Trinity - Dancing with Angels

Trinity - Dancing with Angels

Preached at Hertford College Oxford

“This grace of the Holy Spirit enables them... to dance with the angels.” St Basil the Great On the Holy Spirit (Divine Office Bk II p.670)

I went to the sort of old fashioned boys grammar school that taught ballroom dancing to the Upper Sixth. It was the nearest we got in the 1960s to sex education.

We hated it. Yet there was, and is, something immensely enjoyable in the social patterns of dancing: the partnerships, the community, the shared knowledge, the complementarity of the steps, the public intimacy.

What else could explain the resurgence of that absurdity known as Line Dancing? Or the fact that almost as many people voted in Graham Norton’s Strictly Dance Fever as in the General Election!

Some have argued that contemporary, club-scene dancing is yet another sign of postmodernity: individualism and self-expression; no rules and no partners; the breakdown of social coherence and mutual responsibility.

They see the difference between modernity and postmodernity as the difference between Foxtrot and Industrial Techno; The Little House on the Prairie and Sex in the City; or, if you’re into it, the difference between the original Star Trek & Deep Space Nine.

But clubbing is supremely a social pursuit with codified rules of conduct and dress, not obvious to the outsider - but that is why they are an ‘outsider’. It serves the age-old purposes of waltzes and Morris dancing; of Stripping the Willow and Charleston; of ballet and ballroom.

Wherever we turn in the world, in whatever age, there is an instinct both to worship and to dance. Perhaps with the exception of the Southern Baptists. The old Texan joke: “Why are Southern Baptists against sex standing up? Because it may lead to dancing!”

So what of St Basil’s contention that “This grace of the Holy Spirit enables us... to dance with the angels”.

In the early discussions of the church fathers, one of the words used to describe the interrelatedness of the Trinity was ‘perichoresis’: the inter-animation of the persons of the Trinity.

The late Professor Colin Gunton at King’s London took up the word again more recently. In “The One, The Three and The Many” he writes that the word ‘perichoresis’ is “heavy with spatial and temporal conceptuality, involving movement, recurrence… and a dynamic, mutual reciprocity.”

We might put it more simply than the good Professor - dancing. The ‘choresis’ of perichoresis, comes from a similar root to choreography - the mapping of dances.

The dynamic of the Christian God, whom we honour today as Blessed Trinity, is the loving dance of eternity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit caught up in the wordless communication which we mimic in all our human dances.

You find it in mediaeval poetry. In the Christmas Carol, Tomorrow shall be my Dancing Day, as Christ talks about his incarnation:

Then was I born of a virgin pure,
Of her I took fleshly substance;
Thus was I knit to man’s nature,
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing, O my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

Or here is Evelyn Underhill writing in the middle of the First World War in Theophanies:

Heaven’s not a place…
No! ’tis a dance
Where love perpetual,
Rhythmical,
Musical,
Maketh advance
Loved one to lover.

Then of course there is that old Shaker favourite, Lord of the Dance:

Dance then wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance says he…

And as we are drawn into the sacred choreography, so we take on the characteristics of the other dancers in the Trinity. Dancing is a great act of solidarity, of togetherness. That’s part of the buzz of clubbing, of dancing, of being part of the throng of people.

And in that solidarity with the Holy Trinity, the fruit of the Spirit produces in us the traits of the Father and the Son: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Then the charismata, the gifts of the Spirit, reproduce in us the works of the Father and the Son.

So together as the people of God we bring healing and wholeness, wisdom and truth, freedom and justice to a world that remembers how to dance, but has forgotten why it dances.

I had a message on Facebook yesterday from one my old students. His fellow students all called him affectionately Gammy Gav because he had a wonky leg. He never wanted to come dancing with us. (I taught a course on theology and culture and it was de rigeur to go clubbing on Friday night.)

We finally persuaded him, but he stood at the edge, watching. Then a gaggle of girls pulled him into the dance - and he danced!

