first night of the proms

A very interesting thing happened at the end of the first night of the proms: the conductor, Jiri Belohlavek, bowed to the orchestra. (Parable.)

A great deal is often made of the role of the President at Communion, or the Bishop, as the focus of unity, as the one who gathers God's people. The direction is often accordingly mis-construed as 'from the people to the President'. It often feels as if the president is the one with the power or authority, rather than all the people.

The great conductor of a famous orchestra last Friday night, Jiri Belohlavek, re-dressed the balance more correctly: he bowed to the orchestra, acknowledged (as he said in an interval interview) that it was not he who produced the sound and the music, but the players in the orchestra. His task was to enable them to play the music, to draw the music out of them. So the direction of encouragement is 'from the conductor to the orchestra'; the direction of music is 'from the orchestra'. The direction of a revelatory theology is 'from God to us'; the direction of our referential practice is to point 'from us to God'.

In the concert for Diana a week or two back, some of you will have seen the clip where Princess Diana visited a home for the blind, and one of the men wanted to feel the contours of Diana's face to get a sense of what she looked (and felt) like. One shot showed Diana kneeling on the ground in her stockinged feet at his desk, next to one of the luckiest people in the world that day (as he said), with his hands stroking, and then cupping both sides of Diana's face.

What no eye has seen... God has revealed to us through the Spirit...
...the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ...
...then we shall see face to face...
...we will see him as he is.

He must increase, but I must decrease.
Jesus got up from the table, took off his jacket and shirt, and tied a towel around himself.
Though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself...he humbled himself..even [to] death on a cross
Philip