I’ve been doing some sketches for an ikon I’ve got it narrowed down to two – Ignatius of Antioch (one I’ve always wanted to do and never have), and a Theotokos.

Who knows, I might do both.

Yesterday the Times carried an article stating that Cardinal O’Connor “called for the National Gallery to surrender a Renaissance masterpiece [the baptism of Christ by Piero della Francesca] – because it is a “work of faith” rather than art.” He went on to comment that works such as this 15th century painting ought to be restored to their proper context – a church. Hmmmm . . . .

This is a tricky one. The Cardinal points to something I’ve been talking about here and that is that religious art is not merely “about” faith, but it participates in the life of that community. I remember well the first time I saw an extensive icon exhibit in Washington DC many years ago – how strange I felt seeing these images disconnected from the congregations and homes in which they were an integral part of living the faith. In this light, I think that I can well understand the Cardinal’s overarching point.

On the other hand . . . . As Rachel Campbell-Johnston highlighted in her response to the Cardinal’s comments the idea is a bit mad: “our British clerics are not as rich as Medici popes. Surely the Church has more important priorities than paying for the sort of security systems and climate control mechanisms that an artwork of this enormous historical calibre would need if it were not to mildew and crumble, end up the subject of a ransom demand or be attacked by some attention-grabber.” That is to say that many of these wonderful spiritually charged images would have been lost long ago – especially in England where iconoclasm destroyed vast swathes of the country’s cultural heritage – had they remained in, or been restored to Roman churches across the land. What is more – would they necessarily go to “Roman” Catholic churches, or would they naturally go to Anglican (“English Catholic”) buildings? So now we’re off to the races fighting over a painting that was meant to instill in the viewer higher ideals and a better approach to his/her fellows.

Cambell-Johnston makes another equally valid point, that is what is to say that in a fine museum like the National Gallery one cannot pause, reflect, and be refreshed by the experience? She notes: “if the Archbishop thinks that just because a picture is in a church, people will recognise its specific religious import, then he clearly has not been to St Peter’s in recent years. The Angelus bell rings. Do the crowd bend their heads in respectful silence? No. The cameras keep whirring, the jaws go on champing gum. In fact, the possession of a great artwork is more likely to lead to the desecration of a sacred space.” I was in St. Peters last year and her point is well chosen. I remember standing before the relics of St. Peter – and in the din, and the shoving, the clicking, and whirring, over the noise of audio guides and iPods – it was well nigh on impossible to just have a moment to reflect and appreciate this one place. But you don’t have to go to Rome to see Cambell-Johnston’s point in action – one need only visit St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey (and its Roman counterpart the cathedral) to experience the same concept. These are not so much “sacred” spaces anymore, but with their unique architecture, and the many pieces of art within, they are themselves works of art – tourist attractions. I’m not suggesting that they ought not to be so – they should, indeed they must be, because they say as much about the history and heritage of our society as they do about the religious faith that produced them. But there is an unmistakable “desacrilisation” that one experiences in these places.

Actually, one witnesses a tension between the desire to encounter the sacred, and the desire to encounter great works of creativity; both among the crowds, and even – within ones self. If anything what this article and response raises is an equally interesting discussion about the nature of sacred space. What constitutes sacred space? Can it be temporary? Can an item that is “sacred” make the space around it sacred? Likewise can displaying a sacred item in a “profane” space desacrilise that work?

Can these works, now disconnected from their original context, continue to participate in the life of faith and not become desacrilised images “about” religion? In their current place – in the National Gallery – can they not work in a new, possibly even better way to draw people to re-consider what it means to believe?

Last week I posted on Menachem Wecker’s essay in which he explores how art can be a media for reconsidering faith in a creative, and consumerist society. This week, Mark Lawson writing for the Guardian’s CIF Belief section delves into the interplay of art and faith.

There have been a number of instances in the recent past when art depicting Christian themes has been deemed offensive by some believers, but their attempts to have it censured have been brushed aside. In contrast, similar artistic productions centering on Islam have been removed, or shut down. Lawson explores this dichotomy.

I’ve been mulling over Wecker’s proposition that art can be a means of communicating ideas about faith if employed effectively – and Lawson’s essay is a timely new tack on the idea. Even in Britain, where churches are emptying as fast as Northern Rock, christian imagery remains a powerful medium around which atheists, agnostics, and lapsed Catholics build stories, and express important, moving ideas.

Recently I’ve been enjoying the Guardian’s Comment Is Free: Belief section which can only be found online.