And he realized that we all look a bit gammy when we’re dancing. And he didn’t look too gammy at all! It worked wonders for his self-esteem.

The God we worship, the Holy Trinity, is a loving fellowship of three in one.
He is not remote and alone, but an intimate community. They are so wrapped up in each other, that they are indistinguishable. One in three and three in one.

But not so wrapped up that they have no time for us. Easter was when Jesus the Son, came to call us into the dance of the Trinity.

And although we feel all unworthy, and spiritually akimbo, gammy, in comparison, yet God the Father’s love draws us into the fellowship, into the dance.

And as we are caught up in the joy of the Blessed Trinity, we are transformed into the likeness of God: we become noble humankind and not brutish animals. Or as St Basil puts it, with great theological daring:

"So is their joy unending… so do they acquire likeness to God, so - most sublime of all - do they themselves become divine."

Ezra Pound once remarked: “Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance.”

Christianity begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the unpredictable dynamic of the Holy Trinity.

So, don’t sit around the edges of the dance: the cynical onlookers of church life. We have enough of those. You’ll atrophy! You have been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

“And this grace of the Holy Spirit enables you... to dance with the angels.”

Mary Magdalene, Sex & Spiritual desire

Feast of St Mary Magdalene, July 22nd

Song of Solomon 3.1-4; Psalm 42; 2 Corinthians 5. 14-17; John 20.1-2, 11-18 “I will seek him whom my soul loves.” Song of Solomon 3.2 Why do I have two songs going round in my head, one by Gershwin and one by Cole Porter, when I think of today’s saint? Well the first is the Ira & George Gershwin song “Let’s call the whole thing off” recorded by Fred Astair in 1937.

You like potato and I like potato, You like tomato and I like tomato; Potato, potato, tomato, tomato! Let's call the whole thing off!

Is it Magdalene (Magdalen), or Maudlin? The answer is relatively simple. If it’s an Oxford or Cambridge College, then it’s pronounced the tearfully sentimental way – maudlin, for that is how the name was pronounced in the 15th century when both colleges were founded, and indeed, the tearful Mary was the origin of the word maudlin. (There was a huge cult of Mary Magdalene in England in the 15th & 16th century and more churches were dedicated to her than to the Blessed Virgin Mary.) (The extra ‘e’, by the way, on the end of the Cambridge College name was probably a 19th century affectation, using the continental spelling to distinguish it for postal purposes from the Other Place.) Magdalene, is the pronunciation if it is today’s saint or a church dedicated to her, or a road named after her or a nearby church. Now Fr Anthony has outlined the biblical material we have about this Mary on the front of today’s Weekly Sheet, and I’m not going to repeat that. (See below) However, the church has a long tradition of conflating three, almost certainly different, women: this Mary Magdalene, exorcised of seven devils by Jesus and consequently, as a woman of means, a financial supporter, present at the Resurrection as we read in today’s Gospel; then there is Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus; and finally, the woman who was a great sinner and anointed our Lord’s feet and wiped them dry with her hair, often reputed to have been a prostitute, although there is no evidence of this. It is this woman who is so often pictured voluptuously by artists, as in the Titian on the front of today’s service booklet. And this takes us on to the second song that goes round in my head: Cole Porter’s 1928 hit, much bowdlerized since, “Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.”

Birds do it, bees do it; Even educated fleas do it…

Which prompted me to add a verse:

In Knightsbridge bars, debutantes do it; In the Sloane Club maiden aunts do it…

Although I’m sure that can’t be true, because I was once told that in Knightsbridge, ‘sex’ were what the coalman delivered your coal in… The readings today have a theme running through them, that brings together the different aspects of Mary Magdalene as she is traditionally understood: the transformation of love, longing and lust, through penitence and tears, into the new creation of spiritual desire and thirst. Noli me tangere: ‘do not touch me’ says Jesus to Mary; look but do not touch. This is the erotic longing of the lover for the beloved, which we read in the Song of Songs. Or in today’s Psalm: “Like as the hart desireth the waterbrook, so longeth my soul after thee, O God.” (Ps 42.1) It is at once a physical and spiritual longing, which we hear caught in the very English restraint of Herbert Howell’s setting of the Psalm in the Offertory motet. Consider these two definitions of sexuality and spirituality for a moment.

