Students at one theological college were sent off to a betting shop and told to place a bet. Most of these clergy-in-training had never done such a thing before, and were ill at ease: is everyone looking at me? What am I supposed to do? Will I let it out that I haven’t a clue what’sgoing on?

The point, of course, was that that’s how many people feel today when they go into a church. In the same way, many who find themselves, to their own surprise, coming to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the living embodiment of the loving God who made the world, feel unsure of their new surroundings. How does it all work? Yes, I may have discovered God calling me by name; I may have realized that Jesus died and rose again for me; but what happens now? Will I ever feel at home with all this new language, with people doing and saying odd things and assuming everybody knows what it’s all about?

This book is written for people like that – and many more besides, since we all need an occasional 'refresher course'. Graham Kings is the vicar of one of London’s liveliest churches and theological secretary of Fulcrum. A theologian, mystic, poet and entrepreneur, he invites us to come on a journey through countryside familiar to most experienced Christians but often bewildering to newcomers. He is an encouraging and entertaining guide.

The journey in question is the Christian year – Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity. From very early on, Christians have not just told the great story of the plan of God to save and renew the world. They have also lived this story, following the biblical narrative through the year and so, like a family marking birthdays and other anniversaries, reminding themselves constantly who they are and why. God’s preparation of his people; his coming in the person of his Son; Jesus’ life, death and resurrection; the sending of the Spirit – these are not odd, detached beliefs, but tell a great story, a play in which we are all invited to become actors in our own right.

Graham Kings brings all this to life briefly and vividly. He introduces some fresh and perhaps controversial ideas; he would be the last person to say that everyone should agree with everything he says! But he not only explains the map of the Christian journey and encourages us all to keep travelling; he allows the book to embody one of its own great themes, that of new creation. Through shrewd use of art, displaying and discussing paintings and sculptures with which he has himself been involved, he turns this book into a multi-media experience.

And, through some of his own poems, he not only illustrates his themes but encourages us all, through meditation and contemplation, to discover the truth that, as St Paul says, ‘we are God’s work of art, God’s poem’ (Ephesians 2.10). This book will open the mind to fresh truth while opening the imagination to glimpses of glory.

Imagine the year ahead of you. What comes to mind? When does that year begin? Whose year is it? How do you make God smile? You tell him your plans . . .

God sees further and wider than you see, knows you better than you know yourself, and loves you more than you have ever been loved.

The year ahead for you belongs to God. It is his and he gives it to you, to your family and friends, to your community and to the world. Quite a year, then. Not worth cramping its imagining and not worth rushing either. A spiritual writer of great wisdom once wrote, ‘Hurry is actually a form of violence exercised upon God’s time in order to make it “my time”’ (Donald Nicholl, Holiness). The seasonal rhythm of the year, which has been kept for centuries by the Church across the world, may have something to offer you. How about imagining your year fitting in with the Church’s year?

Rhythm is not only the longest English word without a vowel – though admittedly ‘y’ acts as a sort of vowel – but is also basic to our enjoyment in life. We breathe, walk and swim rhythmically, usually without noticing it. We appreciate music, poetry and drama. We become more balanced in our quality of life when rhythms develop naturally. In this book, we shall be looking together at the rhythm, balance and journey of the Church’s year. Each chapter has a focus on a particular season: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost and Trinity. Each chapter also has a dynamic participle (an ‘-ing’ word) which relates to the season of the year: beginning, being, sharing, suffering, dying, rising, living and identifying.

Questions are provocative and can be central to learning. Children abound with them and sadly, too often, we leave them behind as we degenerate into adulthood. Each chapter has a question and my responses to them provide signs for your journey – works of art, poems and comments on some passages of Scripture. You will still have lots of questions by the end of the book and it would be good to interact with these together through the book’s website www.signsandseasons.co.uk.

Art is evocative and can be moving. I’ve chosen eight works with which I have been involved, and which have moved me towards God – one from Indonesia, three from England, two from a Bulgarian artist, one from Kenya, and one from India. I’ve also interwoven with these works poems that I’ve written at different times in Kenya, Cambridge and London. Do be patient with me and, if these particular poems don’t light up for you, then just turn over the page – or, better still, pause a bit, and write some poetry yourself. Again, these poems could be shared on the website.