I have a confession to make – I would be in ecstasy if every individual OC/IC believer had a blog – and added something to it at least once every two weeks. My overarching reason stems from an idea that I’ve been banging on about for at least four years now that is the simple question: “Where are our voices?”

When I survey the net I find dozens of Episcopal, Jewish, Roman, Muslim, Presbyterian, Gnostic, and Emergent sites and blogs – produced by thoughtful individuals, and cooperatives. These sites, even the ones I strongly disagree with, are often a joy to read – because they encourage my own reflection, they inspire my own writing, and they make me consider ideas and issues that would otherwise have never passed across my desk.

One thing that stands out among these blogs, is a conversation among adherents to that particular tradition (a conversation which often spills across a series of blogs from that particular tradition) about what it means to be “Episcopalian” “Roman” “Muslim” or “Gnostic” now and how particular events within that community shift and re-shape that sense of self understanding. This element of the conversation draws in voices from the whole spectrum of their particular tradition.

Faith blogs demonstrate that there is a lively engagement with issues of faith and praxis going on at all levels across the spectrum of religious expression. And while blogging does have some significant drawbacks (some of which I’ve mentioned before and others I plan to explore soon), it seems to me that the benefits substantially outweigh them.

What is sad to me is that it seems to me that that there are, by proportion, so few OC/IC blogs. I wonder why, and again ask where are our voices? I have some suspicions on this point, but can’t quite put my finger on the “whole” picture yet.

Maybe the best thing to do is to put forward some of the reasons why I think we ought to encourage widespread blogging within the OC/IC movement. So rather than ask, where are our voices, I’ll answer the question: Why blog?

Networking – making connections with other OC/IC believers is a natural by-product of blogging. If those of us who already blog were to highlight other OC/IC bloggers, and include links to their sites on ours, we’d quickly create an easy resource for other OC/IC folk, as well as those seeking to know more, or better understand us (particularly the curious who just cant understand why we simply aren’t crushed under the weight of our obvious and overwhelming heresy).

Blogging allows OC/IC and non-OC/IC folk to see the wide variety of things we reflect on, debate, and care about as individual believers, and within our communities. This means that OC/IC folk see that the majority of us are not interested in ecclesiastical hemlines, jewels, broom cupboard cathedrals, and slinging anathemas at one another like high-speed sloshy lugies – that we really do care about our faith, our tradition, and yes, believe it or not, about one another.

Blogging allows for an ongoing exchange of ideas – one that (in theory) is not hurried or constrained by time. It allows for a exercises of “thinking out loud” with the audience – and through that conversation encouraging reflection on related issues, and refinement of ideas, which in turn, perhaps, in the fullness of time, leads to a fuller exposition of an idea in another format, such as a published work, a video, an art installation, a study day in your local community, a conference, or inviting a guest speaker to your parish to talk about the issues.

Let us not forget that scholarship, and the free exchange of ideas, is a core feature of the founding ideals of the OC/IC movement. The conversation through blogging has the potential of encouraging scholarship, something that in many respects is lacking in our movement. Rather, let me qualify that – we have plenty of scholars in the community, but they are largely unknown outside their immediate circle of friends and acquaintances. We need to be cultivating new scholarship, while at the same time encouraging more of the existing scholars within our ranks to become more public.

So, I blog, and I want to encourage all OC/IC people to blog about our faith and our tradition, because it encourages networking, it publicises what we are thinking (and doing), it encourages the exchange of ideas, it cultivates scholarship, and through scholarship – collaboration. Blogging in short is an easy way for us to get our voices heard not only within our own community, but also within the wider milieu of contemporary Christian thinking.

Here then, is the link to the “publishing arm” of our friends at the ICCC in Philadelphia – at present they’ve produced a couple of prayerbooks and their own collection of canons.

We’ve tidied up our LULU storefront, in preparation for some upcoming projects. In addition, a second edition, as it were, of the canons is now available. Three canons have been substantively altered (actually this was done at a synod meeting over a year ago – we’ve just been to busy to actually “publish” the changes); and a number of grammatical and formatting problems have been resolved. Additionally, this newest edition is available as a downloadable file.

More OC/IC writers are writing and publishing – via LULU and through Apocryphile Press I’ll highlight more of these projects soon.

In a post two weeks ago I raised the question of when personhood begins. Andrew Brown, writing for the Guardian the other day describes a debate between the secular philosopher John Harris, and Professor David Jones of St. Mary’s College (Roman Catholic) which raised an even more useful (and perhaps even more unanswerable) question: what gives that “life” value?