Sexuality - of the essence of ‘being’ - knowing and being known – longing for connectedness, intimacy, absorption into the beloved.

And:

Spirituality - of the essence of ‘being’ - knowing and being known – longing for connectedness, intimacy, absorption into the beloved.

Looked at in this way, they are the same. It is hardly surprising then, that the Bible is full of graphic sexual imagery: in Genesis; the Song of Solomon; the Psalms; the Prophets; Jesus; Paul; the Revelation of St John… the sexual and the sensual run through the Bible, and the metaphor is taken up by many spiritual writers. But it is more than a metaphor. Human sexuality and intimacy are a reflection of the spiritual bond within the Trinity; a bond which we are drawn into through Christ’s passionate love for us. It is part of being made in the image of the triune God. Now in some centuries and in some parts of the church, this juxtaposition of sexuality and spirituality has all been too much, and so a sort of dualism has arisen, in which human sexuality has become the demon, and pure spiritual love the ideal. So the Virgin Mary becomes the pattern, and any life less virginal is regarded as second best. This sort of theology is deeply ingrained into many of us, and still produces inner tensions, and as we know, theological struggles in the wider church. It is a rich vein for the poetic. Here is John Donne wrestling with his feelings and longings, in Sonnet xiv:

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee, and bend Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. I, like an usurpt towne, to another due, Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end, Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue. Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine, But am betroth’d unto your enemie: Divorce mee, untie, or break that knot againe, Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free, Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

I used to say, to the alarm of some of my students in my spirituality classes, that you will never be at ease with your spirituality, until you are at ease with your sexuality. For some had naively thought that if they became more spiritual, it would sort out their turbulent inner struggle with the sexual. But as celibate monks and nuns have observed through the centuries, there is a terrible irony, that as spiritual desire grows, so does sexual desire. The old abbot was once asked by a young monk when he would be free from all these sexual thoughts. He pondered a moment and then replied: “About 5 minutes after you die.” It is not coincidental that the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon was written by a man that Scripture tells us had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And they were not all platonic, political alliances. At another level, it is not surprising that people turn to the church, to the spiritual, for hatches, matches and dispatches. These are times of heightened emotional and physical awareness: the intimacy of marriage which Scripture likens to the bond between Christ and his church; the mystery of a child springing from within; the wrench of death and physical parting. Only as we realise that the physical and sensual and emotional are part of our spiritual relationship with God, will we grow in our love and desire for more of God, the mysterious beloved, whom we long to hold, like Mary, but cannot. Jesus tells Mary not to touch him. It is not the touch itself that is inappropriate, for later he invites Thomas to touch him. But it is a signalling that the relationship has changed, for her and for us who follow. The human longing to touch and hold those whom we love is but a shadow of the new intimacy of Jesus with his people. He will send the Holy Spirit to dwell within us; there will be a deeper union of God with us which transcends the limitations of human relationships. Here, at this Table, our hunger and thirst for the beloved is both satisfied and yet still inadequate. We rightly continue to long for a physical presence of Jesus. There is a symbolic physical closeness as we take Christ into our own flesh in bread and wine. And yet we know, that until we are united with him in the life to come, our Christian pilgrimage, like that of Mary Magdalene, will always be driven by desire. Our spiritual life will be characterized by the quest of all the saints: “I will seek him whom my soul loves.” Song of Solomon 3.2 Weekly Sheet notes Mary Magdalene is described, both in the canonical New Testament and in the New Testament apocrypha, as a devoted disciple of Jesus. She is considered by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican churches to be a saint, with a feast day of 22nd July. Her name means ‘Mary of Magdala’, after a town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. The life of the historical Mary is a subject of ongoing debate and popular interest in her was heightened in the book and film The Da Vinci Code, each loaded with dubious and inaccurate historical assertions. In Luke 8:2 Mary is mentioned as one of the women who ‘provided for Jesus and the twelve disciples out of their means.’ The book also tells the story of an exorcism on Mary that cast out seven demons. These women, who earlier ‘had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities,’ later accompanied Jesus on his last journey to Jerusalem (Matthew 27:55; Mark 15:41; Luke 23:55) and were witnesses to the Crucifixion. Mary remained there until the body was taken down and laid in a tomb prepared for Joseph of Arimathea. In the early dawn of the first day of the week Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary the mother of James, (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; Gospel of Peter 12), came to the sepulchre with sweet spices to anoint the body. They found the sepulchre empty but saw the ‘vision of angels’ (Matthew 28:2-5). As the first witness to the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene went to tell Peter and John, (John 20:1-2), gaining her the epithet ‘apostle to the apostles’ and again immediately returned to the sepulchre. She remained there weeping at the door of the tomb. According to the New Testament, she was the first witness of the Resurrection appearances of Jesus, though at first she did not recognise him (John 20). One tradition concerning Mary Magdalene says that following the death and resurrection of Jesus, she used her position to gain an invitation to a banquet given by Emperor Tiberius Caesar. When she met him, she held a plain egg in her hand and exclaimed “Christ is risen!” Caesar laughed, and said that Christ rising from the dead was as likely as the egg in her hand turning red while she held it. Before he finished speaking, the egg in her hand turned a bright red, and she continued proclaiming the Gospel to the entire imperial house – hence, Easter Eggs!