In Scripture, God speaks to us through his reliable ancient words, which come alive across the centuries in surprising ways. We need to understand their meaning in their original contexts and interpret their significance faithfully and imaginatively for today. I wrote much of this in the new British Library, not far from our church in Islington,while there was an amazing exhibition of the world’s greatest collection of Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy books, called ‘Sacred’. It was very popular. Two precious texts in particular struck me. Codex Sinaiticus is the earliest complete New Testament from fourthcentury Egypt or Palestine, and the Lindisfarne Gospels is the luminous legacy of an artist monk in Northumbria in the early eighth century.

Imagining the journey of a year can be exhilarating and risky. As a family, we lived in the foothills of Mount Kenya for seven years and I walked up Mount Kenya twice. On one occasion we got to the top of Point Lenana, the third highest peak, about 16,000 feet, and the highest that can be reached without climbing equipment. The view showed the curvature of the Earth and Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. The second time, we had to come down, having walked to 9,600 feet, because some of our group had altitude sickness. Our Kenyan guides were indispensable for the journey. They gave signs, directions and assistance in carrying, and also provided wisdom about timing and advice on turning back when necessary.

A journey of faith can begin at any time, and the beginning can be a process over a period of time – for example, an Alpha course, which is a very popular introduction to Christianity over several weeks – or a particular point of focus. It often turns out that even those people who have a definable moment of commitment ultimately discover many significant movements and people in the background leading up to this moment. Beginnings can be topsy-turvy. My own life was turned upside down as a student in January 1974. In one week, as a law student at Oxford, my faith in Jesus Christ came alive, on the Sunday; I met my future wife on the Wednesday; and I joined a prayer group for God’s mission in the world on the Friday.

If you have recently begun a journey of faith – either through a long process or one focal point – then this book is designed for you as a guide as you imagine your year ahead and seek further understanding for your faith. Belief is vocative and usually vocational, in that it is addressed to God, rather than to ourselves, and leads into God calling us to change and to serve. This may seem scary at this stage, but – in the words of both The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Dad’s Army – don’t panic.

Some of the following art, poems and thoughts I shared at a Methodist conference on world mission in 2006, and a year later at the Chelmsford Diocesan retreat house at Pleshey, with those on retreat, preparing for ordination to the priesthood. Over many years, Pleshey was the Anglican base of Evelyn Underhill, the imaginative spiritual writer. In her book The Light of Christ (London, 1944) she commented on the rhythm of life:

We get notions sometimes that we ought to spring up quickly like seed on stony ground, we ought to show some startling sign of spiritual growth. But perhaps we are only asked to go on quietly, to be a child, a nice stocky seedling, not shooting up in a hurry, but making root, being docile to the great slow rhythm of life. When you don’t see any startling marks of your own religious condition or your usefulness to God, think of the baby in the stable and the little boy in the streets of Nazareth. The very life there which was to change the whole history of the human race. There was not much to show for it. But there is entire continuity between the stable and the Easter garden and the thread that unites them is the will of God. The childlike simple prayer of Nazareth was the right preparation for the awful privilege of the cross. Just so the light of the Spirit is to unfold gently and steadily within us, till at last our final stature, all God designed for us, is attained.

So I hope that you will join me on this journey, as we ponder signs and seasons, and that it may turn out for you to be exhilarating, balanced, provocative, evocative, illuminating and patient.

Graham Kings
Islington, London
Easter 2008

Turning Point

"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." Confessions VIII, 7.
"Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires."
Romans 13:14

Stalking in the garden in the heat of the moment,
Reflecting on complexity of voluntary movement,
Slunk in listless and leaden despair,
Tangled, contorted and tearing his hair,
Rapping his head and wrapping his knees,
Rabidly ravaging under the trees,
Wanting to wait and waiting to want,
Weighing the longing of laying and font,
Augustine hears the Word of the Lord
Drifting, insisting the voice of a child:
"Tolle, lege: take it and read.
 Tolle, lege: take it and read."
Vocative discourse spoken by God,
Evocative sing-song challenge of a child.

Turning and turning he opens to read
The Word of the Lord in the words of St Paul:
"Lust and debauchery, revelry, rivalry,
Now is the time to wake from your sleep."
Eloquent professor professes his call.

