Terry was a science teacher for over twenty years before becoming an Education Consultant specialising in Management Training and Personal Development. He also served for a time as a Local Councillor for a Whitstable ward. Terry is a member of All Saints and has been for many years a Lay Preacher in Baptist and other churches.
My first awareness of the painter L S Lowry would have been
in 1978 when the music duo Brian and Michael hit the number one charts with
their song “Matchstick Men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs”, a reference
to Lowry’s idiosyncratic depiction of people in an industrial urban landscape. Of
course, the figures in the paintings are not quite what we would term
‘matchstick’ which normally is characterised by simple single line markings,
but I think we can quite easily appreciate why the songwriters’ chose this
particular metaphor.
Something
strikes me when I look at some of Lowry’s urban scenes, populated by so many
anonymous people. Paradoxically, there is a sense of the people being in a
state of ‘separately together’. They
are in close proximity yet, for the most part, they also seem to reflect a
strong sense of being independent and even alone. There does not seem to be so much
sense of the relational. I think
perhaps this is a consequence of the starkness in which the figures are drawn,
the freezing of a moment in time, and the strongly geometric representation of
the background buildings that frame the people in the foreground. Lowry has
been quoted as saying about his figures “They
are all lonely, you know”.
This
possibility of people being ‘together’, and at the same time ‘alone’, strikes
me as mirroring the strange, tragic and fearful situation that a biologically
simple virus life-form has imposed upon us. We are certainly ‘in this together’
, occupying the same physical and social landscape, but at the same time
required to be considerably ‘alone’ through
the curtailing of normal social interaction. Specifically, for us as
Christians, we are temporarily deprived of the vital Christian element of Ekklesia, the New Testament word for Church,
not the building, but the gathering
for worship, fellowship, and reciprocal ministery. I don’t think we will ever take this for
granted again. It is perhaps a time to allow the Spirit to shape our hearts and
minds anew, helping us to discover what is truly important in life, and to
value again what we have tended to take for granted. Perhaps this is a time to
give more attention to our inner spiritual world, a world that God inhabits comprehensively
with the full spectrum of Divine love ?
It is
likely that our generation will discover new ways of continuing Christian
fellowship ‘at a distance’ when required. We are gifted with the technology to
telephone, text, Email, face-time, etc. But
there are many who cannot access these and they will require particular
attention. Above all, our love and concern for one another will surely lead us
to pray both empathetically and expectantly. Love, and its beautiful children, Faith
and Hope, do not recognise distance or separation. Who knows, in our separation
God might work a miracle amongst us! When
Jesus reached out to touch the leper he collapsed the space between the Divine
and afflicted humanity.
That is also the ministry of today’s church and each of us.
Impossible as it seems the challenge is to engage our spiritual imagination and
find ways and means. We are grateful that our Pastor Simon has already taken
the initiative in this task.
For
followers of Christ ‘Thankfulness’
is a deep theological and spiritual concept. It takes us beyond self-focus and
orientates us outwards to a focus on the Divine and the creative order of which
we are all a part. The very fact of being thankful seems to release the balm of
healing and inner peace. With grateful hearts we can daily give thanks for
those who continue to work, health professionals and so many others, putting
themselves at risk as they deliver essential services. The Bible powerfully echoes
to us that “God is Love” and we shall
see extraordinary manifestations of that truth, lived in the service and
dedication of those who claim to have no religious faith as well as those who
do. May we all contribute in whatever way is possible at this strange and
unsettling time. May we keep each other in our minds and hearts. My we still be
together in our separation.
The
Lord bless you
and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you,
and be gracious to you;
the
Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace . (
Numbers 6: 24-26 )
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