The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

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It was a BBC Culture Show interview with Colm which brought me to read this 100 page monologue of Mary. It was in large part the talk of the work's controversial nature that lead me to it – if it was a work that could offend Christians then it seemed it would be a work worth reading.

It is a tightly written work – I read it on the train up to London, and arriving at Waterloo before the end I stopped at the station for a coffee so that I could get to the end (and therefore arrived a little late for a meeting). That you can encounter the whole work in a 2 ½ hour sitting is part of the power and intensity of the work.

You come face to face with Mary, as a very real person. It is a Mary of old age, and brings to mind a banner of Our Lady of Lincoln where she is depicted as an old women, rugged like a fish wife, a women who has lived.

There are I think 3 points where the narrative departs from the familiar Gospel account that made me stop and think, the first two were “interesting”, bring new insights, the third was much more profound.

So, the first, the raising of Lazarus, we are told that Lazarus was sickly throughout life (an explanation of why he lives with his 2 sisters), but also that after his resurrection it seems he is not even restored to the previous state of poor health, and is very frail and in much pain. Jesus acted out of compassion for the sisters in raising their brother, but it would seem the act was misjudged, for it is not “life, and its fullness” that Jesus gives on this occasion but something of a miserable existence. You get the very real sense Lazarus would have been better off left in the tomb.

Second, at Jesus' trail, the role of the Chief Priests in manipulating the crowd to shout for Jesus' crucifixion is made explicit. But this acts to largely absolve the crowd of the deed, and I find this troubling. The song “How deep the Father's Love” has the line “I hear my voice cry out among the scoffers” which I always find deeply moving – that the rejection of Jesus is a personal and, in the moment, convinced call for his death is an important part of the dynamic of the salvation which is to follow. To turn this into little more that the joining of a chant on the football terrace begins to question and undermine the power of the sacrifice which follows.

And finally, and I feel perhaps I should give a spoiler alert here – which feels very odd, but this was a powerful and shocking moment, and so if you are planning to read the book I think it might be best to save this for a fresh encounter in the context of the narrative.

OK – you had the warning...

Given the authenticity of the voice that had been created up to this moment, it felt totally real, and the reality makes it painful. In some ways it is such a little thing, but Colm's Mary leaves the cross before Jesus dies. And I realised how central Mary's place at the foot of the cross is to my understanding, and not simply of Mary.

Here you will have to indulge me as I quote from Steel Magnolias, where after the funeral M'Lynn has a rant of grief for her daughter Shelby, she says:

“No.. I couldn't leave my Shelby. I just sat there and kept pushin' the way I always have where Shelby was concerned.... I was hopin' she'd sit up and argue with me. Finally we realized there was no hope. They turned off the machines. [Pause] Drum left.. couldn't take it. Jackson left. [Slight laugh] I find it amusin'.. men are supposed to be made outta steel or somethin. I just sat there. I just held Shelby's hand. There was no noise. No tremble. Just peace. Oh God.. I realize as a woman how lucky I am! I was there when that wonderful creature drifted into my life.. and I was there when she drifted out of it. It was the most precious moment of my life...”

This watch of a Mother over her dying child is the watch of Mary at the Cross. The denial of that watch had a visceral impact on me. I found it very hard to continue to read after that point. I think I found it an attack on Mary. It is largely a book which champions Mary, but here it denies her her rights to be there when her child died. At church we have been thinking about offence – and there is a response to mockery of God that if He is worth believing in He can take a few knocks, He can look after himself. But for Mary can we say the same, especially after being soaked in this very human, vulnerable, believable image of the women behind the Icon.

And there is no wriggle room on this one – she either remained at the foot of the cross, or she left.

But, in fact, this is one point where Colm is not actually differing from the account of the Gospels. It is only John who places Mary, mother of Jesus, at the foot of the Cross. The others have Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and many women, but they do not identify Mary, mother of Jesus. And even John does not actually, necessarily, leave Mary there till the point of death. After the dialogue between Jesus and Mary, and the Beloved, we are told “From that time on, the disciple took her into his home.” Maybe their departure to his home was more immediate than we imagine. The Pietà is in fact as much an invention as the talking donkeys of our Nativity plays.

