Time and Relative Dimensions in Faith Edited by Crome & McGrath

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There is still often a tendency to dismiss television as a serious medium, but this is clearly foolish – it is a powerful cultural phenomenon – it holds the greatest audience, even with the increasing numbers of channels and new competition for attention with social media.

Therefore it is right to reflect on Dr Who, it has a long running place in many British hearts, and when it speaks of matters of faith it speaks to far greater numbers than the Church.

As a collection of essays some spoke to me, others didn't (in part because I have not really seen much “classic” Dr Who, it was taken off the air just at the point when I reached the age to start watching).

Some of the most interesting reflections were those that compared the treatments of faith in different eras of Dr Who. There have been subtle and yet profound shifts – it is clear that the most recent stories have a much less comfortable relationship with faith – and yet ideas about the power of belief remain core to many of the narratives, but that power is as often corrupt as it is life affirming.

The status of the Doctor is clearly another key point to examine – there are times when there is a strong Messianic role placed on the Doctor, often by others but at times the Doctor seems to position himself in this way. This relationship is unresolved – as so many questions within Dr Who tend to be.

I am no Dr Who fanatic but I was still able to engage with these essays and find much of interest.

Growing Up to Be a Child by Peter Sidebotham

I couldn't find it on Hive but it is available on Amazon 

While agreeing with the overall point being made, that we should engage more deeply with Jesus' instruction to “become like a little child”, the book itself is rather odd.

I think the first issue is that it is one of those books where once you have got the point it is trying to make there is little further to engage with, and therefore if you are predisposed to agree with it you quickly get the feeling that the point is being laboured.

Also this was written, we are told, as personal reflection from a father to his daughter on the point of her going off to University, and yet there is very little personal or particular about it, other that the occasional awkward insertion of “my darling daughter” as a term of address to the reader at the opening of a point of discussion.

The book is strong in describing the characteristics of children as various stages of their development, and how we can see these characteristics as positive models for our relationship with God. However what is less clear is what these characteristics would actually look like in the context of adult life, or the transposition between for example a baby's need of its mother's milk to our need of the spiritual nourishment from God through the Scriptures feels a little predictable and flat.

I kind of want to me more positive about this book that I feel able, the ideas attests to are ones I would want to celebrate, but their expression here is a little limited.

The Empty Throne by Bernard Cornwell

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With Bernard Cornwell you are getting a consistent product. There is a rich collection of characters and plenty of action.

This Anglo-Saxon tale had a lot in common with his Arthurian trilogy with I read as a teenager.

You are taken to a plausible world, although I am not sure how far it would past muster with historians. There is much in it with feels like a very modern dynamic – gender politics, and religious diversity – as with the Arthurian trilogy our central hero is a Pagan living in an increasingly Christianised society, and somewhat raging against the coming of Christendom – is this a mirror to us is Christendom now appears to be fading.

It kept me suitably engrossed to past the flight to New York – and that was all I was asking of it so it is a success.

The Rice Paper Diaries By Francesca Rhydderch

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This is a tale told with great authenticity, told with 5 distinct voices and yet successfully forming a single whole.

The backdrop of the tale is the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, it is a tale about identity rather than a dramatised history lesson about the Japanese occupation, but clearly one of the ways in which it unlocks the identities is through the disruptive transposition of Hong Kong's “British” ruling elite into interned enemy aliens. Although there is clearly some level of suffering as a result of internment this is not a tale of horrors, such as characterised the Japanese treatment of PoWs, it is a tale about the subtleties of the exercise of power rather than brutalities.

That the central “British” characters are Welsh adds an extra layering to the complexity of identity – and the experience of Mari, Hong Kong born, of the return “home” to Wales tells us of an important dynamic within the colonial experience – there was within it an expansive understanding of what it was to be “British”. That “home” was a place that she had never been, and a place that she never really seems to fit in is effectively conveyed.

It is also a tale about the challenges of family life – in a number of different configurations – and again it is very real – these are people that you can believe in and can easily share in their experiences, their joys and also their sorrows.

