I wrote a little reply to Mike's sermon today and am rather wishing now that I hadn't.  I then came across this reply I made to the forum some time ago. I don't think I had any replies at the time - I know I was bit disappointed although not really surprised.  I am putting it up here now because I don't think I did at the time and I need to read it again. I think I still largely concur . . . .

I just have this feeling that we see it all the wrong way round: consciousness I mean. Our perspective is so self-centred - at least initially, and probably mostly after that too - even for the most saintly of people. I think the New Testament speaks to us a little like medieval paintings do: with no sense of 'perspective' in that other sense (the post renaissance artistic meaning). It wasnt that they (artists in the middle ages) couldnt conceive of perspective;(they could see trees were smaller when you got further away from them: this wasnt the renaissance 'discovery' that art historians often claim) they just didnt think it was important. In fact they might have thought of it as wrong: a distortion somehow.

And the irony is that the post-renaissance obsession with 'perspective' actually takes us further and further away from the way in which I used the word 'perspective' to start with, because post-renaissance 'perspective' puts the individual (ie ME) at the very centre of the picture, with everything moving away from ME.

In other words, the post-renaissance sense of perspective MAKES us self-centred or, to be fair, recognises that we ARE self-centred, in a way that medieval painting does not.

  There is a problem here though because the New Testament is a deeply Greek influenced document written for (and by) people living in a Roman Empire.(I'm taking the Jewishness for granted here). This was a culture that had already had their 'renaissance' and understood perspective very well (in the artistic sense). The New Testament perspective comes into this 'post-renaissance' world and turns it upside down because it offers a completely different 'perspective': ie what we presently regard as the more 'primitive' medieval one. The Christian view overturns the Roman [renaissance] one, which is why Byzantine and 'dark'-age art loses its interest in the Roman love of 'perspective' and concentrates again on the purely 'spiritual' nature of art.

The Christian lives then in a different 'dimension' in the sense that he perceives the whole world in a quite different way. His sense of 'God' re-focuses everything. You could say his sense of God is like the difference between a 2D picture and a 3D one. Everything is thrown into a different 'perspective' entirely, and especially his <i>own life</i>.

 There is another irony here because, at the very moment when Western culture was rediscovering this Roman artistic 'perspective' and putting the ME at the centre of his art, Galileo and Copernicus et al were discovering that MAN in the philosophical sense was definitely NOT at the centre of this new spatial (scientific) material universe - [in the post-renaissance sense].

To oversimplify, the more we place 'spatial dimension' at the centre of things (with everything moving towards or away from ME) the less we understand what we could call (to be symmetrical) the 'God dimension' [but what the Christian would call God.] 

  You might ask how this relates to what Eldad was saying but I think it does. Just as the 'spatial' dimension has gradually superceded the 'God' dimension: first artistically, and, when art was outstripped by 'science', scientifically, so it is with our sense of TIME.

 As we know through Einstein et al there is a synergic relationship between space and time which is still, I suppose, where present day science mostly hovers (trying to grasp the meaning and implications of this).

 The great problem for us today is that we live in an unbelievably complex world where we are educated in a post-renaissance world-view (which unintentionally puts ME at the spatial [and therefore 'spiritual'] centre, [because the post-renaissance scientific man does not recognise the essential difference here, unless instinctively]. This instinctive understanding of the problem comes with the Christian (and Moslem) perception of the world as having a 'God dimension' which is at odds with his own scientific (and artistic) post-renaissance education. (This is noticeably less of a problem in Moslem countries where education is very much more 'God-centred'.)

 When we talk about the after-life we tend to do so in modern 'scientifically aware' terms as being 'something that happens after death' in the physical sense. In other words "not today, but later".

 The first problem with this is that it is not admitting a real understanding of the essential concept that, for God, there IS no tomorrow, but only today. In other words we talk about things to do with God in a way which He might not recognise. ('Do you think that my thoughts are your thoughts?' He says. And again. 'My ways are not your ways'. And again, 'Do you think that I am like you?'.) Well yes I'm sorry Lord but we mostly do and I think its here that complexity can begin to defeat us.

