Green things

What is Viv up to when there is no blog for ages? Is she not having any thoughts? Far from it, dear reader; the problem is more likely to be that she is having far too many, and has had to go and lie down. Today, I went to a private viewing of a new exhibition at the Ropewalk in Barton: http://www.the-ropewalk.co.uk/tony-bellars-self-portrait-with-flowers/ and was so excited by what I saw, that I had to get out on the bike for the afternoon to calm myself down. Tony Bellars does things with bits of wood and wire, and...well, you'll have to look, and chase up his work to see what I mean.

Homeward bound, looking forward to my bath after the hailstorm.

After the ride over the bridge, home and into the bath with some wine and a theology book, John Rogerson's Theology of the Old Testament since I will be going to his lecture on Wednesday 25th April at the opening of Sheffield University's biblical studies department's 65th anniversary celebrations. See http://www.shef.ac.uk/biblicalstudies/news/65years If I can possibly read the whole of this book, I stand a chance of being able to feel that I might be able to sound as though I did once study theology in the normal way. I've had the book a while, but you know, every book has its time, and I think this book is for me now. Being excitable, I found the first few pages, well, exciting, because my former teacher - always my teacher in fact - writes not with a sidelong glance at what the OT might be for us now, but with that aspect fully integrated into the aims of writing the book in the first place. I look forward to reading his matured and distilled thoughts after his distinguished lifetime of study. I'm interested in the idea of the 'hot' and the 'cold' narrative that he speaks of. Chronicles is a 'cold' narrative, because it stresses continuity with the past, support for the status quo; the Deuteronomistic history is 'hot' in describing events with a view to challenging readers to look critically at their situation with a view to making changes and improvements. I must look at anything I read with this distinction in mind; I know I often want to read something that is both cold and hot - cold in confirming me in beliefs I already hold, but hot in that those beliefs often involve hoping that change will happen in ways I support - towards a more environmentally wholesome society, for example; life is complicated! As part of his preparation John Rogerson says he 'spent three months at the end of 1994 in  Göttingen
reading all the Old Testament theologies that I could find that had been published in German in the nineteenth century.' Oooh dearrrrrrrr - I hope he will not be disappointed in his student and what I have tried to do with my life since I sat at his feet in a literal-ish sense.

And now for some Viv-ish expression of theology, here Psalm 104, which is almost finished. Just a snippet of it, incomplete, but this is the Shape that is meant to evoke the Almighty 'clothed in light', and somehow I feel it succeeds; at any rate, I didn't feel the need to pull it out, which is all I ask. Shapes have meaning, don't they? And this one has both male and female attributes - female in looking graceful and balancing on a pointy bit, and male in being wider at the top like the male torso. The rainbow colours are meant to suggest light split into its component parts. But there was also a bit of a thought in the back of my mind that just wouldn't go away, as the shape seemed to want to move and it stirred a memory of a kind that prevents me ever taking my stuff too seriously, and if you have a moment, do look at this (notice too a woman in the media who has not been surgically enhanced; not too sure about the chaps): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vur_Mg1yffg

The background to the whole embroidery is a green crocheted mesh, and no longer looks like what you see above as it is ALL covered up now (see left), but is still there as a kind of symbolic support network underlying all, and it peeps out here and there. And to the right of the Shape, you can see a stream of blue water, actually it is like a ring of water, constantly flowing round in a self-contained system, which is a support-network-within-a-support-network, which is what the psalm is all about - creation and its interlinked support networks, which we spoil at our peril.


I did a Humber pic above - few blogs escape this - but what about something from the Peak District where we went a week or so ago? The green thing is a puddle encountered in a walk out of Eyam - yes yes yes, I have messed with it a little, something I rarely do and always tell you if I have; and another pic, (this one cosmetically un-enhanced, like myself so far) that was green to start with, of part of the view across the valley from our holiday home. Greenish anyway, but by comparison with that fake green puddle, it may seem less so.

Dear reader, I am too tired now to remember why I included these pictures, so I hope you enjoy them. It could be I put them here because they are green; minds make strange connections, don't they, especially when tired. I'm going to bed, with my theology book, and also hoping that in my sleep I can come up with some ways to evoke Psalm 133 and its dew that turns into streams. I have a wonderful memory of a spring gushing forth from a Yorkshire moorside of about 50 years ago that has lit up my life ever since with its gleaming emerald crystal-clear-water-over-moss-and-lichens, much like that puddle above in fact, and this will be my guiding light in the next piece.