that the words of the meditation washed over me, I found God, and I knew love!
In the words of Eddie Askew:
Where is your peace Lord?
What are you trying to tell me?
When Jesus offered his peace,
he was facing the cross. Head on.
And it wasn’t just words.
He could talk of peace, while he felt the pain,
because he was at peace.And as I identify with him, Lord,
as I discover the strength of your love,
as I come to terms with what I am,
and know that I am still accepted,
the peace is here!
I can drop my defences.
Isn’t it time we learnt to take time from our busy-ness (even our ‘Christian busy-ness’), and allow Space for God?
Last year Space for God saw the introduction of some Christian ‘culture’ in the form of John Taverner’s Protecting Veil, a most stunning piece of music by an orthodox composer. This year ‘culture’ returned again when Tony introduced us to Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Symphony no.3). The symphony fits uneasily into the categories of either ‘spiritual’ or ‘secular’: composed in the second half of this century by a Pole, it juxtaposes a fifteenth-century monastic chant, with a short prayer scrawled on the walls of a Gestapo cell by an 18 year old captive woman. At times tortuously painful, and alternately toweringly beautiful, into the fabric of stringed instruments the golden thread of a solo soprano is woven, rich and moving.
To sit in a quiet chapel and attend to this three-quarters of an hour work is to be deeply struck by the conflicting emotions of fear and hope, and in this sense the symphony represents the recent history of the twentieth-century, a century that itself does not know whether it is ‘spiritual’ or ‘secular’.
An added poignancy to the piece is the fact that only recently has Gorecki’s talent been appreciated in the West: until the collapse of the iron curtain, recent Polish classical music remained virtually unheard of. From the dark opening strains of cellos which rise up to be crowned by the solo female voice mid-way, this piece is a wonder to hear. For me, to sit and listen and be overwhelmed, was as if to be transported to the crucifixion, Gorecki’s Symphony no.3 a reminder of the pain of life, and its joys — a piece of music that is an Icon of humanity and of Christ.
I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air.
The opening of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Windhover, dedicated “To Christ Our Lord”: a description both of a kestrel and the Holy Spirit according to A-level notes I borrowed from my sister some 8 years ago, desperate to widen my knowledge of English Literature in any possible direction in preparation for an Oxford entrance exam. It was a sketchy, shallow introduction to a poet, and one that I never followed up, aware that there is an intense spiritual depth to Hopkins’ poetry, but content to paddle at the edges of his meaning and let the unique, incredible beauty of his word patterns wash over me.
Last week, in a light-filled Derwent Terrace Room, the sun dappling through that wonderful tree whose branches stretch outward cross-like beside the lake, John Robertson led us in approaching God through Hopkins’ poetry. This is not a summary of that experience, but a response to it.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame …
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same …
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came
For a man to ‘selve’ is to act
in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
We‘re rather short on ‘selving’ in this world.
But Hopkins’ poetry is not all beautiful optimism, for he was only too sensible of, too sensitive to, the agonies of our world, awesomely expressed in a poem in which God seems to have appeared:
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Space without God. On this point John referred to a literary critic who accused Hopkins of becoming neurotic: a critic who clearly does not know what it is to lose sight of the God with whom he had once felt his life entwined. This points to another angle on the theme of space for God: the lack of space for God in out secular university studies, a lack which in certain disciplines seriously compromises our understanding of the subject.
This distancing, this failure to engage fully with our world and our God who are so entwined, a failure to ‘selve’, is expressed perfectly in the lines of his poem God’s Grandeur:
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
BUT “for all this, nature is never spent.” There is still a beauty in the world to experience
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Eventually, we were invited to ‘selve’ in our own manner, indoors or out. Outdoors, feet unshod, coarse cushioning grass gave way to careful gravel, to softer new-mown and dying daisy heads. Gaze long enough in to azure sky and the soft marbling of distant clouds appears, and low down pigeons flying high catch white sunlight on their wings with Transfiguration brightness and hope. Holy Spirit for me. I think that’s what Hopkins meant in the closing stanza of The Windhover:
No wonder of it: sheer plod make plough down sillion*
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
* furrow
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Last modified: 25th November 2005