Now, no procrastination, delay;
Later is now, tomorrow today.

            Graham Kings

The Gospel of the Song

In the beginning were the Words,
        and the Words were the Poet’s,
        and they were part of Him:
        lively and brilliant.

And the Words became music,
        and were sung,
        full of beauty and freedom.

We have heard the Song,
        and been utterly moved,
        again and again.

We had read poetry before,
        but beauty and freedom
        came through this Song.

No-one has ever seen the Poet:
        this one Song, which is in His heart,
        has shown Him to us.

                      Graham Kings

First Written Gospel

Jesus the Sacred, tried before Pilate;
Pilate, the scared - trial before Caesar?
Jesus, entitled to justice from Rome,
entitled by Pilate, ‘The King of the Jews.’

First written Gospel, translated for all,
title deeds of the kingdom of God;
proclaimed to the city, unchanging Word,
‘What is written, is written’, bequeathed to the world.

                      Graham Kings

By the Waters of Delivery

By breathing and brooding,
by breaking and birthing,
by parting and loosing,
by stirring and soothing:

by giving, re-living,
by stilling, refreshing,
by drowning, immersing,
by raising, re-versing,
you, Lord, deliver us.

      Graham Kings

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The Hostage Deal

Between the rolling of the stone
     and the crying of the name
     came the agonising.

Shuddering, Jesus stares into the tomb,
Making a deal with death in the depths.
A greedy exchange is strangely agreed:
Lazarus comes out and he will go in,
The prize of life for the price of death.

The hour of starkness fully come,
The Dealer is struck and laid in the tomb.
Then is the end, but the end is of death:
Through terrifying life in the depths,
Death is destroyed, exploded inside.

Before the rolling of the stone
     and the coming of the women
     came the rising.
 
 
                  Graham Kings

Rabbouni

Who is this woman facing this man?
Head lightly inclined,
eyes wide open, gazing;
hands uplifted, palms upward, surprised;
gorgeously arrayed.

Who is this man facing this woman?
Coming from the right,
profile clear, bearded;
hand outstretched, palm down;
gloriously appareled.

Behind her, two angels hover
reflecting her shape:
behind him, scented trees lean
setting the scene:
below her, a dark opening hints.
All silent witnesses.

The eyes have it:
focus of tension and attention.
One word awakes her: ‘Mary’.
One word responds: ‘Rabbouni’.

Their hands shape a triangle
at the centre of meeting:
her two, shocked and suppliant; 
his one, blessing, calming, sending.

                      Graham Kings

The Image of Her Father

For many years in Israel’s womb
The embryo grows, the Church of Christ:
First the Head, then the Body,
The Son of Man includes the many.

For hours upon a Roman cross
The Church’s birth begins in blood:
Crucified with Christ her Head,
Constricted by the love of God.

The third day, from a gaping tomb,
The Church emerges urgently:
Risen again with Christ her life,
Released, relieved, the joy of God.

The fiftieth day, with tongues of flame,
She breathes the Spirit, cries the word:
Conceived, inspired with Christ, she grows,
The heir of all, the child of God.

                Graham Kings

Gallery into Oratory

East Gallery, Bishop’s Palace, Wells;
windows of light, in and on three walls.

At the previous evening’s preview,
people gathered without gathering,
and looked without seeing.

In the peace of a fresh morning,
the gallery becomes oratory,
flowing with your presence.

I bring a chair to sit
and gaze, amazed, at you,
the Saviour and Giver of Life.

I peer through wood and tempera
to you, the Peerless One.
You see through my appearances,
and pierce flesh and temperament.

Your right hand gives
the sign of bread and blessing;
your left hand holds
the Word of life and love.

To you, I give thanks for saving me;
to you, I turn and return my life.

Though icons are unsigned,
Silvia’s love for you
shines through and through.

She is the woman who
wipes the hair of her brush
on your face and neck,
your hands and garments,
pouring out her life.

Signing the invoice,
my inner voice sighs:
Pearl without Price,
owning nothing, I owe everything
to you, the Only One.

Through the abundance of your face,
flow the subtleties of your grace,
knowing, guiding, anointing,
searching, guarding, sending. 
 
                             Graham Kings