Pictures of love blog 9 'The Angel of The North'

Decembers guest blog for 'Pictures of Love' is by Rev. Elaine Lindridge, she is the District Evangelism Enabler for the Newcastle Upon Tyne Methodist District, please feel free to leave a comment on this blog or any of the other blogs in the series. We would also wish you a joyous and peaceful Christmas. 

I just love this view from my house – and as I look out on a morning I see Britain’s largest sculpture. I remember watching on the day this giant angelic work of art was hoisted up & then dropped into the ground – that was February 1998. How amazing, not just because it’s a work of art, but because it’s an angel! And for me it reminds me of where I belong. And when I’m driving up or down the A1, I see this magnificant angel, Jumbo Jet wing arms outstretched, kind of welcoming me home.

The Angel of The North has been described as a symbol of renewal or regeneration, which is really appropriate to this region as we’ve undergone massive social and economic change. It’s also significant because the Angel has changed this unused ground, this ‘no space’ into ‘significant space’…some might even dare to call it, ‘holy space’.

The artist who created this angelic sculpture, Antony Gormley, has said of the Angel

‘I want to make something we can live with and that becomes a reservoir for feelings – feelings that perhaps we hadn’t known about until this thing was there, or feelings that couldn’t arise until it was’.

Throughout time there have been reports of encounters with angels, and they’re not just confined to the times when the Bible was written. I’ve always thought it must be pretty terrifying to see an angel - not some cute kid dressed up in a nativity play, but a real one, a messenger of God. I wonder, ‘what’s the message that we need to hear today?’

I think most of us have feelings that go deaper than perhaps we admit even to ourselves, but betray our need for more than a mortal life offers. There’s something within every human spirit that always seeks to reach out for more, for something higher. To reach beyond our ordinariness to something remarkable & special. In a spiritual sense, as you lift your head to look up at the Angel, you look away from self and from earth to what some would call the heavens. Maybe this Angel of The North is indeed a messenger too. It’s message serving as a reminder to look up from what sometimes seems the trivia of our day to day living and consider what might be of eternal significance.

Pictures of Love blog 4 'Creativity'

As we journey on exploring what love means to us our next blog for Pictures of love comes from my superintendent minister Rev Stuart Earl... 

"It may seem egocentric or mercenary to have a photo of myself or my books under the heading "pictures of love", but read on. What I love is creativity - which for me at the moment is words and stories wrapped into thoughts about how the world and church and faith and love are and what they might be. I have dragged my own thoughts into two books so far published, and one (I hope) about to be published. It's not the money that I do it for (though I need to sell a few more before I can afford to publish the third!), but the risk of having a go, the thrill of completing it, and the risk of what others think of it. Because creativity involves risk - and thrills, and so, of course, does love.

Others of you will have other ways to be creative - the big creativity of producing and rearing children, or smaller projects such as how you decorate your home, how you order your garden, your appearance. Or it might be that you love music or art and have a go at them occasionally or that that is your "big thing". It might be photography, or poetry, or... When we are creative, we are illustrating that we are made in God's image, as the Bible says. He created, so can we. You can't love without having something or somebody to respond to, to risk rejection from, to engage with, to give yourself to. That's what God does with us. That's what, I suppose, in a strange way, we do when we share our creativity with others. Thank God, right now as you read this, for the ways in which you can be creative."

Pictures of Love blog 3 The Himalayas

As we continue looking at 'pictures of love' here is a guest blog by Rev Simon Sutciffe, to read about some of his work as a pionneer minister in the Methodist Church click 'here'. To read a bit more about pioneer ministry in the Methodist Church read 'here'. 


I recently went on a trip to India and spent 4 nights in a village called Leti in the Himalayas. Below is a poem I wrote about it. It’s a place that I have never been to before, but is now etched on my heart, and I pray, I will see again.

What can be said about four nights in Leti?

Some inadequate words about the place being pretty?

The snow-capped mountains or the dark roaming hills?

The haze of the sunshine or the noise of the snow?

Children singing and dancing or

The bright coloured shacks?

Griffins circling high above or

Cricket played on the plateau below?

But no word can carry the silence of this place

The ear thumping

Heart thumping

Stillness

Of beauty

And in the end the only

Response that can be made

Is to be still

And be quiet;

Say nothing

Not a word.

Just sit and admire

The craft of our God.

Pictures of love blog 2 The Sound of Silence

Welcome to the second guest blog for the pictures of love project this is written by Rob Bee, a long standing friend, sound engineer, musician, twitcher and Methodist local preacher. Rob was one of the leaders of Cafe Sundae a fresh expression in Timperley based at the Methodist Church. If you want to be involved in the Pictures of love project then check out the info on the link above and send a photo to rob.dimension@tiscali.co.uk and please feel free to leave a comment at the bottom if you so wish.