Trinity Sunday 2006

Trinity - Dancing with Angels

“This grace of the Holy Spirit enables them... to dance with the angels.” St Basil the Great On the Holy Spirit (Divine Office Bk II p.670)

This reading in the Divine Office comes up each year as we move from rejoicing in the Resurrection to welcoming the Spirit at Pentecost and then on into the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Each year it strikes me afresh.

I went to the sort of old fashioned grammar school that taught ballroom dancing to the Upper Sixth. We used to get together with Worthing High School for Girls. The Amanda Foxtrot was the nearest we ever got in those days to sex education. We tried to be bolshy and to dislike it, but it was quite fun.

There is something immensely enjoyable in the social patterns of dancing: the partnerships, the community, the shared knowledge, the complementarity of the steps, the public intimacy.

Wherever we turn in the world, in whatever age, there is an instinct to worship and to dance. With the exception of the Southern Baptists. The old Episcopalian joke puts it well: “Why are Southern Baptists against sex standing up? Because it may lead to dancing!”

So St Basil’s contends that “This grace of the Holy Spirit enables us... to dance with the angels”.

In the early discussions of the church fathers, one of the words used to describe the interrelatedness of the Trinity was ‘perichoresis’: the inter-animation of the persons of the Trinity.

The ‘choresis’ of perichoresis, comes from a similar root to choreography - the mapping of dances.

The dynamic of the Christian God, whom we honour today as Blessed Trinity, is the loving dance of eternity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit caught up in the powerful, yet wordless communication which we mimic in all our human dances.

It is no wonder that over the centuries the divine Liturgy has become a stylised dance. The synchronisation of movements, the courtesies, the communication beyond words, which even the congregation is drawn into through music and symbolic gestures; through the spiritual vibrancy of knowing they are playing their part.

You find it in mediaeval poetry. In the Christmas Carol, Tomorrow shall be my Dancing Day, have you ever noticed the words of the second verse as Christ talks about his incarnation?

Then was I born of a virgin pure,
Of her I took fleshly substance;
Thus was I knit to man’s nature,
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing, O my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

Or here is Evelyn Underhill writing in the middle of the First World War in Theophanies:

Heaven’s not a place…
No! ’tis a dance
Where love perpetual,
Rhythmical,
Musical,
Maketh advance
Loved one to lover.

