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The
more I read Amia Srinivasan’s sermon from last Sunday, the more
brilliant I think it is. She talks about the ambiguity of experience:
being a stranger as opposed to being assimilated in a society, of
actually wanting to be an outsider and an insider at the same time.
Right at the end she mentions psychoanalysis as a further example of
this paradox in a reference that seems to be to Melanie
Klein’s work on the child’s conflicting relationship with its mother as
it experiences acceptance and rejection in the process of breast
feeding. By the age of four years the child can begin to come to terms
with this. But to be able to feel ambivalent
about someone is, for Kleinians, an enormous psychological achievement
and the first marker on the path to genuine maturity. Amia Srinivasan
said, ‘This is a desperate, unbearable situation. It is why we all, at
some level, have the urge to destroy those we
love, to assimilate the beloved into ourselves, to annihilate him or her
completely.’
Not
only does this give us an insight into the paradoxical nature of self,
but it provides a fresh model for exploring the big theological
questions of sin and redemption, our seemingly innate violence versus
the gospel of Love, and the grand paradox of the nature of God: the
creative one who stands apart and the one who suffers helplessly on the
cross. (Amia’s sermon is on http://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk) |
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| | Services
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Tuesdays & Thursdays
12.15pm Lunchtime Eucharist
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Sunday 28th February 2016
10.30am
Preacher: Revd Canon Brian Mountford
There will be Children’s Church during this service in the Old
Library; children are invited to leave together during the first hymn.
Music:
Palestrina, Missa Brevis
Henry Purcell, Jehova Quam Multi Sunt Hostes Mei
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| | Other forthcoming Events
— Check out our Facebook page: |
| | Forthcoming Concerts
Friday 26th February 8pm
The Oxford University Wind Orchestra:Programme includes Mendelssohn, Holst and Saint-Saens
£4/£8 online
£5/£10 at the door
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ouwo-hilary-term-concert-2016-tickets-21256735468
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Saturday 27th February 7.30pm
Queen's College Choir: Brahms Requiem
Tallis Spem in Alium
Motets by Howells & Bruckner £20/£12; £18/£10 (concessions); £5 (students)
www.ticketsoxford.com, 01865 305 305, Playhouse box office
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Sunday 28th February 5pm
Choir of St Hilda's and BISC
Mozart's 'Coronation' Mass (Ave Verum)
Free
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Monday 29th February 8pm
Christ Church Orchestra
Mozart: Symphony 29
Haydn: Cello Concerto in C Major
Hayden: Syphony 45
Tickets on the door: £5/3 ____
Tuesday 1st March 8pm
Oxford University Chorus
Bernstein: Chichester Psalms
& other sacred choral works
Tickets on the door: £8/5
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| | Poetry corner —
At Parting
Since we through war awhile must part
Sweetheart, and learn to lose
Daily use
Of all that satisfied our heart:
Lay up those secrets and those powers
Wherewith you pleased and cherished me these two years:
Now we must draw, as plants would,
On tubers stored in a better season,
Our honey and heaven;
Only our love can store such food.
Is this to make a god of absence?
A new-born monster to steal our sustenance?
We cannot quite cast out lack and pain.
Let him remain – what he may devour
We can well spare:
He never can tap this, the true vein.
I have no words to tell you what you were,
But when you are sad, think, Heaven could give no more.
- Anne Ridler (1912-2001)
Anne Ridler – poet, editor, playwright and mentee of TS Eliot – was also a member of the congregation of St Mary’s.
This
beautiful poem wears its rhyme scheme lightly. Its opening syntax is
slightly contorted, tiptoeing around the issue: ‘we through war awhile
must part’ is a more reluctant, less painful phrasing than ‘we must part
through war awhile’. The central image of love stored as a ‘tuber’ for
eking out in leaner times is an abiding one; love is also stored within
the poem for when we need to draw upon its sweetness. |
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