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guidrgis and Missing: Three Days in Jerusalem by Sonia Falaschi-Ray

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I am considering these two works together as I happened to read them one after the other in the midst of Lent, this timing was, at least consciously, accidental – but clearly they speak into that season.

With the Last Days of Judas Iscariot the effect of reading the text of a play is of course distinct to the experience one would get attending a performance.

It is a play set somewhere in the anterooms of heaven, in a courtroom where the eternity destination is considered. It echoes with the words of the prayer of King's College London, which we said daily in Chapel, in which we remembered the “strict and solemn account which we must one day give before the judgement-seat of Christ”, although perhaps the courtroom of this play is not quiet the set up the authors of that prayer had in mind.

The play deals with an appeal hearing against the eternal damnation of Judas. Consideration of the fate of Judas is a powerful proxy for the wider question of the nature of God's love and mercy. Most of our traditional understandings of Judas' fate would appear to place him beyond the reach of God's love and mercy – but this is a scandalous conclusion, as if true then the God we believe to be infinite is in fact finite and the ramifications of this can quickly be an unravelling of anything worth believing in. But it is not actually that simple to grant Judas mercy, because then we risk creating a dynamic in which actions have no consequences, which don't seem right either.

The play is funny, the courtroom receives a range of characters, biblical, historical, fictional, most of whom are hamming it up for laughs, I enjoyed it, but if I am honest I didn't actually find much substance in it – until suddenly, toward the end, the tone changes, and perhaps the power of what happens next hits home in part from its juxtaposition with the fluff of the preceding bulk of the play.

We get an encounter between Jesus and Judas, there is intense anger – Judas is angry, unable to bear Jesus' words of kindness – there is some subtle use of biblical images, Jesus asks Judas to “feed my lambs” - words from the Gospel when Jesus restores Peter after his denial. But Judas slips away, back into a “catatonic state” - Jesus pleads “Please love me, Judas.” and you want to weep at Judas' response “I can't.”. The plays concluding action is Jesus washing the comatosed Judas' feet – a sign that even in the midst of our ongoing rejection Jesus will continue to love us.

Meanwhile, “Missing” plays with the interesting comparison between the 3 days that the boy Jesus was “lost” in Jerusalem (following a family passover visit to the city) and the 3 days between crucifixion and resurrection. The idea is interesting but I am not sure that the execution is entirely successful.

At moments Falaschi-Ray is highly imaginative in fleshing out the stories, especially with the childhood tale where the Gospel account is hardly even a sketch, and yet there were also a number of times where the narrative becomes clunky in order to shoe horn it into the biblical structure. Also I didn't actually feel the connections that were made between the two stories were particularly interesting – mostly it seems in the childhood tale we were just being given elaborate back stories to fairly insignificant details of the Gospel accounts of the Passion. We are also given a “plausible” scenario for the legend of Jesus' visit to England – which personally I found distracted from my ability to invest in the narrative.

The second part of the book, exploring the Passion, is more successful, and this success, such as it is, is largely independent of its pairing with the earlier part. The account of the Harrowing of Hell (somehow appropriately Chapter 13) gives we have another meeting of Jesus and Judas – but the moment of forgiveness is a little too easy...

“'Of course I forgive you. However, I can't help the fact that throughout the future you're going to have a really rubbish reputation.'

Judas smiled through his tears; at least Yeshua hadn't lost his sense of humour.”

There is something authentic that I like about the idea of Jesus making a quip like this at such a moment, but after the gut wrenching encounter of “the Last Days” it simply isn't enough.

And so after considering this two works where do we get to in relation to that central question about the love and mercy of God – both show God's desire for Judas, they reject any notion that there is a limit to love. However I think “Missing” is in danger of losing sight of consequences – it is just a little too tidy whereas “the Last Days” success is in showing that even with God's infinite love forgiveness is not easy. We can probably all think of times when someone we love has stretched our capacity to love them to the limit, some may even have times when their capacity was broken. Maybe it doesn't make sense to talk of stretching God's limitless love to the limit – but if ever that idea is intelligible it is within the encounter in “the Last Days” - and that seems the only way to reconcile our understanding of Judas.

