September 2021 The Sign ISSN 1471-6267 The nationwide church magazine supplement I loved the badges

read something recently which a scheme whereby children would collect dredged up a memory from childhood; rosehips from the hedgerows, take them sadly, childhood is a rather distant to school and then once a week, the Imemory and so I imagine that only a few Delrosa Syrup lorry would turn up and readers will recall this with me! Back in take away the sacks of hips. I even recall the the 1950s and 1960s, a regular that the sacks were green. feature of the autumn, from late In return for our efforts, we children September until the end of October, was were paid a few pennies for each pound rose hip collecting. we collected and so was the school. However, this was not just a rather quirky hobby. Rural schools took part in Continued overleaf

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2 Continued from previous page

However, more important than the money were the badges! Different styles depending upon how many pounds you collected. It seems a very simple thing to get excited about, but we did. The background to all this was rather more serious and had its origins in 1941 as part of the war effort. The public were encouraged to return to (or re-learn) the prompted my reminising is, at one level art of foraging in order to supplement slightly amusing, but at another level it or augment rationed foodstuffs. The is quite thought provoking; a Christian concept was very actively promoted and retreat centre was offering a ‘Foraging resourced by the government. The then Retreat’. Ministry of Food published several leaflets Foraging has become rather on how to find and use the Hedgerow fashionable over recent years and a Harvest and there was an emphasis upon whole range of organisations from the wild foods with health benefits – many BBC to The Woodland Trust offer leaflets of the sources of fruit no longer being and courses; there is even The Foraging available. The rose hip was singled out Course Company. If you go on one of for particular attention because it was these days or weekends, I note from the a valuable source of vitamin publicity material, that you get to eat C, oranges being in short the fruits of your labour at the end of the supply. day. But in truth, I think that folk who do Believe it or not, that this are actually fulfilling some sort of year 200 tons of hips were spiritual need rather than just wanting to collected and converted supplement their diet. into 600,000 bottles of Our faith is rooted in the idea of a rose hip syrup which in turn Creator God but the green agenda found its way into the diet of recent years has brought a of babies and children. new understanding and a new The scheme continued emphasis to the place of the until the late 1960s and natural world in our faith. I wonder how many So, a Christian perspective to remember rose hip foraging! Why not? But remember, syrup on rice pudding I played my part in improving the for school dinners? health of the nation’s children and The thing that got some badges to prove it!

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5005 Eccl_The Sign_T130 _114x184_[ MONO_1_HR].indd 1 09/02/2021 14:22 prayer

Worship: a meditation made for God.” Worship then is, in the This is an extract from an article for The words of the old Scots Catechism, “our Sign written in 1949 by Michael Ramsey, chief end”. who was to go to become Archbishop of Of course, it is wrong to shut off a Canterbury small department of life under the name of “worship”, and to practise a piety Our worship has its root in the truth that unrelated to the rest of your life. But, so God is our Maker. It is there that we long as worship includes a real offering to must begin if we are to realise the God of all life, we rightly put it first of all. meaning of worship: “Let us kneel before Our daily moments of lifting up the soul the Lord our Maker.” We belong to a to God in adoration are the day’s first created world which owes its existence work — not just a preparation for the to the will of God and work, but the work itself, depends upon him utterly. and a little foretaste of Without the world, God the day when we shall would be God: without worship him as he loves us God, the world would be and shall see him as he is. nought. Worship is likewise the An old English saint, the first activity of the lady Julian of Norwich, Church. Set in the midst puts this vividly in one of of a world which will not her “visions”. “He showed worship, the Church, as me a little thing, the size man’s priest and man’s of a hazelnut, in the palm representative, offers to of my hand; and it was round as a ball. God the worship which man as a whole “I looked thereon with the eye of my declines to offer. In this the Church understanding, and thought: What may follows the pattern of our Lord whose this be? And it was answered thus: It is mission on earth was to “glorify the all that is made. . . It lasteth and ever Father”, and who now glorifies the Father shall, for that God loveth it. And so all- in his ascended life. thing hath the being by the love of God.” To join in the worship of the Church in Well, we belong to a world that has its sincerity is to bear witness to the true being by the love of God; but, unlike the meaning of man, and to help in rest of his visible creation, we are the recovery of that key to man’s true allowed to know him upon whom we place in the universe which has been lost. depend. For we are made in his image, Worship, therefore, touches very after his likeness. He has given us a mind closely the common life of man: it does to know him, a heart to love him, a will so not by trying to be topical and to serve him. The meaning of our popular, but simply by that spirit of existence is summed up in the words: “I adoration which represents the meaning come from God; I belong to God; I am of man as a creature in God’s image.