Then of course there is that old Shaker favourite, Lord of the Dance… "Dance then wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the dance says he…"

And as we are drawn into the sacred choreography, so we take on the characteristics of the other dancers in the Trinity. Dancing is a great act of solidarity. (It’s part of the buzz of clubbing.)

The fruit of the Spirit produces the traits of the Father and the Son: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The charismata, the gifts of the Spirit, reproduce the works of the Father and the Son. So together as the people of God we bring healing and wholeness, wisdom and truth, freedom and justice to a world that remembers how to dance, but has forgotten why it dances.

I had lunch with some of my old students the other day.
One of them was Gammy Gordon - the affectionate name the other students gave him because he had a wonky leg. He never wanted to come dancing with us.

We finally persuaded him, but he stood at the edge, watching. Then a gaggle of the girls pulled him into the dance - and he danced!

And he realized that we all look a bit gammy when we’re dancing. And he didn’t look too gammy at all! It worked wonders for his self-esteem.

The God we worship, the Holy Trinity, is a loving fellowship of three in one. He is not remote and alone, but an intimate community. They are so wrapped up in each other, that they are indistinguishable. One in three and three in one.

But not so wrapped up that they have no time for us. Easter was when Jesus the Son, came to call us into the dance of the Trinity.

And although we feel all unworthy, and spiritually akimbo, gammy, in comparison, yet God the Father’s love draws us into the fellowship.

By the indwelling Spirit we take on the Divine. St Basil goes on with great theological daring, dancing on the edge of heresy, to describe the work of the Spirit in Christians who venture to dance with the angels:

“So is their joy unending… so do they acquire likeness to God, so - most sublime of all - do they themselves become divine.”

Don’t sit around the edges of the dance floor, or locked, like the disciples, in an upper room, waiting and watching. You have been baptized! Christ has given you his Holy Spirit! The Father has invited you to the dinner-dance at his Table!

You are called to partake of the Godhead in bread and wine and so to enter into life in all its fullness.

This is the mystery of our participation in the Blessed and Most Holy Trinity.

Or as St Basil put it:

“This grace of the Holy Spirit enables you... to dance with the angels.”

Living in Between

Living in Between

"the end of all things is near..." 1 Peter 4.7

A church member who was a devout golfer, getting ready for retirement, came to talk to his priest one day. "Tell me, Father," he demanded, "are there going to be golf courses in heaven? I have to know."
"Well," said his priest, "I'm not really sure, but tonight I'll say a special prayer and see if God will tell me the answer."
The next Sunday, when the service ended and the congregation was shaking hands with the priest on the way out, the golfer cornered him again. "Did you get the answer, Father? Are there going to be golf courses in heaven?"
Well, George," the priest replied, "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"
"Tell me the good news first," George said.
"The good news is that, yes, there are golf courses in heaven. Beautiful courses, where the sun is always shining, the rough is not too deep, there are no sand traps, and you never have to wait to tee off."
"Hey, that's great!" exclaimed the golfer excitedly. "But what's the bad news?"
"Well, the bad news is that St Peter has you down to tee off this coming Tuesday morning at 8."

Christians are arguably always caught up in the 'in-between times'. They never arrive. It is in the nature of our faith. And although we would sometimes like to know our future, it is better that we should not know. The Bible tells us all we need to know about the future and about living 'in between'.

First there was the time between the Garden of Eden and the giving of the Law to Moses.

Then between the giving of the Law and the coming of the Messiah, the fulfilment of the Law.

And for the early disciples there was the wait between the events of Holy Week, and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

And some years after Pentecost Peter is able to announce that the Church was still 'in between', but that the end was nigh. The apparent delay of the Lord's Second Coming was always a problem for the early church which Peter and Paul sought to address.

So here we are on an 'in-between' Sunday - with Ascension last Thursday and Pentecost still a week away. In the drama of the liturgical year we are to wait until the Spirit comes.

When I was but a young man in Sussex I went with my Pentecostal friends to 'tarrying meetings' - from the words of our Lord to his disciples in Luke's Gospel: "but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." (Lk 24.49)

- we were to pray and wait for the Spirit to fall - or for 9pm - whichever came earliest.

