Bigbulkyanglican

Treasured books and tree houses

Over the past few moving weeks we have made some decisions about which books "to keep" and which to throw/recycle/take to the Charity Shop.

Childhood books represent a particular dilemma - "do you really want to keep that?"

I loved Swiss Family Robinson for the tree houses - remember how in some of the illustrations there were two with a linking bridge - but the style and story would probably seem rather twee or quaint now.

Well if you share my fascination with tree houses then see this:

wow

Architectural Containers

Found this post rather apposite today - sprung thoughts of doing something similar with the vast number of removal boxes we will have available once they are upacked - but also ideas for office accommodation in the new role at Scotland's largest container port of Grangemouth.

Art installations on churches

Often thought that we could be all the more imaginative with the outside of our Church buildings - if only for temporary installations, but this is utterly stunning on the exterior of Washington National Cathedral

Architecture and Church

Have at last finished my analogous read of Alain de Botton's "The Architecture of Happiness" - fascinating to see how architecture relates to cultural changes - and to compare this with the Church in the same historical context.

Was really struck by the role of the purists in architecture which has many parallels in the contemporary Church and how the obsession with theeation of the "new" (interestingly referred to in architectural/theological language such as "new heaven" and "paradise") rather than the adaption and renewal of the existing which is required in the post-modern era

The Allelon post today has similar thoughts from Ryan Bell. He quotes architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne:

". . . in the last three or four years, we have embarked on a kind of high profile architecture here that required very different skills from those Meier displayed at the Getty. Instead of building new landmarks from scratch, architects are being asked to extend, restore or otherwise re-imagine existing ones."

and draws conclusions which mirror mine about de Botton's insights

"This make me think immediately of the so-called “church planting movement” that has been popular in my tribe. But different skills are required today. Adaptive reuse is the way forward in our overcrowded, sprawling city. Rather than creating new, “idealistic” churches we need leaders with “different skills” who can lead “adaptive” ventures in our communities, connecting with what has been and leaning into a diverse and rapidly changing future.

I did a little experiment. I went back through the article and everywhere he referenced the Getty or architecture I substituted the word church. It didn’t work perfectly, but what emerged was a striking parallel between this conversation about the relationship of a museum to a rapidly changing city and the conversation I am increasingly a part of about the church and a rapidly changing world."

Reading Discipline 4

I have set aside this morning as a "reading" morning and will focus on Alain De Botton's " The Architecture of Happiness" which is one of my favourite recent reads.

It is challenging and inspiring at the same time, and instructive about how buildings influence how we feel and view ourselves - or fail so to do.

With this read-through however I am reading it as a parable - I am replacing  "architecture" with "theology or Church" - there are of course some revealing historical parallels between building history and developments within the Church since shared the same social milieu.

And of course both architecture and church face the same contemporary critique

"A concern for architecture has never been free from a degree of suspicion. Doubts have been raised about the subject’s seriousness, its moral worth and its cost. A thought-provoking number of the world’s most intelligent people have disdained any interest in decoration and design, equating contentment with discarnate and invisible matters instead."

and we share much common history and mutual influence

Such austerity has been a historical constant. In the spring of 1137, the Cistercian monk St Bernard of Clairvaux travelled all the way around the Lake of Geneva without noticing it was even there. Likewise, after four years in his monastery, St Bernard could not report whether the dining area had a vaulted ceiling (it does), or how many windows there were in the sanctuary of his church (three). On a visit to the Charterhouse of Dauphiné, St Bernard astonished his hosts by arriving on a magnificent white horse diametrically opposed to the ascetic values he professed, but he explained that he had borrowed the animal from a wealthy uncle and had simply failed to register its appearance on a four-day journey across France.

 

(Click on the reading category on the right to read the preceding posts)

John Henry Newman

Over the past week I have been reading again about John Henry Newman the 19th century divine who was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement which bought renewal to the Church of England. JHN was one of my chosen feature topics during the final year of my theology degree.

As with many "great men", he is a most intriguing mix of achievement and failure, - so for example he wrote the most remarkable and inspiring sermons, but was not according to most accounts a particularly good preacher himself.

Some would suggest his greatest achievement is what he inspired in others - and as I have travelled over the past three sabbatical months it has struck me how much has been inspired or attributed to him particularly in the vexed questions of the design of church buildings as worship spaces.

Several people have offered me this saying/litany from JHN

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall ever have a beginning.

Growth is the only evidence of life.

If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.

If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.

Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.

Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.

To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.

Written in the mid 19th century it provides an inspiration for our current missional ambitions and hopes. I am particularly challenged by the penultimate paragraph . ..

I loved the image above of JHN which I found during a visit to Chester - so often the popular images are either of him as an elderly man or even a lampooning cartoon. The image should remind us of his great achievements in the first half of his 89 year life.