5 Finding Peace in Anxious Times

We live in an age of high anxiety. So rapid provide sustenance and protection for are the changes of this modern era that his most treasured creatures of all? The we struggle to cope with both its pace core of Jesus’ teaching on anxiety is an and scope. In a globalized world we are invitation to trust God. He reorients us exposed to more information than we from the nose-length focus of worry to can absorb and more distressing news the availability, generosity, and good will than we can process. The means of of our heavenly Provider. human destruction now include nuclear, From childhood, Henri Nouwen was biological, and technological warfare. fascinated by trapeze artists. He drew Increasingly violent natural disasters several lessons from watching these assail us, along with the prospect of remarkable acrobats of the air. A lesson cataclysmic climate change. For good from the ‘flyers’ is the importance of measure, add in a pandemic, economic letting go of the security of the bar in crisis, food insecurity, social unrest, order to soar. Another lesson is the cen­ political divisiveness, and wars abroad. It tral role of the catcher. Far less glamor­ seems the perfect storm for stress that ous, the catcher’s role is nonetheless key can quickly become overwhelming. to the beauty and wonder of a flyer’s Anxiety in the face of fearful forces is performance. Flyers cannot leap, twist, nothing new. Jesus understood well the or flip without the steady, strong arms of nature of human worry. He addressed the catcher ready at just the critical anxiety in his Sermon on the Mount, moment to catch them. Henri sees God urging the ordinary people of his day: ‘Do as our catcher: not worry about your life, what you will ‘Trust is the basis of life. Without eat or what you will drink, or about your trust, no human being can live. Trapeze body, what you will wear’ (Matthew artists offer a beautiful image of this. 6:25). Some of us don’t worry much Flyers have to trust their catchers. They about such basic needs, but many in our can do the most spectacular doubles, world still do. Jesus might use different triples, or quadruples, but what finally categories today, but his larger message makes their performance spectacular are would surely be consistent: Lift up your the catchers who are there for them at eyes to the Sustainer of all life in this the right time in the right place.…Let’s world, from the smallest of creatures to trust the Great Catcher.’ Bread for the the ‘crown of creation’ in human beings. Journey, 1997, p.11 If God feeds the birds and clothes the With God ready to meet our leaps, lilies, why not trust the Creator to twists, and turns in life, we cannot be

6 ‘dropped’. Our divine Catcher is ‘The leap of faith always means loving completely trustworthy. This gives us without expecting to be loved in return, freedom to fly. giving without wanting to receive, In an age of high anxiety we are deeply inviting without hoping to be invited, susceptible to the dynamics of fear and holding without asking to be held.’ Bread suspicion, anger and resentment,­ a for the Journey p.81 grasping need for control, and an This leap into the ‘thin air’ of choosing obsession with avoiding pain and death. thankfulness and graciousness in spite of These common responses to anxiety rob hurt—not knowing what response we us of our spiritual birthright of inner might receive, if any — is an act of trust. freedom and peace. The image of God as In our many fears and jealousies, we are a steady-handed catcher can offer us continually called to trust in the One both comfort and courage as we let go who loves us without reserve, the One of our own security bars and ‘fly’ into an who runs to greet us every time we uncharted future. return home to the embrace of the Nouwen teaches that we can choose divine heart. When we trust that gratitude as a conscious practice and immense, eternal love, we can feel encourages us to notice that with each gratitude and express love. Our leaps of choice of thankfulness, the next choice faith are met with the strong arms of the gets a bit easier and we begin to see Great Catcher. more clearly how our ordinary lives are filled with grace. Giving gratitude a Extract from On Retreat With Henri chance to blossom in our lives often Nouwen by Chris Pritchett and Marjorie requires a leap of faith: Thompson, Canterbury Press 2021.

