Orange things

Flames, raw materials

Flames in situ

The great thing about the Golden Year - my name for this year when I have to produce ten things to exhibit in Southwark cathedral's teashop - is the time I can give to experimenting. I'm really quite pleased with this little patch of colour on my Psalm 104 piece, which is meant to represent flames, but perhaps that was obvious - it probably doesn't look like marmalade in its final form, though I do wonder just how much I will need to 'explain' and how much is best left for discovery by the viewer - that's a perennial problematic thought. But these flames took shape from the basic dyed but unfelted wool shown here, and made the day at the Ropewalk http://www.the-ropewalk.co.uk/learning to do this worthwhile.

I'm a total colour junkie, so it's just as well the psalms are written in technicoloured language. I was trying to persuade a secular artistic person of their glories yesterday - I might even have said 'The psalms are not religious! Not all, anyway!' and I think I almost believe this, on some definitions of 'religious'. There seems to be more allergy to religion out there now than I have ever known and we church-going folk can be jumpy, and so I find myself defending myself from any possibility that I might be thought a 'religious maniac' as we used to call them; now we say things like 'fundamentalist'. Thankfully these flames are meant to be those of God's messsengers/ministers, though there are others at the bottom of the piece that are more destructive in the text of Psalm 104. I don't want these things editing out, as they do rather add something..... colour for a start, and we 'religious' people don't do everything that's recommended in the Bible after all.

But back to this word 'religious'; there are quite a few people who like to say they are 'spiritual but not religious', because 'religious' has become the thing not to be, (though I like to think this idea and the language expressing it might be getting a bit tired). I like to say I'm 'religious but not spiritual', because 'spiritual' smacks to me too much of dream catchers, crystals, Tibetan prayer wheels, runes, Andean flutes etc (I am indebted to Davidson & Milbank's 'For the Parish: A critique of Fresh Expressions' p.112 for this list. See For the Parish.), the kind of situation where (Davidson & Milbank cont'd) 'religion has become indistinguishable from interior decorating'.

Getting into a bit of muddle, you think! Is she/isn't she/the psalms religious? It all depends what the opposite is in the conversation of the moment. So I'm happy to be 'religious but not spiritual', and I actually like the C of E equivalents to joss sticks etc - which could be scones with home-made jam, perhaps - but when I said 'the psalms are not religious' I'm trying to say in a shorthand and populist way that they are not pushing full-blown dogmatic systems in the way that fundmentalist Christians or some RC bishops might do.

For a discussion of 'spiritual but not religious', see  http://haligweorc.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/spiritual-but-not/ where the term is shown to cover a multitude of different positions.

There aren't enough pictures here now, so let's find one..... part of my rendition of 'Daisies are our silver'. When I used to sing that, school was the only place I got to partake in religion, and it interested me, (along with fairies I readily admit). Hymns like that made me feel that religion was a kindly thing that made all kinds of aspects of life better.... that the world was made by God and to be enjoyed, savoured and cherished.... that it was good to be satisfied with simple things.... would that it were always so.