This came in from Kate.
Have you ever read “The Vision” poem? Here is an opportunity:
What inspires you?
Does anything worry you?
Write, draw, sing, or dance your response!
Categories
Category: Creative Worship
Categories
“Christmas Light” review
During Advent in 2022 Quartz used visual arts to give people the opportunity to contemplate how they shape light entering the world. We made several mobiles, strings of mirrors, that were hung in the building. They were beautiful to look at, and many people commented that the installation helped them contemplate.
The process of making the installation was as important as the finished work of art. So please enjoy the images, and take some time to explore the process as well.
This video has a quick run through of a process which took several months.
We invited Photographer Stephen Ross to try and capture some of the atmosphere created by the installation. An evening with some powerful torches and a wee bit of smoke, and these are the final images.
Travel through time on the Blog
The process was recorded on the Quartz blog. A main page for the project could be accessed through the “Activities” menu. The blog posts tagged “Christmas Light” built on this, step by step. They start with the first post introducing the ides for an advent installation from here You can follow the development of the thoughts and theology as the project developed.
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Advent Installation
Do you remember the canopy of Angels from Christmas last year? That was an example of a type of art known as an “Installation”. As a community art project it drew together ideas from a wide range of people, and worked in a relationship with the building it was hung in. The architecture and lighting…
And the main page which hosted the project while is ran as a current activity.
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Christmas Light
Follow this link to find out more! As Christmas approaches Christians are thinking about the light of Jesus coming into the world. All over the world we will be spending time becoming aware of ways in which this light makes the world a better place to live in. We invite you join us in this…
And the main page which hosted the project while is ran as a current activity.
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Nuggets of Christmas Light
As part of the Christmas installation this year we have been asking people to recognise the ways in which they bring light into the world, and their relationships. They have been writing words and drawing symbols as described elsewhere on this site. Here are some of the symbols of the “Nuggets of Joy” which have…
And the main page which hosted the project while is ran as a current activity.
I draw during the 11 O’clock service. The pencil and paper help me to explore the familiar surroundings and repeated words.
Perhaps this is similar to taking notes in a lecture theatre, even if the text is available online. Writing helps focus the mind and activate more of the brain to aid retention. For me the drawing is not so that I remember though, it helps me contemplate rather than rationalise. Sometimes I’ll draw a design inspired by the feeling of the moment or the archetecture of worship. At others a phrase from a reading will start me exploring the nature of my experience of the Divinity. It is usually a combination of many things!
This Sunday my drawing was most influenced by the reading from 1 Corinthians ch2 (although I later looked up John ch14 when I started putting my thoughts into words).
The flow of the service seemed to follow the theme of questioning the relationship between ritual acts and righteous living. Even kindness and public displays of charity can conceal support for systematic injustice. Whilst all the right words might be said, the balance of power remains with the privileged. An empty ritual of giving reinforces dependency rather than releasing potential, whether this is through fulfilling basic needs or placing abundance at the service of those who need it – both to restore healthy relationships.
Beneath this flow, my mind was occupied with thinking about the passage from Corinthians and the relationship between the presence of Jesus and that of the Holy Spirit. As Christians we look to Jesus for our example. Did Jesus ascend so that we would need to sense more broadly though? Rather than imitating one human being, we now have to be aware of the Spirit in being human. As pervasive as salt, yeast, light and obvious in her absence in tasteless behaviour, the weight of grinding poverty, and piety which blinds us from the minute to minute reality of what needs to be done.
So my drawing starts with a cross. Radiating from the cross are waves of water, transforming into tongues of fire. Perhaps viewers loose sight of the cross as they gaze on the drawing. For me though, I see the fire of the advocate blazing with anger fueled with an experience of ethical indignation that cannot be satisfied within the status quo. I see the healing waters of the comforter refreshing and bringing peace to those who are weary. The art style comes from stone and the metals of the earth, and perhaps by exposing it to the “open air” in this blog post others will find meanings I haven’t seen yet.
And that perspective shift is why the cross gets smaller and smaller as the drawing develops. The cross in it is not something to look at. It is a place to stand and look out from. The invitation is there to centre yourself in Jesus.