7 All Hallows by the Tower Faith in box and lime

Nicolas Cranfield

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the death of Grinling Gibbons. A noted master woodcarver, his name has re­­ cently become more than just a footnote in history, as some of his patrons were When, aged 19, Grinling first moved to involved in the Royal Africa Company England after the end of the Second and the forcible removal of free Africans Dutch War, he went to live in York rather into slavery. than join other denizens in London. One Cambridge college is still debat­ Although there was a thriving art ing the removal of the monument scene in York at the time, centred on the designed for a former royal-household painter and sculptor James Etty (c.1634- employee. The outcome of that process 1708), with whom Gibbons kept a lively may determine how others feel about friendship for years, and the stained- past commissions and the future of glass painter Henry Gyles (1645-1709), it notable works of art. may have been family links that brought Gibbons (1648-1721) was born at a time him back to London. of crisis and the rise of populism on both In a later recollection, the diarist John sides of the Channel. His father, James, Evelyn recorded stumbling across the was a draper who had become a wood­carver working in the royal dock­ Freeman of the Company in London at yard at in an outhouse in the the end of his apprenticeship (1638), a winter of 1670-71: “I saw him about such year after his marriage to Elizabeth Grin­ a work, as for the curiosity of handling, ling, the daughter of a tobacco merchant drawing & studious exactnesse, I never in the Low Countries. in my life had seene in all my travells.” The future master carver was born in The intricate carving that Evelyn had Rotterdam on Easter Tuesday, in April spotted through the workshop window 1648. It is probable that, like his elder was a relief of the crucifixion based on sister, he was baptised in the local Dutch an engraving by Agostino Carracci (1589) Reformed church. after a painting by for the

8 Scuola di San Rocco in Venice. In it, grand figures of François Duquesnoy, Gibbons had closely followed the print’s Gib­bons, it seems, adopted a style and dimensions: it measures nearly four by chose his woods — lime, pear, and box — two foot — an ideal size for an overdoor. under the direct influence of the earlier Evelyn, too, had bought a copy of the Northern Renaissance traditions of same engraving, in Venice, and such was south Germany. his admiration for the young man’s carv­ Although his religious carving might ing (now at Dunham Massey, in not have found favour, his intricate Cheshire) that he offered to introduce carved foliage for the proscenium arch of the immigrant­ artist, whom he found to a theatre attracted the attention of his be likewise “Musical, & very Civil, sober fellow Dutch countryman the leading and discreete in his discourse”, to court painter Sir Peter Lely (1618-80). Charles II. Lely soon introduced him to the artis­ tic world of the recently revived St Luke’s Where had Gibbons learned his craft? Club, and to his bosom friend . For years, it was presumed that he had When Lely died, it was Gibbons who was been apprenticed in the Low Countries commissioned for his monument in St to one of the Quellin cousins who Paul’s, Covent Garden, even though he worked on decorating the town hall in was quite untried in marble. Amsterdam in the 1650s and 1660s, and May (1621-84), an architect, had lived who ran the leading workshops in in Lely’s house in Covent Garden, and at sculpture there and in Antwerp. the court in exile at the Hague. At the But Gibbons was never fully at home Restoration, he was appointed Paymaster as a sculptor, and was largely antipath­ of the Works and later Comptroller etic to figural work. Rather than look to the Roman of Bernini and the Continued overleaf

