mountain masala

he weeps for you

While in London I finally got to see a couple of pieces by the renowned video and installation artist, Bill Viola. Then in Ayr I came across Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973-1994. 

Here's a wonderful piece from the book, writing about his 1976 work "he weeps for you".

One of the foundations of ancient philosophy is the concept of the correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm, or the belief that everything on the higher order, or scale, of existence reflects and is contained in the manifestation and operation of the lower orders. This has been expressed in religious thought as the symbolic correspondence of the divine (the heavens) and the mundane (the earth), and also finds representation in the theories of contemporary physics that describe how each particle of matter in space contains information about the state of the entire universe.

The ensemble of elements in "He Weeps for You" evokes a "tuned space," where not only is everything locked into a single rhythmical cadence, but a dynamic interactive system is created where all elements (the water drop, the video image, the sound, the viewer, and the room) function together in a reflexive and unified way as a larger instrument.

The traditional philosophy of the microcosm/macrocosm has been profoundly expressed in the Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism. The Persian poet Jallaludin Rumi (1207-1273) developed these concepts with subtle variation in the course of his life's work. In "The Masnavi" he wrote:

With every moment a world is born and dies,
And know that for you, with every moment come death and renewal.

Whether or not you agree with Viola's cosmology, what he says about installation art is interesting. Here is someone seeking to craft an experience where each aspect complements the others and makes a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

If you ever want to show Bill Viola works, educational institutions and museums (and presumably churches) can rent or buy them  from Electronic Arts Intermix. Some of his work is also available on DVD from Amazon.

pick me! pick me!

the many packets of photocopying that I did on my travels have all arrived in the post. now they're sorted and I can start reading....

where to begin??

beloved, do not let me be discouraged

somehow I seem to have and extra 75 songs at emusic.com. no doubt a computer glitch but I'm happy if they bill me the $23... (btw if you ever decide to join tell me and we'll get 50 free tracks each. I know it's not real analog music, just digital mp3, but I get so much wonderful music....)

in my browsing I saw the name "yo yo ma" (world renowned cellist) and immediately clicked. the link was to "silent city" by Kayhan Kahlor and Brooklyn Rider. It's an east-west collaboration of strings with some of yo yo ma's colleagues.

go to itunes and listen to the divine track "beloved, do not let me be discouraged".

my early selection for holy week next year. gorgeous.

On reading a play in rehearsal....

"Lots of questions have emerged, which now need answering. The text may allow ambiguity, but the actors can't act it. We need to make choices. That's the difference between reading a play and acting it.... We might not have all the answers, but perhaps we have some of the right questions".

Gregory Doran, Director, "Hamlet", Royal Shakespeare Company
(Stratford-on-Avon, 2008 - starring you-know-who)

This is great. He suggests that good acting requires recognition of the ambiguity of the text, of bringing good questions to it. And yet to act requires choosing a particular interpretation at a particular times and being committed to living that, to performing it.

in every atom

know the world is a mirror from head to foot,
in every atom are a hundred blazing suns.
if you cleave the heart of one drop of water,
a hundred pure oceans emerge from it.
if you examine closely each grain of sand,
a thousand atoms may be seen in it.
in its members a gnat is like an elephant.
in its qualities a drop of rain is like the Nile.
the heart of a barley corn equals a hundred harvests.
a world dwells in the heart of a millet seed.
in the wing of a gnat is the ocean of life.
in the pupil of the eye a heaven:
what though the grain of the heart be small
it is a station of the Lord of both worlds to dwell therein.

