An invitation from the Dean
Dear Friends,
August at the Cathedral
It’s been a while since I wrote one of these letters to the Cathedral’s friends, supporters, visitors and enquirers. Someone thanked me for my “ramblings”, so duly warned that my thought processes were a bit circular and diffuse, I decided not to tax your patience and charity and stay quiet for a few months.
However, now that we are emerging from lockdown and restrictions, I wanted to write and tell you what is planned for August and invite you (warmly as always) to come and visit and take part.
Over the past five years we have held a series of “Great Exhibitions” during the last ten or twelve days of August. They have been the brainchild of Peter Walker, our Artist in Residence and his team at Luxmuralis, who, with David Harper, the composer, have produced stunning sound and light shows in the Cathedral. They take place mid-late evening giving visitors chance to experience the Cathedral at sundown and in darkness. Taking his brief from exploratory, idea-generating conversations Peter has held with me and his wife Katy, we have come up with subjects that we hope have been timely, relevant, intriguing and provocative. Looking back we have covered the Environment, War and Peace, and Space Exploration (if 2020 had been normal we would have considered what it means to be fully alive), but this year, as we realise our dependence on scientific discovery to help us combat deadly disease and risks to our whole way of life, we’re glad to be thinking about Science, Creativity and Spirituality.
Please take this letter as a personal invitation to attend. The sound and light shows will be staged from Thursday 19 August until Monday 30 August. Please visit the Cathedral’s www.lichfield-cathedral.org/science for booking information or call the dedicated ‘phone line on 01543 306101. It is family friendly and accessible to all, highly immersive with lots to see, hear and experience, sending you out with more appreciation and knowledge.
Meanwhile for visitors who want to come to the Cathedral during the day, there’s a special display in the North Quire Aisle of pioneers of science: eight people who have done extraordinary things to help us understand our world and further human capacity to work with nature and human society. From 13 August there will also be a large installation in the South Transept called “The Laboratory”. It will be a space inspired by Albert Einstein’s desk: “if a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what then is an empty desk a sign?” A laboratory is a place for observation, recording, experimentation and research, allowing us to appreciate the intricacy of the world around us. The installation “Laboratory” will also feature a large scale and beautifully illuminated DNA Structure. Visitors will be asked to leave their thoughts and ideas about what scientific discoveries they have found to be important and what future developments and inventions might make the world a better place. An ideas board will act as a place for harvesting and collecting all these hopes, dreams and aspirations.
The Great Exhibition itself is a sound and light show on a grand scale. The main artwork will illuminate the thirty-eight metres of the Cathedral’s Nave interpreting the whole sweep of science. Peter Walker has said: “The Great Exhibition is about seeing things in new ways, on a vast scale. We create these events in ways not seen elsewhere, taking people around and through spaces, and engaging them in new ways. Science is a vast subject, so the installations are designed to tell a short history of nearly everything in a contemporary way”.
We are holding this exhibition in the wake of the global pandemic and the vaccination programme that has offered society a way to avoid the worst consequences of a frightening disease. For some (me included), science is a bit of a closed book. They got bored or turned off by science lessons at school. Yet we live in a world impossible to understand without the knowledge, skills and technology science has developed. Some might object that science is the enemy of faith, that belief in God is rendered meaningless by scientific theory and evidence. For sure there is what might be called “the religious ambiguity of the universe”. Many scientists will assert that reality is permeable to divine activity, that there is a deep harmony in creation that testifies to a creator, whilst others will assert that human life is totally explained by genes and memes without any recourse to religion or the transcendent. The debate points to how significant science is: an end in itself or a marvellous body of knowledge that tells us the “how” of creation but not the “why”? Whatever your views, I hope you will come and be wowed by what’s on offer. The Cathedral trades in awe and wonder. After so many months of our lives and imaginations being constrained and confined, this summer’s show is an invitation to re-connect and re-engage with big questions and the enjoyment of discovery.
Please be assured that the Cathedral has “Covid Good to Go” status. We’re as safe an environment as any public place can be. You and your family, friends, neighbours and colleagues are welcome, and we would be grateful if you would extend our invitation to all whom you know. If you attend, please tweet your pictures and comments. The social media traffic will be a great bonus.
Finally, you might want to play with the idea of the Cathedral as a “laboratory of the spirit”: a place for observing, reflecting turning things over, making discoveries about God, ourselves and the way we relate.
I leave you with a splendid poem by R S Thomas from his collection “Laboratories of the Spirit” where in our search for wholeness and human wellbeing we do not so much have to look for miracles but an appreciation of what is already there and has already been given.
EMERGING
Not, as in the old days I pray,
God. My life is not what it was.
Yours, too, accepts the presence of
the machine? Once I would have asked
healing. I go now to be doctored,
to drink sinlessly of the blood
of my brother, to lend my flesh
as manuscript of the great poem
of the scalpel. I would have knelt
long wrestling with you, wearing
you down. Hear my prayer, Lord, hear
my prayer. As though you were deaf, myriads
of mortals have kept up their shrill
cry, explaining your silence by their unfitness.
It begins to appear
this is not what prayer is about.
It is the annihilation of difference,
the consciousness of myself in you,
of you, in me; the emerging
from the adolescence of nature
into the adult geometry
of the mind. I begin to recognise
you anew, God of form and number.
There are questions we are the solution
to, others whose echoes we must expand
to contain. Circular as our way
is, it leads not back to that snake-haunted
garden, but onwards to the tall city
of glass that is the laboratory of the spirit.
With my love, prayers and blessings
Adrian Dorber
Dean of Lichfield