St Paul’s Cathedral

9 Bob Easton Continued from previous page

(1668), and, even if Sir , who became Surveyor of the Works in 1669, is more widely known, it was to May that the King turned for the rebuilding of the castle at Windsor, from 1673. Acting on his friend’s advice, May took Gibbons with him. Gibbons resumed his acquaintance­ ship with Evelyn at a City dinner in tious chapel at Whitehall. The chapel August 1679, and took him to meet a rich itself was short-lived, and its furnishings merchant, Christopher Boone (c.1615- were dispersed after James VII and II was 86), a member of the Merchant Taylors’ driven into exile. Company who was involved in the East At , while Gibbons India and Guinea trades. He had been carved two chimney pieces in the English Resident in Seville, but returned Queen’s Closet and four over doors in to live in the parish of All Saints’, Lee, in the Queen’s Gallery “with festoons & south-east London, where Gibbons had foliage & other ornaments”, Emmett enclosed for him a pen­dulum clock “in was exercis­ing himself with 942 feet of [the] curious flower-work”, and adorned frames over doors and chimneys, and the ceiling, fret, and chimney piece of 1405 feet of modelling and hollow the “Ladys Cabinet”. corniche. Like Lee Place, Holme Lacy (Hereford­ Gibbon’s overreaching designs for the shire) and chisel can be seen at work at Sudbury (Hertfordshire) no longer exist, but some Hall (Derbyshire), Badminton House of their carving does, showing Gibbons’s (1683), Burghley House (1684), and at outstanding use of limewood to shape Petworth. By 1694, the previously reluc­ leaves, fruits, and flowers, with their thin tant Wren brought him into St Paul’s stems, for overmantels, mirror Cathedral to work on the decoration of surrounds, and wains­ coting.­ the choir and chancel. A decade earlier, Such appliqué skills could be managed Gibbons had received plaudits for the from the Ludgate Hill workshop, and reredos in the newly built St James’s, allowed Gibbons to remain in London Piccadilly. “There is no altar any where in even when he was fulfilling commissions England, nor has there been any abroad, elsewhere. Above all, he could work for more handsomely adorn’d” (Evelyn, 7 more than one client at the same time, December 1684). although the demands on his time meant that much of the work passed to his A year-long nationwide festival celebrat­ most trusted associate, William Emmett,­ ing the tercentenary of Gibbons’s death, a liveryman of the Joiners’ Com­pany. “Grinling Gibbons 300, Carving a Place in In addition to his designs for Windsor History”, is launched on 3 August with Castle, and later at Hampton Court an exhibition, “Centuries in the Making”, Palace (c.1699-1701), his royal commis­ at Bonhams, New Bond Street, in sions with Wren included the ostenta­ London.

10 recipe

Sugar-free Halva

Here’s a recipe for Halva that uses no Method sugar. This recipe does not require 1 Line a small box or tin with cling film. candying honey to a “soft-ball” stage, 2 Chop the dates and soak them in a which would give that distinctive little water, bringing them to the boil to crystalline texture of most kinds; it is soften them. easy to make and good for you. This 3 Blitz them to a smooth paste with a recipe makes a comfortable-sized block stab mixer, or you can use a fork, and with a chocolate topping (using coconut then add the tahini and the ground sugar, now easily available) of about sesame seeds and vanilla. 10cm x 17cm (4 in. x 7 in.). 4 Spread this in the tin and level with a spatula. Ingredients 5 Melt the coconut oil and coconut 100g (4 oz) pitted dates sugar in a small pan, allowing the 1 tablespoon tahini (sesame paste) coconut sugar to dissolve. 4 tablespoons ground sesame seeds 6 Stir in the cacao and vanilla and allow 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract it to cool slightly. Then pour it over the For the topping: halva and allow it to cool and harden in 2 tablespoons coconut oil the fridge. 1 tablespoon coconut sugar 1 tablespoon raw cacao powder This recipe was written by Terence Handley ½ teaspoon real vanilla extract MacMath