Let the fire of the Holy Spirit bathe you and transform darkness into light.
Let the water of the Holy Spirit bathe you and heal your wounds.
And flow through the food you eat, the drink you drink, and the relationships you live your life in.
How the digital world can help us worship
at 6pm on Sunday the 29th of January we will be gathering in St Johns to use digital technology to worship together, and also explore ways in which access to the digital world can help us live out the Missio Dei, the mission of God.
In the beginning…
One of the first ways I experimented with using the internet as a place to develop ways of being digital church, about sixteen years ago, can be found here https://www.wordsmithcrafts.co.uk/cyberculdee/cyberpilgrim1.html
I was living in a farmhouse without a car and several hours walk outside town, but with broadband I could keep in touch with what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. I just had to switch on my PC and I opened a door to a space where I could learn, pray, and be challenged and inspired. Here is one of the videos from that first pilgrimage into the online world.
The online world has developed considerably since then, and people who were born on the day I made that webpage are now sixteen and adults in Scots law. They have grown up in a world where having an online digital presence is more normal than reading newspapers and where they often communicate with their peers through digital media more frequently than in person.
Can anything good come from the internet?
As people realised that Covid was not something that would be over by Christmas they changed from hunkering down to shelter in a blizzard and started to adapt to prolonged lockdown. For many this opened their eyes to ways in which digital technology could provide ways to overcome the isolation of lockdown, and perhaps grudgingly at first they learned.
It will take a while to understand the impact of those years. This article describes a sequence of adapting to enable people who were isolated by lockdown, extending practices to involve them, and starts to ask questions about how the new normal might disrupt previous assumptions. This one explores similar issues at greater depth and lists some of the challenges to traditional church structures as a result of what was deemed possible and beneficial.
For those comfortable with digital resident behaviour when worshiping lockdown might have been a very positive experience. Prevented from the ability to attend a place they were geographically committed to, they found online spaces to gather and participate with others as Church.
Online spaces like this have existed for a long time, but congregations were swift to adopt video conferencing technology to provide a range of solutions. They used a mixture of interactive gatherings, live transmissions, and pre-recorded liturgies presented at a set time for people to participate in together from their own homes.
St Johns primarily used a combination of webpage and zoom coffee to adapt the 11 O’clock service. As Quartz we used a mixture of online and blended activities, and developed our use of technology to the form you are experiencing today.
A quick taster of what to expect…
Musical worship
We will be using Spotify to sing together. The karaoke setting provides lyrics and a playlist can be pre-selected or made collaborative from the app on peoples smart phones. This is a more social way to use the app than just using it to create a soundscape like the Candlemass one below.
Meditative prayer
Several members of the Quartz team use the “Pray as you Go” app. This is a chance to talk about that.
Intercession
Reading
The SEC gospel reading for the day can be found on the SEC digital calendar which can be viewed on a browser, or downloaded to the calendar app you use on your phone.
Or you could read it in many different translations at Bible Gateway Mark 1:21-28
and if you want to read, and be guided in contemplating the passage, here is something provided by the Jesuits in Ireland
https://www.sacredspace.ie/content/mark-121-28
What do you recommend?
Please bring your ideas, and any examples of ways in which access to the internet has helped you.
Digital Divide
We recognise, and understand, that if you have been working all week in front of a screen you might not want to spend your Sunday evening doing the same! The evening is a chance to meet in person, and converse.
A digital divide exists as well. In Scotland we have a high level of access to digital technology, but lockdown showed that there are rural families who rely on a satellite, and families where all the children needed to share the same device to access school. Please take a moment to look at these projects which work to improve access to appropriate technologies.
Digital Participation in Scotland
https://digitalparticipation.scot/
For further research and thought about this topic
Access to theology and worldwide academic research
To what extent can digital Church be Gods instrument for mission, or will those who engage with the divine online remain a marginalised community? This paper discusses online pilgrimage and some of the issues.
An introduction to another academic paper. I’ve not requested the paper yet, but it sounds interesting!
Categories
Memories
Selected by human rather than algorithm, here is a memory of what was going on in Quartz three or four years ago! I wonder what is quietly germinating in the ground this winter ready to burst out in the next three of four years!
