December 15, 2012 by marcuscurnow - 0 comments

Last Sunday’s Playlist: Advent in Art ‘The Visitation’

Advent 2, December 8, 2012

MoW (Ministry of the Word)

Once again following the Advent in Art Series we used the imagery of James B. Janknegt and ‘read’ this text alongside the story of the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth from Luke Chapter 1.

We explored some of the traditions of art history in portraying this story of the meeting of the two pregnant women. Interestingly, against convention, the artist has chosen to include in the background the men who are absent in Luke’s text. This reflects the gender politics that will be apparent in our reading of Luke over the coming Lectionary year. Zechariah, the male religious authority, is silenced and Joseph remains largely invisible.

Elizabeth’s Spirit-led response to Mary’s visit (Luke 1:42-45) contains a triple blessing on womanhood, who will be the preferred vessels of God’s Word in Luke’s story. There is a rich sense of blessing and vigorous fertility in the story which is reminiscent and affirming of what can be described as the ‘resistance is fertile’ movement of the midwives who disobeyed the Imperial Egyptian death decree in Exodus 1-2.

In his recent webinar “Revolutionary Christmas Carols”, Ched Myers suggests that this story contains “a theology of the womb” where Luke’s detailed list of the rulers of the age are displaced by village women of no significant estate. It’s an affirmation that transformation comes from the margins, not from the rich and famous celebrities, nor the politically powerful, but poor folk who act as the true carriers of history.

Whilst such a text affirms the ‘domestic’ we must be careful not to ‘domesticate’ it! Within the art work it is evident that an adult prophet and king are being birthed who will challenge the powers of their day. Mary’s response is a hymn of social reversal that makes up the first of the three revolutionary canticles of Luke’s nativity story… The Magnificat of Mary,The Benedictus of Zechariah, and the Nunc Dimmitus of Simeon.

Say’s Ched Myers…

“Imagine having this song sung to you as a nursery rhyme. No wonder Jesus was a revolutionary!”

Picking up on the broader social context of occupation Myers suggests…

“we fail to recognise them as hymns of resistance sung by the oppressed and instead domesticate them by turning them into parlour songs for middle class comfort.”

You can purchase images from this artist at his site http://www.bcartfarm.com/ or sign up for reflections over Advent via www.adventinart.org website produced by Mark Pierson for World Vision NZ.

PoC (Prayer of Confession)

On the theme of soul-ful cantiles sung by heavily pregnant women, we reflectively listened this performance of Sinead O Connor entitled Jeremiah (Something Beautiful) for our Prayer of Confession. As we lit our second Advent candle we reflected upon peace and confessed the lack of it in our lives and world during this season. The song which speaks of a “Chronic Christmas Eve” is at once a worshipful celebration and prophetic questioning of peace, forgiveness, freedom and true beauty. We reflected upon this song and the experience of homeless people at Christmas time and concluded by passing the peace to each other.

December 3, 2012 by marcuscurnow - 1 Comment

Last Sunday’s Playlist: Advent in Art ‘The Annunciation’

“It’s Mary and the Fairy”! said 6 year old Lowenna in response to this image which formed the basis of our reflection at this week’s community prayers for the first week of Advent.

The Archangel Gabriel also got tagged by congregation members as both Na’vi warrior from Avatar and Dr. Spock from Star Trek.

Artist James B Janknegt, says of his painting:

I’ve always disliked those renaissance and baroque angels, all tiny pink and effeminate. It seems angels always begin their message with “Don’t be afraid”. Who would ever be afraid of a pink, floating baby with wings unless your afraid it’s not potty trained. So my angel is big and imposing.

December 1, 2012 by marcuscurnow - 0 comments

Confession with Waleed Aly: Excising our Hearts, Child Abuse, Royal Commission

Two pieces of writing by Waleed Aly with images by Andrew Dyson shaped our Prayers of Confession in November.

Firstly in response to the Australian Government’s decision to excise the Australian mainland for migration purposes and secondly in response to the Australian Governments announcement of a Royal Comission into child abuse.

Both events raise deep feelings and responses within us and the words and images in the articles started what turned ,on both occasions, into an honest and open extended dialogue about the complexities of confession and the nature of truth, justice, words and actions, reconciliation and forgiveness in our lives and our society.

Our conversation shaped by Aly’s incisive words was important however I found simply using the powerful images as icons for contemplation, confession enough.

Our desperate concern for the wellbeing of asylum seekers begins only when they board boats and ends when we intercept them. It’s like we’re excising the rest of their lives from our humanitarian concern. And here the artifice of our whole political discourse becomes clear: the studied, confected compassion is as much a convenient fiction as the one that pretends Australia doesn’t exist.

Demanding laws that require priests to break the confessional seal sounds good. It sounds tough, uncompromising, common-sense. But it’s also the kind of thing you do when you don’t understand the problem you are trying to solve. That’s what we are witnessing here: irreligious people trying to address a religious problem with brute secular force. That might make perfect intuitive sense to the staunchly secular mind, but we need more than intuition and declarations of secular supremacy here. What matters is what works. And taking an axe to the confessional box won’t work. It might even make things worse…

You can’t legislate away people’s religious convictions, however much you might want to. And you can’t ignore them simply because you hold them in contempt. What matters here is the stuff outside the confessional box: the lame responses to abuse that seem calculated to protect paedophile priests rather than their victims; the legal manoeuvring to avoid paying compensation; the failure of police to follow through on investigations. These are the things we should be pursuing relentlessly. This should be the focus of our desire for justice. Let’s not dilute that by getting lost on some doctrinal excursion it’s clear we don’t understand.

– Waleed Aly “Choir of dissent off key on the sanctity of confession”, The Age, November 16, 2012.