11 Be Generous with Yourself

Gareth Higgins “How long do you usually spend there?” Kiwi writer Mike Riddell tells of how, on “About twenty minutes.” his conversion to Catholicism at forty- “OK. Here is your penance. Go out into two years old, he had to go for his first the world and breathe in its fullness—its confession. He and the parish priest beauty, its struggle, its amazing spoke together, but not in the familiar possibility. Then go to the beach. Bring a dusky booth—they talked in the living flask of coffee and a blanket. Find a quiet room of the priest’s house. place to sit. Watch the waves, and the After telling the stories for which he people, and the seagulls, and the sand. sought absolution, Mike nervously Stay there for two hours. Breathe. Give awaited the priest’s response. I don’t this gift to yourself. And receive the know the exact words that came, but knowledge of your own forgiveness. All they went something like this: “Are you is well.” willing to follow the discipline of the What gift could you give yourself if church?” said the priest, no tone of you really believed you were forgivable? warmth imbuing the question. “Yes,” Rest with these questions for a while, said Mike, though not without some and maybe write down some responses inner reconsideration of this whole to them. Then make a plan to do conversion thing. He was not expecting something in the next week that mirrors this. Mike Riddell sitting on the beach. “I’m going to instruct your penance Give yourself the gift of at least two now, Michael,” the priest continued. “If hours doing something life-giving, you are to be obedient to the discipline restful, and alone. Reflect on the words of the church, and if your conversion is the priest told him: “Breathe. Give this to be honest, you will do what I say.” gift to yourself. And receive the Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea, knowledge of your own forgiveness. All thought Mike, wondering if he would is well.” If it’s true that you can’t truly have been better staying a freelance love others without loving yourself, what theologian rather than a son of holy are you waiting for? mother church. “What is the most beautiful place you like to visit?” asked the priest. From How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways “I like to walk my dog on the beach,” to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying Mike responded. by Gareth Higgins (Canterbury Press 2021)

12 books

QUEEN VICTORIA This thorny crown Michael Ledger-Lomas OUP £30 (£27)

As a bishop, I perhaps ought to confess that Queen Victoria had a prejudice against the episcopal order. When mem­ bers of Convocation came to wish her well on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee, she described them as a “very ugly party” and frankly avowed “I do not like bishops!” Victoria was, however, alive to the connection between her authority and the vitality of the established faith. Reading her journal, however, it be­­ comes evident that, while Victoria was frequently expansive about Highland scenery, foreign travel, and the theatre, her interest in texts and religious ideas was limited. Under 8 August 1852, she wrote: “Albert told me much about an interesting book he is reading, the Life of was a byword for ceremonial shambles. Jesus by Strauss — Dinner as yesterday.” Lord Robert Cecil, who many years later She was nevertheless a convinced liberal became Victoria’s Prime Minister (as Lord Protestant, committed to a lay style of Salisbury), having witnessed the Queen piety. opening one of her earliest Parliaments, Her marriage to a German Lutheran of remarked that “we can afford to be more radical theological views and her widow­ splendid than most nations but some hood deeply marked her faith. Archibald malignant spirit broods over all our most Campbell Tait, born in Edinburgh, was solemn ceremonials and inserts into her ideal churchman. She deeply sym­ them some feature which makes them path­ised with the loss of his five daugh­ all ridiculous — something always breaks ters to scarlet fever while he was Dean down.” No one was saying that at the of Carlisle. Her journal became a end of the reign. mausol­eum book in which she recorded the loss of relatives, friends, and The Rt Revd Lord Chartres is a former servants, and lamented over newspaper Bishop of London. This is an edited version reports of ac­­cidents and disasters. of a review that appeared in the Church At the beginning of the reign, England Times.

13 poetry place

The Pulley

When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, “Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can. Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie, Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way; Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure. When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure, Rest in the bottom lay.

“For if I should,” said he, “Bestow this jewel also on my creature, He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature; So both should losers be.

“Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness; Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast.”

George Herbert

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