Categories
Christmas Light
Follow this link to find out more!
As Christmas approaches Christians are thinking about the light of Jesus coming into the world. All over the world we will be spending time becoming aware of ways in which this light makes the world a better place to live in.
We invite you join us in this by contemplating the ways in which you bring light into your relationships with the world and those close to you.
We believe that everyone has the potential to be a unique nugget of joy! So your response could be as simple as writing your name. You could also think more deeply and write, draw, or make something to symbolise the ways you uniquely do this.
Take a photo of your response and send it to quartz@wordsmithcrafts.co.uk. We will print and add your contribution to a mirror as part of an installation in St Johns Dumfries. Added to a collection of over 100 mirrors it will catch the light and shimmer for everyone who drops in to experience it.
We will be posting photos and videos of the process online for those who are unable or, would prefer not to, visit the building.
Follow this link to find out more!
It makes me smile when I think that one of the things which early Christians in these isles are remembered for is illuminated manuscripts. The grin gets broader when I compare the ready appreciation of this art with the slowness with which “youthwork for adults” has been accepted in many worshiping communities. The Manga gospels seem to be tolerated to try and ‘hook’ the youth and draw them in, but the acceptance of contemporary arts is slow.
Even in those congregations where the arts are an integral part of Sunday worship this tends to gravitate towards a particular congregation and their niche culture. Something has driven a wedge between the Church and the wider community and this has been driven deeper during my lifetime. To some I suspect this feels like the country (or union of countries!) is slipping away from church control into paganism. To many in my generation however we watch as despite our best efforts the institution seems slow to adapt and to cling to the mindset that underlies colonialism as well as economics that de-humanise people and will consume our environment.
Why is this relevant to the arts? Those who positively identify with the term pagan are often the leaders in environmental action. Back in the 80’s and 90’s they were building car henges. Drawing on the deep prehistoric past to express ethical idignation through contemporary art with the prophetic style of an old testament prophet. Not everyone is called to participate in such works of prophetic art, but has innovation been relegated to youthwork with the false expectation that people will grow out of it when they become adults?
Whilst a wild meadow of flourishing spirituality is blooming in many small gestures of artistic expression outside church meetings, inside we have a culture struggling to come to terms with digital projector screens let alone the theological implications of shifting from a clockwork understanding of spacetime to one which involves quantum uncertainty and the ‘spooky effect’.
So, I grin when someone thinks that a manga gospel is a new idea. They were too little, too late, and inexpertly executed, but a valuable attempt. After all, the shape that the light of the gospel took for centuries before printing presses was in the glorious colours of illuminated manuscripts. Experimenting with the best technology available, to variable levels of achievement. The church can provide #SensingSpirituality and #sensingmeaningfulness but it will need to escape the vice of the recent past to inherit awareness of the dynamic eternal truth. Like all living organisms it will need to seek out and undergo change in order to preserve its substance.
If we can do this in our Christian communities, and can embrace creative acts like the fusion of illumination from the late iron age combined with manga, then we make the way smooth and open new paths for exploration. Not using art functionally as a hook to lure the unwashed in, but as a celebration of the Way flourishing in fields we did not sow. Then perhaps the wedge will disappear, although what our gatherings will look like is unknown. In the C8th monasteries what did they imagine worship would look like now?
More of this artists work can be seen on the Scribal Styles website
Categories
Forest Lanterns
On Sunday the 30th of October 2022 at 6pm we will be gathering in St John’s church building.
The clocks will be changing to mark the end of British Summer time. The Nights are getting longer and darker, and the trees are drawing into themselves, letting go of their fruit and leaves. Seeds are buried and the end becomes the beginning of something new.
We have prepared a large lantern with light shining through fallen leaves and symbols of harvest. This reminds us that the cosmos declares the glory of God. On the evening participants will be invited to take a word or phrase and ‘plant’ it in their own wee lantern as a prayer.
While making these lanterns we will discuss our memories of #SensingSpirituality over the last year. Especially moments experienced during Quartz Forest Church activities. There will be some projected images as reminders!
