THOUGHTS TO PONDER

As last Christmas approached I decided to make a scrapbook as a gift for my youngest grandson who was soon to be one year old. I remembered how much I loved doing this as a child and I have managed to keep one of my favourites to this day. There is something about choosing, cutting out and sticking down bits and pieces that continues to fascinate and bring a curious amount of pleasure. As I rummaged through the many scraps of treasure that I squirrel away I came across an old Christmas card from St Cuthbert’s bearing a beautiful picture of an angel. I only had the picture, not the whole card so had no idea who had painted it although I was sure that it was sited in the church somewhere and of course it is just to the left of the altar as you are facing it from the congregation.

I included it on the page devoted to angels with a special note to say where it could be seen and now my gaze, whenever I am in church is drawn always to it, the colours are so rich and yet also subtle and immensely satisfying, changing and varying according to the light. It has led me to think how little we celebrate the beautiful environment that enriches our worship together and what a privilege it is to have such an inheritance. Often as I listen to the readings I focus on a particular part of the altar, one of the windows or perhaps the flowers and they become iconic, leading me deeper into what my ears are absorbing, and it was not so long ago that I was suddenly jolted from my reverie by what seemed like an incredibly loud rustling of paper.

I came to as if rudely awakened from a dream and my initial response was one of a quite unexpected anger, quickly followed by a puzzled sadness. Mostly because I suddenly felt quite alone in my pleasure when I realised that many of my fellow worshipers were directing their attention to the written word. To me the interior of St Cuthbert’s with its visual splendour reassures me what a sensual pleasure worship is and when it is at its best sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell are all delighted, even though the latter more subtly than once it might have been. Incense is still so evocative of Ash Wednesday services that I attended as a junior school pupil and how heady was the depositing of the ashes on the forehead. At the time I had no idea what it meant, and didn’t need to, the reverence and seriousness evoked was enough and far more memorable than any words could ever have been.

Early Byzantine churches constructed long before the invention of the printing press gloriously conveyed to the illiterate the bible stories in rich mosaics that embellish their walls, and many of you, like me, must have stood in awe before them. Figures were ordered and sized according to their theological importance, the lack of regard to the laws of perspective not a sign of ignorance simply that it was not useful, not relevant to what needed to be conveyed.

Of course not all of us have all of our senses and they can seem to diminish in intensity as we journey through life until, suddenly a chance sound, sight, taste, smell or tactile sensation can generate a memory so loud that we reel from it, not necessarily always in pleasure and the sensation can be as acute as it was when first we experienced it. In my work as an art therapist I find that one of the most evocative materials is plasticine and it is always the smell that is remembered most commonly with pleasure. My young grandson is not ready for the delights of plasticine yet, it would of course go straight into his mouth, taste still being one of his primary pleasures. The pleasure of being fed and this desire to be fed brings me back to what brings us all together in acts of worship. It is traditional not to break fast until after the sharing of the Eucharistic meal, not to feed the body until we have feed the soul and it is my belief that the soul is not fed by words alone and there is nothing in our inheritance at St Cuthbert’s that leads me to suppose that those that came before us thought otherwise. As a young teenager I loved Elvis Presley, jiving, flirting, make up, cropped jeans, tennis, drawing, painting, the list is endless and my young mind absorbed the liturgy, which I still remember verbatim although I never know where my glasses or diary are. Someone once told me that tradition is something, which takes new things in at one end, and other bits drop off the other and the bit in the middle is tradition and that for me is the liturgy as it is now. It might not be quite the same that I learnt as a teenager but who cares when we all speak together it all sounds the same, it all sounds like worship.

Margaret Temple