In the last week or so I've travelled north - first north of the river (I've discovered since moving to London that if you travel north of the river it's like you've travelled to a foreign land - it does take forever to get there....) and then north up the M1 to the places I feel most at home as I spend some time with my family. As I left the M25 after the forever drive round half of it and drove onto the M1 the clouds parted and the sun came out - the great escape from the south accompanied by a party in the skies.
My two trips north have involved two encounters with insects. Not the 'get in your hair, don't bite me, stop buzzing' types of insects, but big metal insects, formed and crafted into sculptures that sit above the landscape around. I'll start with the second because I want to talk more about the first.
Yesterday we went to a free exhibition at Chatsworth House (I've only ever been to the free things at Chatsworth) called The Radical Horizons: Art of Burning Man at Chatsworth. Large sculptures scatter the landscape outside of the main Chatsworth House - they look to celebrate creativity and collaboration as part of the exhibition which is formed of sculptures first exhibited as part of the burning man festival in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, US. They aim to bring the unique creativity and possibility of the festival to the landscape around Chatsworth.
One of the sculptures was le Attracta - about the embodiment of what one is attracted to. Rather than just being attracted to heat and light, the sculpture is designed so that the moths embrace fire - they become it rather than be consumed by it (I guess unlike like one of those moth catchers that fizzle them to smithereens they come alive in the fire). Unfortunately the fire part of the sculpture wasn't working or in action as we saw it yesterday, but the magnificence of the sculpture was clear and its design and concept was still fascinating without the fire. You could sit beneath the insects and participate in the attraction to the source of light and heat in the middle of the it.
The beautiful thing about these sculptures is that they just sit there in the middle of the grounds of the house. Sheep and lambs play on them, deer gather in a congregation not far away. I'd imagine at night there would be moths flying round the giant moths and the sculpture, even without the fire, might come alive. There is something in the concept of the moths becoming all that they are attracted to I quite like - the concept of being, of embracing and not being consumed - it's something I can buy into. However, when you experience a sculpture in a place like Chatsworth, there is a connection that you can never have, you can't completely embrace the story of the sculpture because of where it is - it's only here for a period of time and it it's there to visit, not to dwell.
The sculpture I saw north of the river was in the community garden in Bonny Downs in East Ham. I went to visit Bonny Downs Baptist Church to experience the work they are doing in that community through Bonny Downs Community Association and the way in which they embrace worship and discipleship within the intertwining of church and community - blurry church is the words we used - words I'm still chewing on, but the sculpture is part of that. I think it's a beetle..... (correct me if I'm wrong).
You might say that the sculpture has the same values as the one in Chatsworth. It's creative and it's beautiful. It doesn't light up (but it is near a fire pit). it's in the community garden which is part of the home of the church (where they meet for worship in the summer) and rather than set out to be simply a sculpture that points to something, it embodies all that it is made to represent. Made out of knives seized by the police in the local area, it is a physical embodiment of turning swords into ploughshares or death into life. You can hear their senior minister, Sally, tell its story here (I'd recommend you watch if you have time).
The beautiful thing about this sculpture is that it just sits there in the garden as part of garden life. Insects make their homes in it. There are no sheep or lambs or deer, but there are people and soon to be chickens and every day life is around. I love that it embodies the values of all the church and community association is called to be - transformational, peace makers, bringers of hope, justice fighters, changemakers, full of abundant love.....
What makes it so much different from the sculpture in Chatsworth is that the connection to where it is is clear. You can completely embrace the story of the sculpture - you can get up close and personal and if you are from that community or a community similar to it, you can see the embodiment of the values that burst out of it in those who came together to create it and tell its changemaking story.
That sculpture stands in the middle of the community garden where the church meets for worship, created as part of a community project of which the church led and were part of, that declares the good news that things can be transformed. From the values of the community, from the desire for common good, the gospel of Jesus Christ, who brings life in all its fulness sings out. There is hope, things can change, there is so much more. In its prophetic action, there is an ongoing legacy that speaks love abundantly and where new beginnings become possible. The good news is here in this neighbourhood.
We're not just visitors when it comes to embodying all the values of the gospel we are attracted to - the love and the hope and the grace and the justice, the mercy, the restoration, the transformation, the new life, but those values are something in which we are all called to embody in the places that we live and in the communities to which we are called to dwell.
"....they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore" - Isaiah 2:4
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