What is in Kelvin's Head?

Jericho, Berlin and what wall next?

10/11/2014

I remember going on a school trip to Germany when I was a young teenager. I don’t remember that much about the visit to be honest, but I do remember the wall.

We were not in Berlin but we were staying near enough to the border between East Germany and West Germany to warrant a visit. Indeed the teachers organising the trip clearly thought that it was something that we all needed to see.

It made a big impression. I can still remember being told that we all had to behave – no larking around and no running into the grass near the wall lest we risk being shot.

That in itself was shocking.

I remember the stillness around as we climbed up a lookout tower to look over into this other country – a strange place which you could be shot at for meddling with.

And looking into the other side, we could see members of the military looking back out at us in the West.

What were we really each looking at?

In many ways I think that the anniversary this weekend of the fall of the wall should have been more of a celebration for the whole of Europe. Even those tiresome Eurosceptics in the Tory party might have been expected to have got on board for a celebration of the end of the Cold War and the fall of repressive communism.

The incredible thing to my mind is that something which seemed so fixed, so immovable has gone. How often we need to be reminded that things can change.

The Berlin Wall wasn’t just a physical wall, it was something which existed in the politics of Europe and something which existed in our minds too. The physical represented something much more.

So, what walls need still to fall. Where does Joshua’s trumpet still need to sound?

Inevitably, thinking about the Berlin Wall one’s mind turns to the wall separating Israel from Palestine and cutting right through people’s lives. Thoughts turn too to Korea.

Berlin reminds us that such divisions are not eternal and that things can change utterly.

And there will be mental walls which we can barely recognise that will yet fall too.

Freedom isn’t just a passport to the West.

[Photo Credit: Gavin Stewart – CC Copyright Attribution 2.0]

Berlin Wall

6 responses to “Here or there?”

Gary

01/04/2007

Up there. High altar. No doubt.

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Tom Allen

01/04/2007

I am very much with Richard Giles on this one – there should liturgically only be one main altar – ideally this is achieved by romoving the former High altar and dedicating that space to some other purpose – where that is not possible as in historic cathedrals then it should be left dormant (covered in a simple cloth perhaps) and only the altar which is being used for worship should be dressed since this is in fact THE altar.

Despite all the reservations about removing former altars in the end it solves long-term problems, and provides a single visual focus for Eucharistic worship. At times when a high altar is needed then the new altar can moved there.

This kind of fuzziness illustrates that our liturgical practice has become dominated by hertiage criteria.

I am about to replace our main altar with something moveable and aesthetically more appropriate, but am facing a Registrars ruling that the current altar (and former eastward facing number more recently provided with wheels and moved to the chancel!) must be burnt, and that the wood frontal cannot be used for a screen.

Dont’ we get ourselves tied up in knots!
Tom

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Stewart

01/04/2007

A thought came to my mind this afternoon. At the Creed we all face east. This results in the choir turning their back on the Nave Altar and in most cases put the High Altar in their sight.

Considering Tom’s comments, another thought thinking about some English Cathedrals which have multiple altars around the building, it is not usually possible to see more than one at a time. Some have a chapel behind the High Altar – behind a screen.

Turning back to St Mary’s – all the action at the 10:30 service is centred and focused around the Nave Altar. However there is still the High Altar, the Pheobe Traquair Reredos and Gwyneth Leach mural of Our Lady at the East End. To my mind their presence enhances the worship around the Nave Altar and does not detract from it.

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Andrew

02/04/2007

The Altar is a table, where we commemorate a meal together. Clearly (to my mind) we should all be sitting round it, as we do (more or less) at present. The table reminds me that Jesus instituted the Last Supper when he was among us (HERE), not somewhere else (THERE).

I very much hope that the Altar in St. Mary’s can be left where it is.

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kelvin

03/04/2007

It seems to me curious that the practice that I inherited was to light and dress the high altar whilst using the nave altar. It makes no sense, except perhaps to highlight St Mary’s puzzling parallel worlds of deep conservatism mingled with radical liberalism.

Whist tending to agree with Andrew’s sentiments, it is worth remembering that the nave altar could hardly be said to have stayed in one place these last 20 years.

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Elizabeth

17/04/2007

Here. Both. Loving the paradox.

But maybe I only say that beccause the only church I’ve regularly worshiped in where there are clearly two visible altars is St Mary’s and that’s what I’m used to. I’ve never found it distracting that the high altar is dressed and lit, even though the nave altar is where the action is, so to speak. But then, would I notice if the high altar wasn’t dressed and lit? Probably not.

I do love the nave altar, peripatetic as it is!

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