This is the danger of being a “Bible Believing Christian” - there are important truths which are unscriptural. For the lack of a proof text you cut off your nose. I can not believe that she was not there.

I should emphasis that the trouble this caused me is to Colm's credit – there is nothing wrong with a narrative that questions your fundamental beliefs – and in questioning I have found new understanding. I feel that I might believe Mary remained at the Cross even more firmly now than I did before, and believe it with a much more rounded sense of what that means, what it says about Mary, and also about Jesus. What it says about the relationship between the divine and the human.

As a footnote my guess is that most overlooked this stuff about Mary – and more likely the greater source of controversy will have been the disciples. They come wanting a story, wanting a witness, there is a sense that they are fabricating a story that didn't really happen. But to be honest I was indifferent to this. One of the disciples who visits would appear to be John, the Beloved, another figure from the foot of the Cross, but because he is just a shadow in the story the fact that he wasn't the person we see in the Gospel was of little impact to me. And lets be honest, there was a process of “crafting” the texts which became the New Testament. You can see that process as one of discernment or one of manipulation, but it is simply foolish to deny it didn't happen.

The Image of Christ in Modern Art by Richard Harris

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This relatively slim volume (just over 150 pages) gives a solid introduction to the main British artists working during the 20^th Century on more or less explicitly Christian themes. This is not, as the title might imply, just a study on the representation of Christ, it deals with a much more broad sweep of work.

The majority of the artists, and indeed many of the works, featured were familiar to me, but it was still rewarding to have someone guide you through their work and set them in context. This is the kind of book that tempts you to find out more – there were usually just one or two pictures per artist reproduced but the narrative mentioned many others, and you want to go and find those.

It also helps to set a frame of mind, which you can apply to other works of art that you encounter. I guess that this fall on the side of an “art history” rather than “devotional” (in contrast to say Stephen Cottrell's book Christ in the Wilderness which also looks at some of the works of Stanley Spencer featured here). However having said that, Richard Harris, as a person of faith, is in tune with the devotional potential of these works and so there is a certain blurring of the boundaries.

Perhaps one of the most important insights is the role of a few key individuals within the Church as patrons to these artists. Unfortunately the general art market sees no value in religious themes, and therefore artists need commissions from the Church in order to be able to give time to exploring such material. There is often a tension when it comes to commissioning work, the Church is too timid about what are acceptable responses or forms of expression. Even if (and that is a reasonable big “if”) it is harder to find “Christian” artists today – surely there will never be a shortage artists who wish to explore the great themes of life, to wrestle with meaning, to seek the essence of humanity and its place within the cosmos. All of these things are valid “Christian” explorations – and the Christian narrative is an appropriate vehicle for their exploration with or without signing up to creedal or doctrinal understanding of the faith.

Interpreting the English Village by Mick Aston and Chris Gerrard

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As one of the co-authors is Time Team's Mick this is a book that will have received a wider readership than the average Archaeological publication – and if I am honest I am one such reader.

This volume brings us both the account of a long term study or a single English Village and also a model (a text book) for the study of settlements. This is accessible to the general reader but I think the target audience is the Archaeology student, and so the book is heavy on methodology. How they came to their conclusions is as important as the conclusions themselves.

It is a study of an unremarkable English village, and it is the ordinariness that is the reason that it is of interest. This is a part of the turn with in Archaeology away from the Palace and the riches of Treasure Hunters towards the “common man”. Although the study documents the life of the people of Shapwick parish from the depths of prehistory to the modern day the key moment is the formation of the Village.

The Village is such a central characteristic of the English landscape that we find it hard to imagine that it is an innervation. There was a time before folk lived in villages, they were much more shattered across the landscape.

What is found is that at some point in the couple of hundred years prior to the Norman conquest, in Shapwick at least, there was a major reorganisation of the settlement pattern, and the people were brought together into a Village.

That many of our towns and villages were at origin planned settlements is a revelation – partly due to the organic developments that happened in the centuries that followed that have often largely hidden the plan from view.

This gives us an different understanding of the past – that there was the capacity for planning hints are structures of power and control that were far more developed that we normally allow.

