Posted Friday 1 October 2010
I have just come back from a week’s retreat with some of our clergy at Millport. The Cathedral and College there are places I have loved since I came to know them during my time as Rector of St Columba’s, Largs in the 1990s.
It was a time of good worship, deepening silence, rest, reading and prayer. But what I will always remember this particular retreat for is what the conductor required us to do. He made us really stop and really look at a huge range of paintings and other art from the early Christian centuries right into our own 21st century - crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, Trinity, Christ in modern art, all were brought before us. He invited us to pay careful attention to the works with a view to discovering what the artists were trying to get us to see about the matter in hand and how they were trying to engage us, to draw us in. In effect, he helped us to make space for the artists and their work to impinge on us and lead us more deeply into the mysteries of faith.
This was at times hard work, but all the better for that. It felt, for me, like one aspect of the call to humility, if by humility you understand giving someone else space to be, paying attention to them and allowing yourself to be open to them. In this way it also became, for me, a kind of parable, maybe even a sacrament, of something at the core of the Christian life - giving God space to be God to us as God has given us space to be ourselves.
And that, of course, is what a retreat is for - this one was a very precious gift indeed.
+Gregor
Category: Thought for the Month