Mahmud Shabistari
13th century

a gathering thought

The shape of heaven always changes
round the movement of your own soul.
That space that the world has left for you to fill
is the newest intent and desire of the holy.
Who you are and meant to be in this universe
is what heaven focuses on in this moment.
Each one of us is a rebellious desire of God,
searching for that space in which we can dance boldly in the realm of love.
This place and time, like no other place and time in the whole universe,
is haunted by God's craving for us.
Give in to who you are,
to the shape God loved into you when God first thought of you.
That thought has filled God's lifetime ever since.

by Roddy Hamilton
(from the Welcome leaflet at Abbotsford Church of Scotland, Clydebank)

i thought these were great words of welcome!

sorting and stapling

have the spent the last couple of days sleeping, washing clothes, etc.

i have over 1000 pages of articles and chapters that I photocopied in university libraries while away. there are still packs arriving home in the mail. I'm sorting and stapling them and about to learn how to use Endnote, although I've downloaded a trial copy of Scrivener as well.

Having been cataloguing my new books using Delicious Library. I'm not sure that its better than Booxter or Bookpedia, but it does work with the iSight camera and I do like seeing those covers pop up onscreen!

Next week I'll get to start some reading and will start posting some summaries and reflections as I go.

end of trip

friday morning in edinburgh I did the tourist thing and went to edinburgh castle. the funny thing as was the bus tour guides all wearing kilts... (a side comment: coming to scotland is a reminder of our multi-cultural world.

europeans might be tired of this kind of history, but coming from a country with rather young european buildings, I find it remarkable to see the Scottish crown jewels (first used on Mary Queen of Scots) and then the scottish royal apartments from the same era (and no, there was no Spanish Inquisition....) being the pacifist that i am, the military history stuff is depressing, puzzling and intriguing. much has been written about colonials in recent decades, yet it seems to me for the first time that the roots of colonialism are in european rivarly (the history of the UK alongside the Napoleonic wars, etc, etc, etc).

But I digress... then to the Scottish National Museum where I spent some time in the religious history section. I really don't understand UK church history as well as I thought. The example was Charles II declaring himself the head of the newly Protestant Church in England, and the 300 ministers who  dissented and became outlaw preachers. On display was the mask that one of them (Alexander P???) wore until his arrest to avoid identification. These are the roots of Presbyterianism so I'd better learn some more about them. Of course the other interesting aspect here is the Pictish history and its influence upon Christianity.

then to the trip home which goes something like this.....
- a couple of hours at edinburgh airport
- a few hours a heathrow, leaving 10 pm
- a fairly sleepless 12 hour flights, including the new Indiana Jones movie (3.5 stars....)
- 4 hours in Singapore airport
- 6.5 hour flight to Adelaide

I know, I don't get any pity for this!

some new CDs on my travels including
- the sublime laura marling - alas i cannot swim - one of the mercury nominees - fluid folk with strings and band and some waifs-like moments - love it!
- lau - the best and new british folk band of 2008 - virtuoso violin, accordion and guitar with the occasional world-weary vocal. fairly trad type music but with very excellent meldoic and rhythmic things going on
- big blue ball - world music collaboration crafted by peter gabriel - pretty darn good, a range of vocalists and styles
- noah and the whale - folky, still warming to this....

and a new month of emusic.com downloads
- friendly fires' self-titled album (punky dancey rocky stuff..)
- haushcka - room to expand (very experimental piano)
- james yorkston - scottish drakeish nu-folk (that hushed guitary thing)
-  part of the sand pebbles' "ceduna" (the rest next month...)
- crooked still - still crooked (folky bluegress)
- matthew sweet - sunshine lies (good old matthew back to form...)
- the last shadow puppets - the age of understatement (the new darlings of 60's pop revitalised)

and did I mention the new luka bloom - "eleven songs" (havent heard it yet)

next post on what I learned from all this and what I plan to do next.

edinburgh

on monday afternoon I caught the train from glasgow to edinburgh, where I'm staying in university accommodation - a small room with a very small ensuite. in the afternoon I wandered around to get a feel for the city. the university of edinburgh is in and around the centre of the city, which is full huge old grey and brown stone buildings and cobbled footpaths. its tourist city, with a kilt shop on every corner....