Finding God in a Holy Place by Chris Cook

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This is an excellent book about the wonderful place that is Durham Cathedral. Yet it is not just about Durham Cathedral, the approach to encountering a place as holy is transferable, to other Cathedrals, to Churches large and small, indeed to any place which you choose to stop and seek an encounter.

Durham Cathedral is a familiar place to me, I was not just a student in Durham but also a regular worshipper at the Cathedral. It was at the Cathedral, mainly via Choral Evensong, that I established for myself the habit of regular worship. I am sure that this familiarity adds to the richness of the encounter I have with this book, for as Chris Cook draws different themes out of the various spaces of the Cathedral, I have a vivid memory of those spaces. However I do not think that familiarity with Durham is essential to make this book “useful”.

Durham is used as a case study, but most of the ideas are not tied to it as such. The first two chapters, “Finding a Holy Place” and “Finding God in a Holy Place”, are a “generic” introduction, and then the following chapters move through various spaces within the Cathedral. The reflections on some of the spaces are more transferable, for example those in the Nave can without any effort be read across to similar spaces elsewhere, but others perhaps need a little more work. For example, Cook gives a chapter over to the Feretory, the space around the tomb of St Cuthbert. While other Cathedrals have the remains of shrines, and some, such as St Alban's, are more complete that Cuthbert's, the space of the Feretory has a very particular character. It is a small and intimate room, a quality intensified by its setting within the vastness of the Cathedral. There will be equivalent spaces elsewhere but you may need to think a little harder in order to see the connection.

I particularly liked the reflections on the Galilee Chapel, it is my favourite part of the Cathedral, it has a character that it unlike the rest of the building – its columns are light and delicate in contrast to the solid and steadfast ones of the nave. It has the feel of spaces of the east – perhaps Orthodox, perhaps even a mosque, perhaps a contested space of Andalusia. As Cook writes “The Galilee Chapel is an ambiguous and paradoxical place.” It is usually fairly empty, overlooked by tourists. There is no one overriding focus to the Chapel, the different spaces within in interact. It is the place of Bebe's tomb, great scholar but also at times a little creative with the truth, a good storyteller, I think a afternoon spend in the sun shine listening to him spin a yarn would pass very quickly by.

The one aspect of the reflections which I didn't perhaps share was Cook's thoughts on the statue of Van Mildert, the last of the Prince Bishops, the founder of Durham University, and most importantly the namesake of my beloved college. I understand Cook's reaction to the cold marble of the statue, but I couldn't pass by without going and touching Van Mildert's shoe – the statue is raised so as you reach out the shoe is just at patting height - knowing Mildert was there in the Cathedral was a token of belonging. I think I found the same later in Lincoln, working and living at Bishop Grosseteste College (now University), there was a special nod of recognition when passing the Bishop's tomb, tucked away in the corner of a transept.

This is a delight of a book, I definitely enjoyed revisiting Durham in my mind, but always there are many good techniques for enriching my approach to other places that I visit.

And tango makes three by Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell, and Henry Cole

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According to "the internet" this is 2014's 3^rd most complained about book in US Libraries – which I naturally took as a higher recommendation that any amount of Booker Prizes etc...

It is a sweet little, true, story of two gay Penguins in a New York Zoo, who successfully hatch a spare egg they are given look after by the keepers.

Penguins are naturally cute and therefore I don't think the illustrator Henry Cole had to work too hard to provide an endearing set of images.

The story is told simply, I don't think it labours a “gay agenda”, but clearly sharing this story acts to normalise same-sex relationships – and if normalising such relationships makes you uncomfortable you are probably going to find yourself complaining to the library authorities.

Section 28 may feel like a distance memory, but I suspect many a school would still not stock this book, as dealing with complaints would not be “worth” the aggravation and risk of headlines in the local paper.