WATERCOLOUR
Tate Britain
16 February–21 August 2011
Admission £12.70; concessions £10.90
CALL AN exhibition ‘Watercolour’ and what do you expect? On the one side a tribe which nowadays wears comfortable clothes, peers over its glasses at very close range to the pictures and loudly imparts snippets of wisdom garnered from NADFAS. And ranged on the other side behind the show’s slack but modish title you have another tribe which wants to annoy, goad and otherwise provoke its clientele.
So no surprises that ‘Watercolour’ is yet another exhibition which challenges the viewer. To do this it includes an acrylic. It doesn’t go for chronological display, except in the first two rooms which are pretty much a canter through the early years before the end of the eighteenth century. And it puts modern names up against the old masters. This both entertains and proves Qoheleth was wrong – the old is sometimes vastly superior to the modern, at least when it comes to Tracey Emin and J.M.W. Turner.
Of course Turner is the star of the show. Copies of his sketches by a leading colourist of today are set beside the originals to demonstrate just how hard it is to copy Turner. His Blue Rigi stands out in a room of landscapes. In the final room we see some of his most abstract sketches. These are the finest pictures on display because they work most successfully with the medium. They can usually be seen for nothing so you might not want to fork out for them, but they are easy to study here because they come in the last room and they lack detail.
By contrast the carefully detailed Turners made for public exhibition might have brought in the money and are still very popular today but they lack the sympathy with the medium which the sketchbooks show.
How to use watercolour is a real problem. Why that might be is suggested in the opening room where the medium is traced back to its roots in manuscript illumination, the miniature and cartography. Illumination and the miniature used all sorts of peculiar materials, including oils and inks, and oil and ink achieve different effects from water-based paint. Is it possible that the watercolour is too often made to try to do something better suited to another medium?
And then in a section of implements for the task what becomes very clear is how easy it is for the amateur to do watercolours compared to, say, oils. For one, it’s a lot less messy. And so we have a fully worked up piece by Sargent, Miss Eliza Wedgwood and Miss Sargent Sketching, to show watercolour as the medium of choice for the middle-class amateur.
To be fair to the two misses the rot seems to have set in early with Sir Antony van Dyke, a couple of whose sketches are composed of the dull greys and greens and browns which were to be such a staple of the medium. All in all, it’s no wonder the watercolour has a rather dowdy reputation.
Some artists see this clearly and there are attempts to bring brightness and vitality to Venetian townscapes (and these are successful attempts, too, beside some of the Canalettos and Gaudis recently on display at the National Gallery). Then there is the iridescence of Samuel Palmer and the Pre-Raphaelites. Others managed to work with the medium’s capacity for precise observation.
There are excellent botanical and zoological pictures. Most powerfully of all there are the pictures of wounded soldiers, one with a sabre wound received at Waterloo, others showing wounds from the First World War. These pictures are designed to be a record for doctors to look at. They are very moving to the extent that the works hung beside them by important war artists like Paul Nash, though more artful, fall short in comparison.
And then there are imaginative works which lift the medium even in the most routine subjects. The wonderful Romantic and Gothic works of Girtin and Cotman, with their cloudy castle ruins and ecclesiastical doorways, draw in the viewer, as in a different way does Blake’s visionary art. Unfortunately the room marked out for the interior life – and since we are dealing with artists this focuses on the erotic – suggests once again the medium’s limits, even when it features the work of the well-known Englishman, Victor Hugo. Much happier are the English (and Welsh) pastorals of hills and valleys and waterfalls. In the wrong hands they are too cosy but with Girtin or Ravilious they speak to something of the national sensibility before the Kentish hopfields were ploughed under, defeated by cheap Polish imports.
But in the end it is Turner and his sketches which show what watercolour can do. The wetness – watercolour is a wet medium – is ideal for sea and cloud. It takes a bit of skill to suggest light as well, but all the strengths of the medium, its lack of pretension, its speed, its closeness to nature, are found in Turner’s private sketches. That is the key to the watercolour and one which this show reveals, just.