The scenario, as Brown describes it goes something like this: at one end of the birth canal it is an embryo, and can be destroyed, at the other end – in the world – it is a valued human being. Nothing happens in transit to impart value on that life – so what does, and where does it begin?

Of course in this scenario there is that sense of liminality I raised in the previous post – when the “life” is neither human, nor not human. But Brown ends with a very interesting point:

“It seems to me that one of the reasons that a moral philosopher might postulate God is that it doesn’t make much sense to talk about things being valuable and worthwhile if you aren’t prepared to suggest to whom or what they are valuable or worthwhile. This is where the God of orthodox Christianity comes in handy, because he is by definition the only being who can value everything entirely for its own sake. Everything else in the universe – possibly everything in the universe – finds other things valuable and worthwhile in as much as they serve its purposes.”

The natural follow up question, albeit an exceptionally scholastic one, in relation to “personhood” and “value” is: at which point in the process does God assign value to this “life”?

If, “personhood” and “value” are assigned at the moment of conception (sperm & egg fusing) then we ought to also consider for a moment the effect of the biology involved. Each one of us (unless you are fraternal twins) exists at the expense of other “lives” that were naturally destroyed in the womb – if we accept that they too were “valued” or “persons” then it is not unreasonable to ask why they were destroyed.

As I’ve said previously – this cannot be reduced to black and white answers, and polarized positioning – indeed this is an object lesson in the sacramental way of life – we stand in the mystery, in that liminal space, celebrating the challenges of discernment, enjoying that little bit of wonder and awe in the process.

There are various ways that we “commune” with people not physically present at liturgical celebrations – and by this I mean that we establish, or re-enforce our relationship with them – this is, afterall what sacramentalism is all about – connecting with another.

Inspired by Jordan Stratford’s recent posting of the Advent Conspiracy vid on Facebook, I would like to propose an ISM Christmas Communion so to speak. It dawns on me that with the multitude of small communities and isolated individuals in the movement this is an opportunity for us to share in one communal event, and make an act of communion with “the other” the stranger, the unknown person.

My proposal is simple – to get as many parishes/communities, and isolated individuals across the OC/IC/ISM spectrum as possible to choose a charity (one that helps the poor, the sick, the lonely), and make a communal gift to that charity in commemoration of the Incarnation. The gift does not have to be money – if you or your community are lucky enough to be near to a centre or organisation that helps local people – it could be a commitment of time (and who knows it may actually start a whole new expression of ministry in your community).

I think it would be great if, for those communities and individual clergy and laity who have web pages and blogs, we could have a blog-badge and an agreed upon tag so that it becomes a demonstration of communion and cooperation within the OC/IC/ISM community; as well as an encouragement to more of our compatriots to join in the project. Because there are so many of us, hidden away (or hiding – grin), even by personal contact and word of mouth I’m not sure we’d reach everyone . . . .well, maybe John Plummer can (sorry John, that was just too easy – he he he).

Additionally – many charities now have a way to donate online – those communities and individuals with a web presence could possibly “up the ante” by putting a direct link to this facility on their site.

We don’t have to pick the same charity. The idea is that we come together, for the sole purpose of collectively making a donation to a charity that we’ve chosen with our local community during, say the period 6 – 24 December. I think it would be helpful if as various communities chose their charity they shared it at some central place – perhaps here, perhaps a blog/web page (which could be set up in a matter of minutes) – solely to give those communities having trouble deciding inspiration.

To my mind the beauty of this is that with the wide spectrum of praxis and belief in our movement – this is something we can all do together without ever stepping on one another’s toes. Peace on earth, good will towards your fellow ISM!

If you or your community want to join in – please leave a note in the comments below.

Throughout my 20 years of active OC/IC life I’ve encountered dozens of attempts by individuals and groups to forge a unified OC/IC (now ISM) “body”; particularly in the US. Every one of them fails miserably, and – at least in those cases I’ve closely observed – creates more division, and at least three more “synods” in the process. Getting indie folk to come together under one roof is an exercise in herding cats . . . . angry cats! We get that now.

But . . . .

What is also interesting to me is the amount of cooperation and friendship that flourishes in our motley movement; friendships, which emerge in the strangest ways, and under the most curious circumstances. This . . . working method . . . shall we say, is I think stronger than any “institution” we might craft, and has the tendency to transcend the silliness of “jurisdiction”, praxis, and the variety of theologies we see waxing and waning across the indie spectrum throughout the years. In his interview for the Indie Voices Archive John Plummer notes – “we all need friends” and indeed we do, and friendship – I think is stronger than a formal association for one simple reason – friendship is sacramental; and we are a sacramental people.