Sound is something that is very important to me. As a musician and a professional sound engineer I need my ears and make a living out of crafting, shaping and forming aural constructs. Sound is not only a medium of information exchange and communication, it can also be a thing of beauty, balance and comfort. I love the sound of an E major being struck on an electric guitar through a cranked-up valve amp. I love the sound of a robin in full song in the middle of the night because it's found a street light and it thinks dawn is about to break. I love the glugging sound made when you pour that first glass of wine out of the bottle. I love the silly noises my parents always seem to make between picking up the phone and saying, 'Hello.' But there is another sound that I think is very special. It's impossible to record or photograph because it's immovable from the places it occurs. It's the sound of silence.

Very often when I get home from a busy day at work in the recording studio I'll just sit on the sofa and very deliberately not put the TV or the stereo on. I will sit and enjoy the quiet. It's about more than just resting my ears, I enjoy the stillness of the empty house and the moments of calm. But as lovely as these times are, the Sound of Silence is greater than that. I have been to many places that are quiet and I've worked in studios where the acoustic treatment is so good that sound seems to be sucked away from you into the walls. The Sound of Silence is greater than these things. It's not like 'no noise' it's like 'negative noise'. And it's loud.

Take a walk in the countryside and you will hear a great variety of sounds – whether you're hearing the crashing of waves on the beach, the wind rustling through the leaves in the woods or the babbling brooks in the valleys there are myriad sounds to be heard that calm the soul. But at other times we hear the sound of silence. It's the sound the snow makes as you stand by yourself and listen to it fall; the world holding it's breath as awaits it's transformation. It's a powerful thing. It compels you to listen to it as it screams at you about it's depth and richness. I find it sometimes in the Morecambe Bay Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty when conditions are perfect. It is a silence so complete that the occasional cry of a curlew or oystercatcher doesn't puncture it; it enforces it and makes it stronger. It demands respect; and you obey lest you break the magic.

 The Sound of Silence is the sound of space. It’s the sound of timeout. It's like a mirror. It's a rare thing, it's valuable and it's bizarre. It's not that something's missing - like a TV on mute - it’s that something is very definitely there and choosing to be noiseless.

The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, “Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.”  I couldn't disagree more.

Pictures of love blog 1

Welcome to the first guest blog featuring the 'Pictures of love' project, this has been written by Rev Andrew Dunlop, if you want to know more about him check out his blog. Please feel free to leave comments at the bottom, and don't forget that you can join in the project by sending me a photo via the info on the 'Pictures of love' page and also at rob.dimension@tiscali.co.uk 

I lost my wedding ring. I'd had it on as usual - I never take it off -when I turned up to an outdoor Karting Centre to enjoy a day team endurance racing, a celebration of someone’s birthday. It was a cold day. We were hanging around in the briefing area for quite some time waiting for the safety announcements and for the melting snow to be cleared off the track. Suddenly I looked down and noticed that my ring had gone. I retraced my steps from the car to the centre, via the burger van, looking for something shining in the snow. I even went through the paper towel bin in the men’s toilets. No luck. It was gone. Eventually I suited up and enjoyed the day’s racing (my team came last), all the time with this lost thing hanging heavy in my mind. Messages were left with the staff of the centre to call me if anything turned up and on returning home, I scoured the house and thoroughly went through my bag to no avail.

Arriving home, I was really quite gutted that I had lost my ring. It wasn’t the cost that annoyed me - a replacement ring would only cost about £150-200 and most of that would be covered by my home insurance. It was the item itself, as if a part of me was missing. I didn’t realise how much it had come to be a part of me until I lost it. I was reminded of the parable of the lady who lost a silver coin, searched high and low and threw a massive party for all her friends when she found it. This ring had been used at my wedding, with my wife making promises of commitment and fidelity “for richer, for poorer, to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health... till death do us part”. The ring symbolised those vows, secure and unending. My marriage, and those vows were, of course, still intact. Nevertheless, it felt like something had been lost.

A week later my wife and I were packing and overnight bag for a weekend trip. Just the basic pyjamas and change of underwear needed. Picking up my bag, it fell open and out of a hidden pocket fell a couple of old leaflets and... my wedding ring. It must have slipped off my fingers during the karting trip whilst I was rooting around in the bag searching for something. Time to rejoice, to enjoy a weekend away, to share the good news on facebook, and see the ‘likes’ pile up.

"Imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she'll call her friends and neighbours: 'Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!' Count on it—that's the kind of party God's angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God." (Luke 15:8-10)