Much “popular” history is essential superficial, it depends on the rhetorical skills of the author in order to sweep you along with that argument, and so this is a refreshing change. It is the vigour of the methodological approach to the evidence that makes the conclusion here convincing, and yet they are still able to hold a narrative together that is accessible and intelligible.

Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn

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So we now get to the Booker Prize short-listed instalment of the Patrick Melrose novels, and I find little to set this apart from the earlier books.

It begins by giving a new born baby the internal monologue of a whining self-possessed teenager and from there it doesn't get any better. It did manage to instil a certain level of pity for Mary, the wife of Patrick, and I guess that achieving an emotional response does perhaps put this marginally ahead of the others.

The problem is that Patrick (and indeed most of the rest of the characters) goes through life with a chip on his shoulder because he feel life somehow owes him something. This is despite the fact that in his reduced circumstances he is still comfortably off, indeed would appear to remain well within the bracket of wealth. The lost of a big house in the south of France is clearly a disappointment but it is hardly the equivalent to destitution. Perhaps all ills on Patrick's part are supposed to be forgiven due to his abuse at the hands of his father, but that does not explain the behaviour of the rest of them.

I remain puzzled but the wide range of praise that it attached to these novels.

Mud, Blood and Poppycock by Gordon Corrigan

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The edition I have declares on the cover “This will overturn everything you thought you knew about Britian and the First World War”. This is a bold statement, “everything” is a big claim”! I did my best to set this aside, remembering not to judge a book by its cover and all that...

However this book's intent is a myth-buster, and so at a certain level it wills you to be a fully paid up subscriber to the myths to give fullest effect to its party trick of demolishing them. Corrigan is a retired solider and a large part of his argument is based on, what he sees as, the inherent inability of civilians to understand the military.

There were some “myths” which I was aware were not true – such as the notion that men spend the whole war in the front line trench. This is an idea that pervades, for instance my secondary school had a mock-up of a trench built on the sports field – but this was a small section of the front line, and gave no sense of the supporting network of rear teaches, communication lines and reserves etc, and so the idea was naturally bred from it that what we saw in our field was all there was. That men were rotated in and out of the trenches, spending only a couple of days at time in the “firing line” is am important point to your wider understanding of the experience of the war.

The issue of those shot for cowardice or desertion is one of the hardest to approach, I think that Corrigan gives a helpful insight into the conduct of the Court Martials, showing the while it might have been swift military justice was far from summary. While I think it might be valid to review of individual cases I have always been troubled by the call for a general pardon of all those shot. To do this seems a disservice unless there was certainty all, each and every one, of those shot was wrongly accused. For to pardon one who was wilfully deserting would still leave those who should have been subject to the army's medical rather than criminal systems diminished if we continue to hold them as a collective. I am perhaps not as confident in the good order of Military justice as Corrigan, but he confirms the basis on my unease about the idea of a general pardon. It might win present day politicians some cheap points but it would not be an expression of the fundemental truth.

Corrigan is also helpful in unlocking the way in which the geographical recruitment, and in particular the “Pals” battalions, heightened the experience of collective grief. The sense of a lost generation was not so much a product of the absolute numbers of lives lost but the way in which a town, village, or street was likely to suffer its lost due to a single engagement. In the Second World War the army had moved away for geographical recruitment. So while the casualty rate after D-Day was comparable to that to the major battles of the First World War, the bereaved were unlikely to be known to one another, and so grief remained more personal. There was not the cumulative factor at play.

Corrigan's historical accounts are clear and well written, it is his interpretive passages that are less comfortable. The facts, for the most part, speak for themselves, but Corrigan's ranting add a feeling of trying too hard. Corrigan generally seems to view the myths as the product of deliberate attempts to distort the memory of the war, and in most cases this doesn't stack up. Misunderstandings have been perpetuated, but this is a error of a different order from that that Corrigan rants against. For example at one point he disparagingly refers to “poets who wrote for money”, while a large part of the book is given over to the defence of Field Marshal Haig (and hand in hand with that an attack on Lloyd George), I accept that history has been unfair on Haig but I have the sense that Corrigan is pushing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.