Owen Higgs
KJB: THE BOOK THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
Director: Norman Stone
1A Productions
PAL running time: 90 mins
£12.99
1A PRODUCTIONS and director Norman Stone contribute this enjoyable docudrama to the four-hundredth anniversary celebrations of the Authorized Version. John Rhys Davies (Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones) narrates the story of the translation of the King James Version and the background to it, visiting key locations in Scotland, Oxford and London along the way. This is interspersed with dramatic representations of the central events in the history of the KJV, which are on the whole well acted and make for enjoyable viewing, although scenes and dialogue can seem sometimes to stray into the realm of melodrama. Likewise, Rhys Davies is for the most part an excellent and engaging guide; however, his script is occasionally overwrought and sensationalist: the Authorized Version is at one point described as ‘all-encompassingly great’, and the line, ‘the bishops went ballistic’ also seems to stand in rather too enthusiastic an idiom. Although accessible to a general audience, KJB: the Book that Changed the World in places tries too hard to relate the happenings of the seventeenth century to our contemporary situation, with the Gunpowder Plot introduced as the plotters’ ‘very own 9/11’, and the forerunners of the King James Version of the Bible termed ‘not fit for purpose.’ The academic integrity of this film is maintained through contributions from a cast of eminent ecclesiastical historians during the documentary segments. In many ways this would be an excellent resource for schools in teaching the history of this period. The dramatic reconstructions are visually appealing, and accurate in most details, although one unconvincing tableau shows Mary, Queen of Scots attended in chapel by a Catholic priest in chimere, rochet and Canterbury cap, the sum of whose liturgical action is to swing a thurible in her approximate direction.
The theological issues raised by the translation are dealt with relatively well: James’ desire for unity within the Church of England, and his high theology of the monarchy, are competently treated. However, although the film bills itself as the ‘amazing tale of the birth of the King James Bible’, it focuses very little on the actual process of translation, and would better be described as a historical overview of James’ reign and its immediate prehistory. The theological significance of the Authorized Version is downplayed in favour of its literary merit – ‘a masterpiece of language’.
In all, despite occasionally laboured dialogue and hammy performances (by both the dramatic actors and John Rhys-Davies), KJB is a pleasing review of the church history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and ought to prove a valuable resource in educating the general public, and especially young people, about this seminal document and period in Anglican identity.
Richard Norman
THE WORD REVEALED
A Festival Service to Commemorate the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible Edited by Peter Moger
and Charles Taylor RSCM, pbk
978 0854021840, £7.95
ST HELEN, St Botolph and Moscow are three subjects one would not necessarily logically group together. Except of course – and the learned of you will have spotted this already – in a hymn book. They all appear in the Royal School of Church Music’s latest publication, The Word Revealed.
Commissioned by the King James Bible Trust, this hundred page ‘festival service’ is a new, sensitive and welcome contribution to Anglican liturgy. And it doesn’t stop at hymn tunes either.
The Word Revealed sets out a liturgical framework for a service celebrating the KJV. At the centre of the liturgy is a role play that describes the evolution of the Bible, from the early Church right through to modern day versions. Each ‘episode’ begins with a role play (requiring two readers) followed by a Bible reading, a ‘musical reflection,’ a prayer and a hymn. From a liturgical perspective, one might say this is not unlike the order of service for the traditional Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
As well as selecting appropriate readings, the editors have collated a fine selection of music. Eleven hymns are included and they mix the old and familiar with the new. The only unease in the selection is the odd occasion where a more modern text is used for a tune associated with a different text (most strikingly the tune St Helen set to ‘Thanks to God whose Word was Spoken’ feels awkward away from its more familiar association with ‘Lord Enthroned in Heavenly Splendour’). Congregational musical moments are not limited to Anglican sounds, with a contribution from the Taizé community, and two songs fit for churches where an organ might not be available.
