Christianity: Aesthetics: Spirituality: Life: Stuart and Moira Gray

Yes, Tintern is that and more, a true modern paradox. We now seek to preserve what the Reformation sought to destroy. Nothing has changed on the denominational front. Britain remains, officially, as committed to the Protestant expression of Christianity as it did under Henry VIII who desolved such monasteries. Queen Elizabeth remains head of the Church and the Pope no longer has any say in the political manoeuvrings in the affairs which governs this country. Yet we seek, as a nation, to preserve these monuments to a Roman Catholic form of belief and practice, and are proud to do so!.

Why? Can it purely be because they are part of our history, that which made us what we are today? Can it be that such ruins represent styles of architecture which need to be preserved? Here, true, is history. Here, true, is the splendid architecture of the 13-15th centuries set in an incomparable setting. Here, true, is the way mediaeval monasteries operated. That, in all probability, is what the conservationists would have us believe.

THE UNDERLYING MEANING OF TINTERN ABBEY
But that is not all which binds us to such a site and such imperatives do not need the preservation of such monuments. There remain many whole examples of such buildings and architecture that these ruins retain relative unimportance. I believe, however, that another dimension is involved in our wish to preserve these monuments. One merely needs to visit Tintern to understand why this could never be abandoned. Much of humanity is possessed of a soul which operates often unwittingly and beyond knowing conception, and which is aware, therefore, of another and spiritual dimension which oozes from such sites. Humanity is possessed of many attributes, not all of which are clearly defined, let alone understood. In our recent past Tintern has evoked deeper feelings thanks to our education system. Inevitably, at this point, one invokes Wordsworth and his poem:

"For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often times
The still, sad music of Humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects and all thought,
And rolls through all things."

WORDSWORTH AND 'NEW AGE' VALUES
For me Wordsworth was a progenitor of New Age philosophy (as well as modern scientist with his view of an interconnected Universe!). Through his imagination, meditation and insight he recognised the true value of Tintern, which is as alive today as it was in his time, indeed as it was in the minds of those who gave birth to Tintern, and probably, however unwittingly, in the minds of those who decided on its present form of conservation.

So what is this ephemeral spiritual truth? No less than the harmony of God and Humanity through the spiritual use of natural space and human architecture conditioned by liturgy, the unification of human endeavour to expose a spiritual presence within the ordered world of God’s creation. The harmony of the architecture to the surroundings of the Wye valley, the feelings of a presence within the site, all the address this truth.

If one is sensitive enough there remains an otherness about traversing these remains. Whatever the excesses in Church practices which the Reformation sought to destroy, the patina of true spirituality and endeavour remains forever etched in the stones of these buildings. Even if sensitivity is absent there remains vague feelings of peace and otherness leading to a great relaxation.

So, what physically happens? A great slowing of mind and heartbeat coupled with a feeling of timelessness, not of an ethereal eternity but a human timelessness based upon an expansion of one’s being to encompass our own meagre concept of past, present and future conditioned by the form and beauty of the ruins and its setting, a stillness born of being within a site which is so ‘other’ in terms of time and space that we possess no finite handle with which to either confine or define it.

THE LITURGY OF SILENCE IN SUCH REMAINS UNITES HUMANITY TO GOD
Its very silence is an expression of true liturgy, that attempt at union between humanity and God. It is devoid of those devices which would colour or restrict our communion with the divine, the poor expression of even poorer modern inclusive, bland, committee-orientated liturgy, the dull meaningless sermon, the need for modern ‘songs from the shows’ hymns and anthems, or the need to express Christianity as a modern, socially aware construct. Even cathedrals fall prey to this in their desire to fulfil the inclusive nature of their worship but based upon ‘sound’ middle-class principles of a quasi non-confrontational ‘everyone in their proper place’ in terms of liturgy, chapter membership, outreach, even expressions of music. So often we are presented with the expressed finitude of our existence where the very political, liturgical and social babble of the limited and transient nature of the human persona clouds the spirituality of God’s creation in terms of nature and our use of its building blocks.

True, Tintern probably once possessed this and in abundance, but this has been stripped away. We are no longer aware of such human tensions which have existed throughout all finite existence. All we are left with is the expression of aspirations, those of the founder and those of the builders, the interdependence of their aspiring stone and God's gift of nature, but with a subtle difference.

The peace which pervades this place invades the core of one’s being, that of prayer, of devotion, of worship, indeed of the acknowledgement of a Divine principle which starts outside ourselves but which strikes an unsung chord within our being. Subconsciously we resonate in tune with it. All else becomes meaningless to us.

How can this inform us? Jeremiah had the answer. “Be still and know that I am God”. It is within such stillness that we know our path to wholeness of being, the integration of all the elements of our complex existence. And wholeness leads to spiritual awareness, and spiritual awareness leads to God and our integration with the God-within. Only then do we become the complete human beings which is our destiny. It has taken some 14 billion years to reach such an understanding. How true is this search for each of us?

Immediately I hear the cry, “what about music, art, literature, liturgy, the socially cohesive message of the gospels, the forgiveness of sins, the need for redemption and to accept Jesus as our saviour”, in fact the whole panoply of modern Christianity?

Again: “Be still and know that I am God”. God alone remains for us, as for Jesus, the focal point of our journey, our search for the meaning of the universe. All else is the outward expression of our physical and cultural diversity, states of existence necessary to our physical, emotional and psychological well-being on earth, yet mere props of our preparation to communion with our God. Yes, we may be inspired by outward artistic expressions of faith, the music, art, architecture, literature and liturgy which elevates us. Yes, we may feel the injustice of poverty and third world debt. Yes, we may feel the need for redemption, for a cathartic sense of forgiveness. All these may lift us from an earthly to a heavenly plane, but once there they have to stop, be silenced. Ultimate communion with God is on a one to one basis where we are stripped bare of such trappings of our finite existence, stripped bare of our emotions and all feelings generated by our physical existence. Tintern reigns in such expression.

So what has gone wrong? Why has Christianity fragmented itself into so many disparate states of existence, often in competition with one another? Why is the battleground of Christianity being fought out in the back streets of our physical left hemispherical thinking rather than in the foreground of the spiritual multi-dimensional planes of our right hemispherical thoughts. As a former Cathedral Organist, a theologian and head of religious studies in a secondary school I find the reason easy to understand.

This will be the subject of my next thoughts. Meanwhile find an holistic space like Tintern and tune up those meditational skills. They remain the indesoluble and basic aspects of all true religions.

The backdrops to most of the web pages are taken from my photos of Tintern Abbey