Saturday, 17 July 2010

Reflection on Year two in Seminary

I have lately become painfully aware of the transitions that occur in being in seminary. Whilst facilitating at the hermeneutics hui I had the chance to reengage with those from my Diocese. In some respects this was valuable yet it was also painful. Painful in regard to an awareness of the judgements externally of my seminary from those who have little or second hand knowledge of community life and the positive things which are happening. After a year and a half of intentional community building & the pursuit of theological excellence, to receive critical comments from people from home to both my fellow students and to myself, was painful and embarrassing.

There is of course always a cost in leaving the diocese to train at a seminary in transition when others are engaging in a different stream of theological education, however I was exceptionally proud of my fellow St Johns College students, in their leading of worship and pastoral care for those at the hui.

I am aware that there has been a transition in what it means to be a first year seminarian and a second year. Whilst this year I have really stepped up into leadership positions within college, here is also a a second guessing and self criticalness that has crept into my being, that was not so active before. A visit home in part highlights this with friends who have not seen me for some time more accurately able to see the change.

Lunch with a tutor however manages to bring some perspective as she is able to identify that what I am feeling (internally full of doubt, externally confident) is typical for second year students who are constantly under the eyes of Bishops, Deans, examiners, markers and indeed the self, as we strive to step into that new place of being.

It is easy through the day to forget the eyes that watch and yet there is an undercurrent you become aware of in every aspect of life being 'noticed'. It is within worship that I perhaps feel it the most as I become aware of the need to just stop and experience God.

These observations are not bad however, they just remind me of the need to:care for myself, spend more prayer time with God, perhaps make connections with people outside of seminary, get a new spiritual director.

Monday, 28 June 2010

Realignment

The lost as yet unaware of their absence from Grace
see not the path they have strayed from,
nor the deep blue waters beneath which they sink.

Instead an SOS unsent
taps absently out from wayward fingers
the unconscious expression of a muffled intuition.
Come back baby
All is not well
the wise have long left to speak their truths into the earth.

I am aware for perhaps the first time in an age the need for wise counsel removed from the politics of the church, from personal agenda and bias.
The danger of immersing oneself in the smallness of the church community I suppose. And I am aware of at the craziness of a month in which:
15000 words have been written,
exams had,
a four course dinner for Bishops, Archbishops inc ++Katherine Jeffers Schori has been cooked,
meetings attended,
and today begins the facilitating of a group for the hermeutics hui looking at sexuality,
fly to Dunedin Sunday for week long Christology course before two days with family,
mtg with Bishop and back in time for tea and the new semester.

Is it any wonder that in the wee small hours I sit aware of the madness of the church with issues peculating around vying for allegiance. God at this point I choose to keep my counsel unto you, help me in the next few days stand purely in the love of you and your creation.

Wednesday, 31 March 2010

Falling into Easter

I am struck on this day by the how even when feeling somewhat distant and detached from Church, Easter manages to pull me back, immersing me in the eternal passion narrative.
Last week I finished the icons for the chapel at St John’s College. As I have said earlier the process of being so close and immersed at such close quarters with the passion narrative I had felt as though I had been held in a constant state of grief whilst painting these. I had done Easter to death before we even arrived at it!

On Monday evening at evensong I released the icons into the hands of the college. Father Honoré took a blessing service adapted from a Syrian rite where the icons were anointed and blessed with holy water. As I sat in the chapel I was for the first time far enough away from them to really feel the power and impact of them as they were supposed to be viewed, in a church, at home ,in their natural environment.

I wept, not just for the grief of letting go of these icons into others hands, but for the transformation that sat before me.

The pictures you see here of the icons come from the studio where I worked. Hopefully I will have some of them in the chapel to add later.

We have been blessed in Seminary for the last few months to have six brothers from the Melanesian Brotherhood join us and journey with us through Lent and onward through Easter, I had spoken to one of them about icons before, but it was not until the blessing that he really understood what it was I was talking about. I was profoundly moved at the end of the service to have him hold my hand as we looked at the icon and later receive a request to create an icon of his 6 brothers who were martyred in Melanesia several years ago. A previous icon had been painted of the brothers but it sits in Westminster Cathedral far away from the brothers. I was, and indeed remain, deeply touched and in awe of the task of creating an icon where the figures are of those in living memory.

St John’s College continues to be a place of growth and wonderful challenge. The mix of cultures beautifully articulated in a gathering last night. Here a group of Pakeha, Maori, Fijian Melanesia and English students gathered with the Melanesian Brothers to watch a DVD of a passion play that they performed. So we watched a Melanesian passion play, performed in England, watched in New Zealand.
After, we gathered for Tenebrae before stepping out into the night with the moon bright above us.
Blessed be to you all this Easter
Megan

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Well the year has begun in earnest with a five day trip up into the Hokianga staying on the marae to follow the footsteps of the early missionaries here in Aotearoa New Zealand and then into two weeks orientation at college.

We are blessed for the next few months to have 6 of the Melanesian brothers with us at college. Today I had my first singing lesson with them. There complex harmonies are amazing. As a first time singer I of course am easily led astray but it was exhilarating.

Otago University is also new for this year. Although I remain in the seminary in Auckland I am now studying out of Otago.