Pleasingly, the choir anthems (largely in four parts, with frequent unison moments) contain a spread of music from Handel and Mendelssohn to the twenty-first century, and should be accessible to most parish church choirs. The most famous use of the KJV in music is represented in the inclusion of a chorus from Handel’s Messiah, whilst the inclusion of Adrian Batten’s O Praise the Lord is symbolic, as Batten would have been twenty years old in 1611. There are three contemporary compositions too. Notable amongst the three, Thomas Hewitt Jones’s entertaining ‘Lead Me Lord’ does not miss a chance for a modulation or two, and what must be
Christian Stobbs
Juliet David, illustrated by Jo Parry Candle Books (Lion Hudson), 400pp, hbk, £11.99
==============================================================
KJB: THE BOOK
THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
Director: Norman Stone
1A Productions
PAL running time: 90 mins
£12.99
1A PRODUCTIONS and director Norman Stone contribute this enjoyable docudrama to the four-hundredth anniversary celebrations of the Authorized Version. John Rhys Davies (Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones) narrates the story of the translation of the King James Version and the background to it, visiting key locations in Scotland, Oxford and London along the way. This is interspersed with dramatic representations of the central events in the history of the KJV, which are on the whole well acted and make for enjoyable viewing, although scenes and dialogue can seem sometimes to stray into the realm of melodrama. Likewise, Rhys Davies is for the most part an excellent and engaging guide; however, his script is occasionally overwrought and sensationalist: the Authorized Version is at one point described as ‘all-encompassingly great’, and the line, ‘the bishops went ballistic’ also seems to stand in rather too enthusiastic an idiom. Although accessible to a general audience, KJB: the Book that Changed the World in places tries too hard to relate the happenings of the seventeenth century to our contemporary situation, with the Gunpowder Plot introduced as the plotters’ ‘very own 9/11’, and the forerunners of the King James Version of the Bible termed ‘not fit for purpose.’ The academic integrity of this film is maintained through contributions from a cast of eminent ecclesiastical historians during the documentary segments. In many ways this would be an excellent resource for schools in teaching the history of this period. The dramatic reconstructions are visually appealing, and accurate in most details, although one unconvincing tableau shows Mary, Queen of Scots attended in chapel by a Catholic priest
in chimere, rochet and Canterbury cap, the sum of whose liturgical action is to swing a thurible in her approximate direction.
The theological issues raised by the translation are dealt with relatively well: James’ desire for unity within the Church of England, and his high theology of the monarchy, are
competently treated.
However, although
the film bills itself as the ‘amazing tale of the birth of the King James Bible’, it focuses very little on the actual process of translation, and would better be described as a historical overview of James’ reign and its immediate prehistory. The theological significance of the Authorized Version is downplayed in favour of its literary merit – ‘a masterpiece of language’.
In all, despite occasionally laboured dialogue and hammy performances (by both the dramatic actors and John Rhys-Davies), KJB is a pleasing review of the church history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and ought to prove a valuable resource in educating the general public, and especially young people, about this seminal document and period in Anglican identity.
Richard Norman
THE WORD REVEALED
A Festival Service to Commemorate the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible Edited by Peter Moger and Charles Taylor RSCM, pbk
978 0854021840, £7.95
ST HELEN, St Botolph and Moscow are three subjects one would not necessarily logically group together. Except of course – and the learned of you will have spotted this already – in a hymn book. They all appear in the Royal School of Church Music’s latest publication, The Word Revealed.
Commissioned by the King James Bible Trust, this hundred page ‘festival service’ is a new, sensitive and welcome contribution to Anglican liturgy. And it doesn’t stop at hymn tunes either.
The Word Revealed sets out a liturgical framework for a service celebrating the KJV. At the centre of the liturgy is a role play that describes the evolution of the Bible, from the early Church right through to modern day versions. Each ‘episode’ begins with a role play (requiring two readers) followed by a Bible reading, a ‘musical reflection,’ a prayer and a hymn. From a liturgical perspective, one might say this is not unlike the order of service for the traditional Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
As well as selecting appropriate readings, the editors have collated a fine selection of music. Eleven hymns are included and they mix the old and familiar with the new. The only unease in the selection is the odd occasion where a more modern text is used for a tune associated with a different text (most strikingly the tune St Helen set to ‘Thanks to God whose Word was Spoken’ feels awkward away from its more familiar association with ‘Lord Enthroned in Heavenly Splendour’). Congregational musical moments are not limited to Anglican sounds, with a contribution from the Taizé community, and two songs fit for churches where an organ might not be available.
Pleasingly, the choir anthems (largely in four parts, with frequent unison moments) contain a spread of music from Handel and Mendelssohn to the twenty-first century, and should be accessible to most parish church choirs. The most famous use of the KJV in music is represented in the inclusion of a chorus from Handel’s Messiah, whilst the inclusion of Adrian Batten’s O Praise the Lord is symbolic, as Batten would have been twenty years old in 1611. There are three contemporary compositions too. Notable amongst the three, Thomas Hewitt Jones’s entertaining ‘Lead Me Lord’ does not miss a chance for a modulation or two, and what must be a musical first in the use of the tempo marking ‘Hopeful’. Written for three voice parts – soprano, alto and men – it also subtly recognizes the gender imbalance prevalent in all too many Church choirs. The RS CM’s continuing work, and in particular this musical contribution to the anniversary year, should be commended.