Poems by Richard Skinner

Richard Skinner gave a talk at the Small Pilgrim Places Network gathering back in October, and I was really touched by his poetry and so got hold of a number of his collections.

There was a lightness of touch to his work, the ability to give a subtle twist to a familiar idea.

Reading his collections I found in general his poems were perhaps strongest when they address ideas about faith and spirituality, maybe these had an extra bit of grit with which to work around.

Of the poems Leaping & Staggering is perhaps Richard signature:

For some,

there is the death-defying leap,

clearing the chasm with one bound,

arms flailing,

a cry of triumph,

all terrors left behind

on the far side,

only joy and happiness

ahead.

For others,

(by which I mean you

and me)

there is no triumphal leap,

only a staggering lurch

to the edge of the chasm.

Dizziness strikes,

and a long, sliding, scrabbling descent

is followed

by a long, weary, scrabbling ascent,

until, arriving at the top,

we find ourselves, once again,

on the wrong side of the chasm.

And while we staggers stagger on,

the leapers continue to leap.

One day, perhaps,

we will learn to leap,

and they will learn to stagger.

While from his most recent collection "the logic of whistling", from a set of poems inspired by Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam I found amazing power in the following

In the almost

of not touching

Adam holds his breath:

one slip and

annihilation

is assured. God's judgement

is perfect: His finger

tantalises.

After London by Richard Jefferies

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Many view “After London” as the first apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic novel and as such take note of it as the prototype of what has become a significant genre.

The novel is spilt into 2 parts, the first is a fairly short scene setter – giving the context and some sketchy history to the state of England, while the second part is the narrative “proper”. I noted when considering The Day of the Triffids that the events of the apocalypse itself are often very lightly treated, and that is certainly the case for After London which is set a few generations after whatever it was that wrought the collapse of civilisation. In the first part there are only dimly remembered myths of the “old” order before the apocalypse.

The post-apocalyptic world imagined by Jefferies has a significant resemblance to an early medieval world, perhaps the England of the Saxons during the Viking incursions – there is a suggestion of some sort of King or over-Lord but power and authority is primarily held by local Barons. It is difficult to decide it there is a particular moral message behind Jefferies tale. There is in an post-apocalyptic tale a message to the current civilisation of its own vulnerability – writing to a late-Victorian audience which had lived through such technological progress, and for whom the curve of civilisation was clearly on a continuing upward curve the mere suggestion that this could all come to naught (whether for good or ill) is in itself a radical thought.

One of the things that was particularly interesting was the way in which the hierarchy of the new order was founded on the literacy (or lack of it) of survivors. In this new society access to literacy is closely guarded by the ruling elite, and the descendants of those who were illiterate at the time of society's collapse have been reduced to de facto slaves. What was the contemporary message of this division? You can see it as a call for an expansion of literacy within Victorian society as a guardian of freedom for the “common man”, or perhaps, if you were one of the literate elite, you might see it as a reminder of the dangers of letting the masses have access to education which might illuminate for them the bondage in which you currently hold them?

Coupled with this division of society by education the most interesting point made by Jefferies is that in this new order it was only ancient texts that survived – that is those manuscripts which were hand written onto velum – the mass of “modern” knowledge that was contained only in printed books had been lost.

This was for two reasons, first Velum manuscripts had survived, while the cheap paper books had decayed to dust. But also, the new society had a limited capacity to copy out texts, and so could maintain as needed new copies of the inherently concise ancient texts written to be transcribed by hand, but without access to printing technology the often verbose “modern” writers works were simply too long to be retained. This insight, true when Jefferies wrote, is even more applicable to us, the Wikiepedia generation.

We now have unimaginable amounts of information at our fingertips, but only as long as the National Grid is up and running. How much of the riches (?) of the knowledge we have available via the internet would still be available to us a year, 5 years, 50 years after an “apocalypse” - the survivors would have to search their attics for dust covered and out of date encyclopedias for the remnants of our technical know-how.

And so while the story of Felix, which is the main narrative, was not particularly captivating to me there were with the set up some ideas which have really stuck with me.