I remember inviting the local Pentecostal pastor to preach at my church in Camberwell and explaining that the service had to finish by noon. He looked at me as if I were mad and exclaimed: "But sometimes the Holy Ghost don't get here till 12.30!"

So was the Holy Spirit inactive until the day of Pentecost? Or to put it another way, did God the Son do nothing until he was born in Bethlehem?

The revelation of God in Trinity has had particular foci - historical events - over the past five thousand years. But the work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been evident, retroactively if you like, throughout all of history.

So before the Law was itemised on Mt Sinai, men and women still had consciences, and societies drew up their own laws. St Paul talks about this in the opening chapters of his letter to the Romans.

And before the saving work of Christ's passion, men and women were still saved through faith in a merciful God. The letter to the Hebrews makes it clear.

And before the day of Pentecost, God's Holy Spirit was at work through prophets and kings, through harlots and pagan dictators. Scripture bears witness to it.

Now on this Sunday in the year of our Lord, 2004, we are in between that first Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, and the end of the world, or our own death, whichever comes sooner.

Does that mean that we will see nothing of the kingdom of heaven until 'the end of all things', the consummation of the age, the dissolution of the cosmos?

No! Before that time, retroactively, the kingdom of God is the ideal towards which we must struggle. As we will say in a moment: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."

This was the objective of Adam and Eve as they were cursed and expelled from the garden. They would not re-enter the kingdom of heaven through the garden gate, guarded by the angel with the flaming sword.

They would only move towards paradise regained through the passion of Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit.

It's not as if God was holding out on everyone until the day of Pentecost. As if he commanded them to love God with heart and soul and mind, and neighbour as self, way back in Deuteronomy; but had no intention of giving them the means to do so for a thousand years!

The in-between times have always been as potent as the special events. Becoming is every bit as important as arriving. All of our life, as human beings, is caught up with 'in between', which is one reason that we are so preoccupied with the passing of time. When we are young we cannot wait till the next event. When we are old we wait with some apprehension for the one and only event left for us.

Peter puts it in these practical words of wisdom: "The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4.7,8)

A consistent theme through Scripture is to live as if life matters; to make our life count for God and for others. In the words of our Lord: "I have come that ye might have life, and have it more abundantly."

Peter's little summary here may be paraphrased that we are to live thoughtfully, prayerfully and lovingly. This will cover a multitude of sins. Sin is that destructive agent at work in our life and in our world. It is trapped in the 'in between' time with us.

But Christ has dealt with sin, and if we will live by the Spirit, then sin will not have dominion over us.

So Peter calls for 'fervent charity'. This is Paul's song as well - without charity, Christian love, all is a waste of time. If we are thoughtful, and spiritual, then we should judge our words and actions by love. To neglect this divine injunction is to live in a way that leads to destruction - both personal and social.

A policeman stops a man driving the wrong way up a one way street. "Didn't you see the arrows?" he asks. The driver replies "I didn't even see the Indians!"

What is important about living in between time, is seeing the arrows. It is knowing where we have come from and where we are heading. Of course we don't always get it right, which is why we need the constant reminders of which way the arrows are pointing.

The whole of this mass is a restatement of the saving acts of God which punctuate our history and motivate our day by day living 'in between'. And the mass points us to the future - Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

It is the future, whose power is present now, that draws us on, to the time when there will be no more 'in between'; to the eternity of God.

Meanwhile, we are the 'becoming' ones, always growing and moving on. I'm reminded of that now rather quaint desription of this process as it is described in the 1920s children's story The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjory Williams:

"The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit, Heinemann 1989 (1922)

In the 'in between' we are becoming - drawing closer to Christ personally, and trying to shape our society on the coming kingdom principles of justice and mercy.

Christian hope is the ability to hear the music of the future.
Faith is the courage to dance to it in the present.

In the power of the risen Lord Jesus, may we live wisely in these 'in between' times.