Christian Stobbs
NOBODY’S CHILD
A Unique Glimpse into the Sounds of Zimbabwe Today
Available from Mirfield Publications or from Fr Nicolas Stebbing c~
at
THIS BEAUTIFUL CD, performed by and sold in aid of the orphans of the Shearly Cripps Children’s Home and the Tariro Tabarana Youth Group in Zimbabwe, offers forty-five minutes of beautiful African hymn-singing. Most of the hymns are in fact well-known English favourites (‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, ‘O Jesus I Have Promised’) sung to unfamiliar (but powerful and very catchy) tunes and sung in Shona, with one hymn in KiRwandan and one in English.
The sudden emergence of English in the middle of the CD – in the hymn ‘O Lord my God’ – comes as a surprise, not least because everything else about the track sounds completely at one with the rest of the album: the pulsating rhythms, the beautiful voices, and the stunning harmony are common to this track and all the rest.
There is also a rousing rendition of an ‘Anglican’ Gloria, which is presumably used liturgically there. The album was produced in Harare; for those of us who know that place primarily through news reports of the suppression, violence and poverty there, the quality of the recording will come as a wonderful surprise. Indeed, the whole album bursts with a vitality and an enthusiasm which should put many Western Christians to shame: but then one suspects that that is true of the Zimbabwean Church as a whole.
Peter Westfield
THE HOLY BIBLE
Quatercentenary Edition
Introduction by Gordon Campbell Oxford University Press, 1552pp, hbk 978 0199557608, £50.00
THIS 400TH anniversary edition of the King James Bible claims to be the ‘most authentic’ version since the first edition of 1611. Devotees of authentic seventeenth-century Bibles or modern collector’s editions may well disagree. For a start this is no facsimile as the black-letter (or Gothic) typeface has been replaced by a more straightforward roman font, though the page layout still follows the original. The result is certainly easier to follow but has all the charm of a Victorian Farming Manual and seems somewhat out of place alongside the attractive wood-cut capital letters that begin each new chapter. While several internet reviews have described the quality of the binding as ‘handsome at first glance’ but ‘disappointing on closer inspection’, at £50 few will quibble about value for money.
In spite of these setbacks, the authentic seventeenth-century spellings and occasional typographical hiccups have been retained. While this does much to promote a sense of authenticity, it does leave the reader with one or two challenges in actually following the text. For instance, ‘v’ appears as ‘u’ and ‘u’ as a ‘v’ (hence ‘vnto’ and ‘euer’) while ‘j’ is rendered as ‘i’ (e.g. ‘Iudea’, ‘Ierusalem’ and ‘Iesus’). These aside, the 1611 edition contains relatively few errors compared with later editions and no real ‘clangers’ to speak of. Those familiar with the story of the so-called ‘naughty version’ of 1631 where the printer missed out the ‘not’ from ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’ can rest easy as the seventh commandment appears here intact.
As with all Bibles of this period, the Apocrypha is included in full though not integrated into the Old Testament. While opinion was divided at the time as to its canonical status, most agreed that it should be read as an example of godly living but not ‘to establish any doctrine’ (Article VI). The preliminary pages include introductory material (preserved in the original black-letter type) together with the Calendar, Psalms and Office Lectionary for Mattins and Evensong. Clearly, this new translation was intended not for private reading but for ecclesiastical use. Indeed, the title page includes the qualification ‘appointed (meaning ‘set out’) to be read in churches’ and this is where the real value of this anniversary edition lies. Even with the occasional typographical stumbling-block, one cannot fail to appreciate the rhythm and flow of a text that has stood the test of time and influenced the spiritual lives of countless English-speaking Christians.
This quatercentenary KJV has much to recommend it (including Gordon Campbell’s informative ‘Anniversary Essay’). While the debate over ‘authenticity’ vs. ‘accessibility’ will no doubt continue, collectors may wish to wait and see if interest in this 400th anniversary year is enough to warrant a full facsimile edition.
