Some people like to take chunks of the Bible out of context and then use them to judge, manipulate or frighten others.
Better just to know that in through and beyond all things you are precious and loved, no matter who you are, what you have done, or not done, or the nature or lack of any belief you might hold.
I was reflecting on creation and climate change, global warming. Tablet art enabled me to produce fiery images.
This would not be impossible with watercolour but here I was able to swirl colour together. If anything went wrong I had the facility to erase and correct. With watercolour this is more difficult. In the first image I went to Genesis 1 for inspiration the image of the earth ‘without form and void’. Science, cosmology, art and the Bible enabled me to envisage creation as a conflagration, a ‘big bang’, with interrelated matter and energy being brought into being. But then, on reflection, planets condense to spherical, or near spherical, form and so the first image is that swirling orb, formless but seeking an equilibrium and at the centre of the void will be Earth…or…
Without form and void…
As scripture unfolds, epiphanies, revelations of the divine, ‘the Other’, are described. They take many forms. One such narrative again brings together matter and energy in an enigmatic spectacle with no matter being consumed within an evanescent fiery, burning bush. ‘The Other’ has no name, utters no words, yet converts, forms and inspires humanity to action.
The colour palette of the creation image was retained for a burning bush. The flaming fire was ‘painted first’. Different tools allow the colours to merge in a variety of ways. The merge can be smooth, watery, bubbled or perhaps rough edged. The bush was then lined in over the fire and the ground finished last.
Beyond the life of Christ, through incarnation and resurrection there is further revelation of the nature of God. Pentecost offers that image of fire again, with its contradictory character of energy, warmth and destruction, yet power and inspiration.
The fire was, again, painted first. The black, square blocks were formed using a template like a page frame but then filled using a fill tool that you may be familiar with in photo-editing software. The sky was similarly filled in, as it had been in the burning bush image. Subconsciously the colour I had chosen for this was very much reminiscent of some of David Hockney’s choice of pigments.
In the same way that scriptural and human inspiration interact in forming the images, paradoxically for humanity, that same divine presence of fire in creation and revelation offers humanity the capacity for self-destruction as global warming engulfs what might have been the ‘City of God’.
And is this the anticipated end of humanity? ‘Ashes to Ashes’? And is this the end, not just of each of us individually, but of all creation? Humanity’s knowledge, grasping the divine gift obliterates humanity itself while creation collapses back into the void from whence it came…
For the final image I used a copy tool to take the first image. I then used a sandpaper tool to scuff and scrape at the ‘surface’ of the image. I darkened it, mixing and merging colour to suggest, not just our planet, but creation returning to void and chaotic darkness.
Ashes to ashes…
Text and images © Andrew Pratt 2022 adapted from ArtServe Magazine Issue 33 Summer 2022
Beyond where light can image,
can infra-red probe truth:
dark matter that might harbour
what set creation loose,
where human senses lead us,
through all they analyse,
from arrogance to wonder,
to spiritual surprise?
But senses have their limits:
unanswered yet there lies
the single, deepest question
our intellect supplies.
Yet faith can proffer insight:
the Christ of time and space
speaks of a God incarnate
born in a squalid place.
Alive within our compass,
upon this ravaged earth,
the God of cosmic question
surprised us once in birth!
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) (amended 2019 & 2022 by author)
Originally The God of cosmic question
© 1991, alt 2022 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, http://www.stainer.co.uk.
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
The parable of the Good Samaritan points us to an unexpected neighbour (Luke 10:25-37). Elsewhere Jesus explains that whenever we greet the least of our neigbours we welcome him. And what if instead of seeing the Samaritan as the model of Jesus we turn the parable around…that it is Jesus in the person of the one left injured? It is not just angels that we entertain unawares…
1 Anonymous you come among the nations,
outside the door of synagogue or church,
and what you say will shake the world’s foundations,
will make the sinner sing, the righteous lurch.
2 You come with grace, not seeking any favours,
except a cup of water for your thirst,
and those dismissing you with other ravers
will find that they are last and others first.
3 The ones who offer you a share of shelter,
or visit you when you are locked inside,
who pause a moment on life’s helter-skelter,
will be rewarded for their lack of pride.
4 The ones who care, not simply for your beauty,
who hold you in the sickness of your age,
who walk with you beyond the call of duty
are ones who share the true Messiah’s stage.
5 ‘You clothed me in my nakedness and squalor’,
said Christ to those who fully understood
that love cannot equate with pound or dollar,
is found in acts of simply doing good.
Andrew Pratt, Words © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, http://www.stainer.co.uk.
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Metre: 11 10 11 10
Tune: INTERCESSOR
1 The prophet saw a plumb line simply hanging to sign God's love amid the sons of men, then, with the women, everyone is singing that God will never turn away again. 2 Yet Amos blew the whistle on God's people, a prophet in a time of greed and need, self-righteousness as high as any steeple, spoke of abandonment of law and creed. 3 The powers that be would have him leave the country, yet Amos stood as firm as any rock, the words that he had spoken, quietly, humbly, had power to break the proud, to shake and shock. 4 The judgment was quite plain, for God had spoken, a time for present challenge and for choice; and as words echo through a world still broken, we hesitate to praise or to rejoice. Andrew Pratt, Words © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, http://www.stainer.co.uk. Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd. Metre: 11 10 11 10 Tune: INTERCESSOR Used By Permission. CCL Licence No. 0000 Copied from HymnQuest: Copyright Licence Users' Edition HymnQuest ID: 14320 CCLI#: null
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