 When we talk (or write) we do so in the understanding that the other person lives in the same three-dimensional universe that we do and the reason why the internet creates such incredible tension between peoples and points of view is because this is a fallacy. We simply do not. We use English words which have different meanings according to our own perspective, and one reason for this forum I suppose (or any forum come to think of it) is to discover people for whom words DO mean the same things.

 What am I driving at with all this?

Perhaps, all of this has been generated by discussions with 'aionios' - who I suppose is a 'typical' scientifically trained modern young guy who has an instinctive desire for God which he cannot place into his world-view with any integrity. For him though this was made more painful because his own spiritual needs crossed with emotional ones [which I recognised all too well.]

 Aionios is just the tip of a colossal iceberg. For Americans this is somehow less of a problem although I havent understood why. For us in Europe it is fast becoming a crisis. My country of England cries out for reconciliation with God and at times this cry is a scream which is almost audible. But this is a cry which only the Christian can hear and gradually it is possible to discern that this scream is turning into one of anger directed against the Christian himself; against Christ Himself – Christ the scapegoat?

I feel strongly that we failed Aionios and that we are failing many young people who are well-educated and scientific in their outlook. Erudite and well-intentioned people like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry speak more convincingly than any theologian I have heard recently and this is really disturbing.

The first thing we have to do is to recognise that we live in a post-renaissance world where perspective starts from ME. The reality of this is clearly undeniable and we have to bear that in mind when we speak

from a blog entry by Teresa Jackson in which she is talking at some length about the 'cursing' psalms:

There is no emotion, sentiment or experience that cannot be brought to prayer.  

there is no emotion, sentiment, experience or act of darkness or violence that cannot be brought before you  - although the act of doing so can be difficult and humiliating.

 . . .and so we learn about ourselves . . . . . . 

 . . . . . . . . . . but more especially we learn about you.

in today's tablet. 

. . . . . .Many people have issues with the Catholic Church: the status of gays, the divorced and remarried, the abused, the terminally ill campaigning for euthanasia. The list is endless.

Most remain faithful and often feel disappointed, disillusioned and dismayed with the sloth-like slowness of the Church's response to change, but they recognise that the Church is semper reformanda, if not in their lifetime then in that of the community to which they belong. . . . . . Just because change is not forthcoming in one's own lifetime within the Church one should not assume that it will never arrive. We have seen how many of the concerns which provoked Martin Luther and alienated our Methodist brethren have lately been acknowledged and resolved.

The life of Christ should be our insight as to how the Church will be. Yes, it is far from his vision, but as St Paul reminds us "Now we see as through a glass darkly". We have to compete with so many dissident voices and contradictory images that it is a continued struggle to see the wood for the trees. But we must keep faith, particularly at a time when the media and other so-called influential and intelligent voices of reason decry the very existence of the Church. . . . . .

Daniel Kearney, via email

more again in the tablet this week about the new translation of the liturgy. I cannot comment because I have not yet heard it in situ and will not do so until next summer when I get back to England. I did read through the eucharistic prayers and was in two minds. Some things seemed better and some things seemed worse.  Some things jarred and others did not. But it is one thing to read through, and another to hear spoken so we shall see. The storm rages on on both sides. The Americans seem as unhappy about it as people in the UK going by this site.

But here also is someone who firmly believes the changes to be an improvement.

Perhaps the main change in the years since the vernacular was first introduced in the 70's is the degree to which people (both happy and unhappy with the new translation) are able to communicate their feelings, plus, of course, the fact that people now are less willing to roll over and accept - especially at the present time. Could the church have chosen a worse time to institute these changes? Probably not, but any big change is always a challenge . . . . .

for the moment I will keep an open mind. As someone commented in one endless list that I was ploughing through: "the words may change but the mass does not."

from a talk by Christopher Jamison, former abbot at Worth.

"Pope Benedict . . . . uses the image of the Court of the Gentiles, that part of the Jerusalem Temple that was open to all peoples, the part that Our Lord cleared of money changers: "Today too, he says, the Church should open a sort of ‘Court of the Gentiles' in which people might latch on to God, without knowing him and before gaining access to his mystery ... there should be a dialogue with those to whom religion is something foreign, to whom God is unknown and who nevertheless do not want to be left merely Godless, but rather to draw near to him, albeit as the Unknown.""

a new year's resolution:

you

a new year's resolution:

you.