Edward Martin
NEW MONASTICISM
AS FRESH EXPRESSION OF CHURCH: ANCIENT FAITH, FUTURE MISSION
Edited by Graham Cray, Ian Mobsby and Aaron Kennedy
Canterbury Press, 155pp, pbk 978 781848250444, £14.99
THIS BOOK begins by making some important observations. ‘Christian faith is essentially corporate rather than individual.’ The corporate nature of the faith is threatened by the individualism and consumerism which defines our society. ‘The greatest mission challenge facing the Church in the UK is the growing majority of the population who have not been involved in local church [sic], even as children.’ There is therefore a self-evident need for a new generation of missionaries to spread the ancient faith to future generations, and ‘missionaries are willing to pay the price of cultural comfort, by entering and owning the world of those they are trying to reach.’ Since the great missionaries of the past have counted among their number a disproportionately high percentage of professed religious, it makes sense to turn to monasticism as a way of doing ‘cross-cultural mission.’
So far so good. But where this book fails to convince is in persuading the reader that the so-called ‘new monasticism’ is either recognisably new or recognizably monastic. Meeting in pubs and parks, ministering in ‘rough and unsafe places where the majority of local inhabitants are never-churched,’ and having a rule of life which is ‘not intended as a list of rules so much as a holistic and healthy framework for living’ are all things which faithful members of the Church have done down the centuries, on both sides of the cloister walls. This is not to deny that this book presents an important wake-up call: nobody can doubt that the Church of England is failing in its mission to the people of this land, despite pockets of excellence across the ecclesiological and liturgical spectra. The problem with this book is that it is so full of jargon that it is difficult for those who do not share the language to engage fully with its message – which ironically, is exactly the charge which the Fresh Expressions movement levels against traditional forms of the Church. ‘There are now groups around the world who use this language with the aim of promoting relational mission and evangelism centred on the importance of being community,’ we read in the chapter on New Monasticism as a model. I am sure that this is terribly important; I am just not sure what it means. Again, to quote from the
interesting chapter on the Order of Mission, ‘Covenant and kingdom are at the very heart of the life of The Order of Mission. We seek to walk in our identity as covenant children of God, in covenant with each other, seeking the breaking through and advancement of the kingdom in the relationships and contexts that we find ourselves in.’ The difficulty here is that this sentiment is either applicable to all faithful Christians; or it is entirely meaningless. The same conundrum applies to this book as a whole, important as it undoubtedly is. The afterword is entitled, ‘Is God Shaping a New Monasticism?’ I very much hope that he is; but this book fails to convince me how he is doing it.
Janet Backman
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Five Lost Churches of Leeds
Stephen Savage
Anglo-Catholic History Society, 146pp, pbk Available at £12 + £1.59 postage from ACHS, Mr GB Skelly, 24 Cloudesley Square, London N1 0HN. Free postage to members of ACHS 978 0955071496
THIS IS the latest in a series of occasional papers published by the Anglo-Catholic History Society. It tells the story of five Leeds churches, all at one time or another and in one way or another influenced by Anglo-Catholicism, which were built during the long nineteenth century and which have since closed down. Only one, St Margaret’s, Cardigan Road, can still be visited, as it is now part of the Leeds Left Bank Project.
The author explains in the introduction that the book was inspired in part by Michael Yelton’s Empty Tabernacles: Twelve Lost Churches of London, and by Yelton’s hope that others would write studies of similar churches before they are forgotten completely. Savage writes, ‘Such local studies are important as they can provide valuable case studies of developments taking place more widely.’ In this he is not only correct, but also highlights one of the joys of his own book. National events are played out in a local context here in a number of ways, but two stand out: the first is the Church’s ongoing struggle to keep up with shifting populations as the industrial revolution and then the changes of the twentieth century led to successive demographic shifts; the second is the way in which national events (such as the Public Worship Regulation Act) and figures in the Tractarian movement weave in and out of the stories of these Leeds churches. One such is Dr Pusey, who sent one man to be a curate in Leeds despite (or perhaps because!?) of the man being denounced by his Vicar as a ‘liar and swindler’ in a letter to the Bishop of Oxford.
This is another way in which this book is a fine example of local history: lively portraits of fascinating characters frequently appear and prevent the text from becoming simply a worthy narrative of events. To give just two examples, there is the Vicar who staged his own death before moving to Australia as a self-professed ‘Poultry expert,’ and the Sunday School superintendent who was also Tetley’s head brewer!
The book is handsomely illustrated with black and white photos of the churches and places described. A map would have been helpful for those with only a limited knowledge of Leeds; and as with former volumes in this series, the text is not justified. But these are very minor quibbles with what is a fine book and a valuable contribution to the corpus of AngloCatholic local history.