i'm spending a bit of time each day looking around and the rest as the university library. i'm here at the divinity school, new college, because one of the key people in media and religion studies, dr. jolyon mitchell, teaches here (he and I are meeting up tomorrow). we actually met in brazil recently... the library has a stack of books not avaiable back home - so once again I'm locating references and photocopying chapters rather than actually reading... the divinity school is home to a number of well-known academics including oliver o'donovan, alistair kee and michael northcott.

last night i watched the british movie awards on tv followed by the mercury prize (best album - won by elbow btw).

today I finally hit gold in the "installation" department. The Fruitmarket Gallery is hosting installations by two renowned artists, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller from British Columbia in the US. These were astonishingly good (and complex). go to their website and see the killing machine, opera for a small room,

It was fascinating watching a film of them talking about their work, and to hear George talking about 'immersion' and people 'getting lost' in the space.

apparently they just had a piece in sydney -

16th Sydney Biennale: Revolution- Forms That Turn
Murder of Crows- a new multi-media audio installation

the biennale had an online gallery - its http://www.bos2008.com/revolutionsonline/here.

here's another one of janet's pieces - eyes of laura.

edinburgh photos going up here.

glasgow #3

Sunday morning I worshipped at Abbotsford Church of Scotland with Roddy Hamilton with whom I'm staying.

Its a big, non-traditional building from the 1970's - large worship space with a high roof (a great although cavernous space for doing creative stuff, but with fixed pews...) - and a congregation transitioning from an older, traditional style to something more open to creativity, engaged with the community, inclusive, and thoughtful about faith.

I managed to hit the quarterly communion Sunday, so we had the white clothes on the pews and the elders up the front for communion, plus some ladies wearing hats - I hadn't seen this since 1977! Ah.. it takes me back..

For this congregation, it seemed to me that the worship was a great blend of informality and formality, story and ritual, and cross-age communication. Roddy excels in meaningful prose that puts faith in contemporary language, but with poetic expression and fresh insight. As I said to him, hearing his words spoken aloud by the author in his 'home church' gave them sense and meaning that printed words on the page would not. 

Roddy has been departing from the lectionary and doing series on biblical characters. Today was the start of Ruth, following on from Moses and Joseph. The theme was about welcoming the stranger and being welcomed by the stranger, woven into communion. The 'sermon' was woven through the 'children's talk' (not sure if they call it that), intro to the Bible reading, and communion liturgy. This worked particularly well as the "welcome" became an invitation to the table for communion. (How wonderful it would have been with no pews, and people circled around a central table for this...)

I didn't really come here to see cool multimedia worship, but to get a sense of the crafting of worship and the journey of a community. Although I've only had glimpses of that, it's been helpful to reflect on expression, form and context in relation to liturgy.

I'm interested in Roddy's writing and expression because of his recurring themes - finding 'heaven' in the everyday, the beckoning of transformative grace, an inclusive yet provocative vision of the new creation, linking apparent opposites like peace and danger, melding the sacred and the sensual... God's desire and ours, and left-of-centre perspectives on biblical stories and characters. Roddy's worship is very thoughtful and imaginative, and at the same time gives an authentic sense of being a 'work in progress', unfolding not mechanical, and not always perfect. Of course, there's that sense of 'Iona' in some of this, not their influence (although perhaps), but more a connectedness to the land and the everyday, and the mystery of the nearness of grace in the touch of the moment, that is quite rural, like this landscape (and manual, like the industrial cities). A few thoughts here about rural 'liturgy' in australia...

Roddy wouldn't call this morning 'alternative worship', but he is clearly open to thoughtful exploration of how worship engages the whole person and community, how it opens faith exploration yet also embodies grace, and just as importantly, how it provides a way to be open to God and God's future. We've had conversation about the difficulty of the 'alternative worship' tag and whether it is new, a reformation, or a renaissance.

In the afternoon a drive to Loch Lomond in the afternoon, on the way visiting Cardross where some of my forbears lived, then Pizza Hut for dinner.

Off to Edinburgh Monday!