So study so far looks like...
Contemporary Biblical Criticism
Hinduism and Buddhism
Ministry and Society in 21st Century
Early Christianity
Christology
Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Chaplaincy in Society
Maori.

Phew!

From a teaching perspective two of us begin teaching our first icon class for the year on Sunday. We are already over subscribed with others on a waiting list so it is gratifying.

I think that the fact that we teach it as a threefold venture of:
Prayer
Practical painting techniques
and theology, history and context of icons has been a real selling point.

Later in the term I am taking (as a student) an icon class with a woman who teaches techniques I have not used before so I am very excited.

Anyway, whilst we were away on our marae trip visiting missions, battlefields and marae we were called to write so here are a few poems from that. For those of you wondering about the snoring when you stay on a marae you sleep in the meeting house mattress next to mattress, snorer next to snorer.

No history highlight -swimming up a river chasing flounder into nets and eating them fresh for breakfast. And playing cards with the elders at night.

Someone to Watch Over Me

Tonight I don’t mind your snoring,
on the edge of sleep low feline rumblings
speak to me of comfort.
Of uncles long past,
of brothers lost,
and grandfathers
- once far away,
returned.

Together they remind me
that for tonight,
I am not alone.

Tonight I am surrounded by noisy ancestors
snoring up the rafters.



On Intoducing Oneself to New Waters
My Father told me
to understand a place
I must bury my hands in the earth,
speak without fear to the birds of the night,
and plainly with the birds of the day.

That in introducing myself to new waters
I would enter a courtship temperate,
with foreign oceans inclined towards possession,
- courting water is always delicate.

When overtures gentle,
to tides and eddies,
shallow and deep waters alike are complete,
only then may I advance tenderly...

Knee deep,
thigh high,
waiting,
for that moment delicious...

When...
permission given,
I may fall over into waters new
and be baptised once more
in a salty sway.

In water negotiations at least,
there is always more than one baptism.



Tuesday, 19 January 2010

In the Midst of an Icon Project

Okay so 4am has become 5am as God and I listen to the noises strangely overlooked by the day. I am aware of being in a timeless place at the moment. As I enter the half way point in this icon creation project I am aware that it has happened before this feeling, on one level I experience an intense detachment from the mundane business of the world and yet on another an intense awareness of it's pain and suffering. For the few weeks as I have engaged in this icon project I have found myself bathing in deep gentle grief. When I am not looking at it as I paint I am compelled to immerse myself in it in my time away.

This manifests in odd ways like a current obsession with watching Grays Anatomy, so far I think I am up to programme 35 or heaven forbid extreme makeover. There is something about watching something where I can have a good cry, be it for joy and gratitude or another poignant death in a medical drama which acts almost as a pressure valve.

Each day to look into the face of a grieving Mary, her crippled hands empty as I paint her, has been a challenge. As I wait for the gold leaf to set I have begun my second icon in the series for the St Johns Chapel which is a lamentation. Jesus, dead, is pulled right up into the lap of his grieving Mother, John holds his hand tenderly and Mary Magdalene holds his feet.

Although I am not sure if it will be ready for Easter, I am determined to engage in a third icon of the Resurrection after these two. Then I think I will be released to paint anew. It will be interesting to engage in Easter this year as I would have to say in this project so far I feel as if I have engaged in it already.

On a late night (Megan is in one of her weird spaces) side note, the Holy Water I keep in the icon room evaporated the other day. It felt good to think that I and all who have painted over the last while have at some level been breathing the Holy Water in.

Maybe now I shall attempt some sleep and then comeback and edit this so that it becomes something more than the incomprehensible ramblings of a sleep deprived artist in the midst of prayer.

Blessings to you and yours

Megan

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

Immersing myself in icons

For the last week I have been slowly immersing myself in my latest icon project. The project is a series of icons for St Johns College Chapel for Easter. Basically they will fit into a candelabra in a triangular space. The first is a grieving Mary, the second a lamentation and hopefully a Resurrection. Such projects have a way of raising me up and throwing me to my knees.
I had thought I had, after some time immersed in the agony of the Marion icon for Good Friday, nearly finished. However with the gilding I have come undone.

One of the down sides of living in Auckland is having to adjust to how the tropical climate interacts with both the God leaf and the size. As such I am about to go and for the second time sand of the Gold and begin again.
People are saying just leave it who will care?

Yet I know I will, and indeed more importantly that this is a holy task, that Mary deserves more than to be hurried over to get to the next steps. In the end I know I need to ignore those voices and concentrate on doing what I am lead to do with this icon.

Yesterday in preparation for an intensive painting time Father Honore' took a commissioning Eucharist for me in the chapel. It was a true gift. The exorcising of salt and water, the consecration of Holy water was all a real blessing. Now a bowl of the Holy water sits in the icon room for all who enter.

At moments such as this when I have opened myself up to be commissioned and set aside for this act I am aware in part of separating out again from the world, and stepping into a kairos time.

At present the gilding or re gilding of Mary is just another part of that process, of stripping myself of the once over lightly attitude of the world.

I know that I just have to stop struggling and let myself sink beneath the waters.
Thanks be to God

Meg in the sea