A visitor to Christ Church, Meadow Lane, wrote in his diary in 1925: ‘Many confessions made and regular communions, vocations to the priesthood, to Kelham, to nurses’ work overseas. Beneath it all a burning zeal for conversion, expressed in no sentimental or extravagant way, but as the stern demand of Christ upon individuals leading to a high standard of Christian living and practice, and opening straight upon the whole round of sacramental life and worship.’ One would struggle to find a finer description of the very best of AngloCatholicism.
Ian McCormack
CHRIST OUR HIGH PRIEST
Albert Vanhoye
Gracewing, 164pp, pbk 978 0852447680, £9.99
FACED WITH a crisis of monumental proportions, one response is to go back to the fountainhead and source, to re-draw those clear, life-giving waters and present them again with overwhelming confidence. This is exactly what Cardinal Vanhoye, former Rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, achieves on the subject of the Christian priesthood. He presents the high priesthood of Christ with breathtaking verve and assurance.
This book comprises sixteen talks originally delivered to the Roman Curia at the beginning of Lent 2008, hence the rather pretentious subtitle ‘Spiritual Exercises with Pope Benedict XVI’. The context, however, is not important, save only that it assures us this is not a dumbed-down populist presentation. The talks have been well translated, and once one gets used to the rather patrician style, they are very clear. They read easily once one has the measure of his voice.
The Cardinal focuses mainly on the Letter to the Hebrews, and how vividly he knows his text! This is masterly exposition, and there were, for me, moments of wonderful illumination, out of what is never an easy New Testament text. There is nothing especially Lenten in the subject (though the book was one of Bishop Martyn’s suggestions this year). They would work just as well as preparation for ordination, or as the focus of an individual retreat.
These are spiritual exercises with a rich biblical commentary: they are not theological argument or an exercise in ecclesiology. Nevertheless, at a time when the sacred ministry is under assault, they are full of solid encouragement.
John Turnbull
THE MINDFUL WAY THROUGH DEPRESSION
Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal and Jon Kabat-Zinn Guilford Press, 273pp, pbk £12.99
978 1593851286,
OXFORD UNIVERSITY’S motto ‘Dominus illuminatio mea’, the Lord is my light, celebrates not just theology but all fields of science as God-given. True to this Mark Williams, Oxford Professor of Clinical Psychology, is lead author in a book that brings spiritual, if not divine, insight into alliance with cognitive therapy in the service of those who live with chronic unhappiness. It is a self help book that bridges psychology and spirituality, in this case from Eastern religious practice, but with both an academic and practical aspect. The spiritual technique of mindfulness generates a play of the imagination that can break the mind free from the unhealthy obsessions that generate depression.
This wisdom can be allied to that of contemporary psychology in challenging the mental gyrations that sap human vitality. Professor Williams and his international team of authors provide insight into the healing power of so-called ‘awareness’ through which people can escape the wearisome ruminations of the obsessed mind, befriend alien feelings and come more alive in themselves.
The book is accompanied by a CD with meditations that can help the listener enter the present moment, own more fully their physical context and stand back from the flow of their thinking and feeling. This detachment, a proven spiritual tool exercised in faith traditions, energizes the subject as they look at life afresh through the fuller perspective of a mindfulness that rises above mental brooding.
At the heart of the book is a three-minute exercise for use in challenging situations that is likened to moving down through an hour glass with wide opening, narrow neck and wide base. In this exercise attention moves down from the burdensome mental challenge to focus in the movement of the breath and then out again from there towards a sense of the body as a whole addressing stresses through this standing back process.
It is one of several helpful aids and insights that can be found in a practical volume that bears the authority both of contemporary psychology and the age old spiritual practice of meditation.
John Twisleton
CANDLE BIBLE FOR KIDS
Juliet David, illustrated by Jo Parry
Candle Books (Lion Hudson), 400pp, hbk, £11.99 978 1859858271,
THERE CAN be few biblical resources as bright and beautiful to the eye as this collection of illustrated best Bible stories from Lion Hudson. It was well received as a potential resource by the parents in our toddler group and the children in our Sunday Club found it attractive and accessible.
One of our sevenyear-olds read it with ease and was moved by the page on salt and light from the Sermon on the Mount. No selection of Bible stories will please everyone – we missed the Ten Commandments and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple – but this book is a real winner. Beautifully illustrated, it is destined to be servant of our church’s use of the 2011 King James 400th anniversary to make the Bible accessible to the up and coming generation.
John Twisleton ND