While the lanterns are drying, ready to take away, we will rake these thoughts and chats together.
To finish, a wee word of warning, this is not an event to wear your Sunday best to. It will involve leaves, glue, and pens.
German visionary, theologian, composer and naturalist. Remembered on Saturday the 17th of September, walked this earth till 1179AD.
Many people will be aware of the date ‘1066’ and the battle of Hastings. It probably feels like a distant, far off and alien place. But in that year, people were born, they harvested crops, baked bread and went about the general business of being human. Some of everyday life would have been very different. The same sun shone on everyone though, and the forces of tide, time and environment that shape life on earth work on a scale which should encourage mystic respect.
It may have been almost a thousand years since Hildegard walked this earth, but she walked the same earth as us. So some of the imagery described in her visions is very easy to relate to today.
Because the beauty of woman radiated and blazed forth in the primordial root, and in her was formed that chamber in which every creature lies hidden. Why is she so resplendent? For two reasons: on the one hand, because she was created by the finger of God and, on the other, because she was endowed with wondrous beauty. O woman, what a splendid being you are! For you have set your foundation in the sun, and have conquered the world.
(…)
Commentary: Themes and Theology
by Nathaniel M. Campbell
Dr Eldridge is reported as saying “Viriditas means literally ‘green truth’, or greening power, which was one of Hildegard’s key philosophical or cosmological ideas,” … “In simple terms, for humans to be healthy and happy, then the natural world needs to be happy and healthy too.”
She explored this in a festival of music, visual arts and readings in 2019 and the article describes how an initial encounter with the music introduced her to Hildegard and led her to explore the life of the abbess much further.
This time of year is also known by some as ‘Mabon’. As such is it one of eight festivals which mark the changing seasons in the “Sacred Wheel of the Year”. These are rooted in an attempt by people to explore connections with the ancient past, and current reality. Some of these festivals have been well researched, and abound with practices supported by a long tradition of practice. Others are perhaps more inspired by romance and a reaction against the grinding brutality of industrialisation, with less concern for factual historical accuracy.
The quote from Hildegard I have used above was written in response to a query about the properness of her dressing her nuns in flowing white, silk veils, their hair bound only by a golden coronet.
What if at this time of harvest instead of wondering what is “proper” we could really seek out that which is “True”? Instead of letting ourselves become the judges of other peoples behaviour, can we loose grip of ourselves enough to become the light which helps people see?
This time of year holds many festivals which all wear different clothes. Some of us will be meeting for Forest Church at 1pm outside the Crichton chapel on September the 16th. Some of us will also be heading out to Allanton peace sanctuary to meet with others and pray for peace.
Kirkcudbright Art and Crafts Trail day 1
We are set up as part of the Wordsmith Crafts encampment, which is in turn part of a group of tents pitched by artisits inspired by heritage.
Some of us have been in Kircudbright frequently recently, helping interpret the Galloway Hoard that was found nearby and exhibited at the Gallery.
This time though we are here as Quartz and contacts we have made through discussions about the intangible heritage that was discovered along with the more obviously shiny silver can be explored further.
When we help people encounter the material evidence left by our ancient ancestors people are often moved by actions that remind them of the shared human experience we have. For example, wrapping a cord round a cross before carefully placing it in the ground. We can imagine many emotions, possible motives, meaningful stories from that one insight. We can rationally discuss which is the most probable, we can also contemplate and enrich our feeling of connection with our past and reaffirm the emotional truth of belonging.
People are not sprung from the ground like mushrooms as a philosopher once supposed. Indeed mushrooms are no longer understood as rootless and there are fascinating books about the vast underground networks in forests that challenge assumptions made about intelligence during the age of reason.
But day one has mostly been setting up. Enjoying the sunshine and encouraging people to use words poetically. These fleeting “word pictures” are being photographed and tagged. They can be discovered online by searching for #SensingSpirituality or @cyberculdee
Our hope is to help build an online library of moments using pictures, poems and more. Then when people search for #SensingSpirituality or #SensingChallenge or any of the other Sensings, they will be linked with other people’s moments.
Here is a gallery of images from the first day though! More will follow.
