Poverty

The idea of poverty was frightening enough in a time without social security althugh it must have been all the more repellent if a person had an idea of being buried in the workhouse as well as ending life there. I know that people did not have to be buried in te workshouse and I’m sure that the Authorities encouraged communities and the next of next to take responsibility for the dead. We can imagine the book keepers keeping a tally of the costs involved in provising a funeral and the gasp of excitement at the thought of saving a few pennies.

Those people who did find themselves buried in the workhouse are almost always lost to view and without markers. Yes, there will be the dry as dust paper records that exist in the UK although the physical markers of a grave are often absent. Without a marker and surrounded by the shame of poverty it is likely that many graves have never been visited or the prople occupying the grave actually mourned. Such is the way of poverty, death and burial in a land that perceives itself as being rich and vibant.

In England the workshouses that were built up and down the County have cemeteries attached to them although most people have no idea of this proximity. The cemetery is shrouded in secrecy and uncertainty. The dead are moved into that half world that is based on reality and clothed in fear.

Gressenhall, in Mid-Norfolk is an example of a place where the poor were transported and where they died over time. The Ordnance Survey maps are available and they record the presence of the cemetery. A map published in 1884 shows the cemetery to the west of the site.  The second map was published in 1906  shows the burial ground as being disused. More importantly, a map published in 1978 shows the cemetery as an orchard and we see the life cycle of the cemetery. The dead and the spaces occupied by the dead become a public space and a place for recreation. The idea of poverty becomes so difficult that the dead who died in poverty apparently have less rights to memorials than the living.

Acts 8:2

Acts 8:2


Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.

Otto von Habsburg (1912 – 2011)

Otto von Habsburg  (1912 – 2011)

Thomas Markham - 1686

Monuments often say something about the person interred. That ‘something’ can be inherent in the stone of the monument, the location of the monument within the cemetery,the style of the monument or even what is not declared. The monument speaks at a number of levels and about a range of issues and we have to strain our ears to hear the echoes of other peoples lives



"Hidden in plain sight"

© Godric Godricson



Whilst it is always possible to go nuts about the baroque monuments of great Churches and Cathedrals, it is less so with the vernacular monuments and inscriptions of lesser places and more obscure people. The personal moments of everyday lives are not always carried into the future with size, instead they have sometimes been preserved by the small and the insignificant. We are compelled to read and re-read the signs and symbols to try and perceive something about our ancestors. In an effort to read the past we have to understand that the simple things in life are not always easy to understand.

The small messages of this monument are fascinating to me. The fragmented piece of broken stone is set as a jaunty angle into a rudimentary brick context. The rough brickwork is covered in cobwebs and hidden in full view of the world amongst the larger monuments the. The fragment is actually facing a bus stop and people waiting for a bus must see it every day without noticing or thinking of removing the stone.

I am not going to say where this monument is because I think it is regrettably easy to carry away this fragment of a  lost life and I very much want to keep it safe. The little piece of stone with a dead name rudely inscribed on it carries something of the man into the future. Although the stone is on a tomb to which it does not appear to belong; we can believe that someone in the past understood an association between the man and the tomb on which it is set and we must respect the integrity of that connection.

Jesus and the Christian faith



Hazy faces from the past
© Godric Godricson



In perceiving Jesus and the Christian faith as a cult of death; I want to draw out some sort of separation between the Jesus portrayed in the Gospel and the Jesus of death, popular culture and the popular imagination. The Gospels have particular ways of seeing Jesus and Mark perhaps even perceives Jesus as embodying a ‘messianic mystery’ as to His identity. We now have the opportunity of considered the ‘messianic mystery’,  how this mystery came about and how disciples came to see past the mystery in The Transfiguration. In the ‘messianic mystery’ we can perhaps see why there may be a contemporary  confusion about the identity of Jesus and how He is perceived. If the disciples with contemporary contact were baffled by Jesus in the 1st Century then why should humanity in the 21^st Century be any better informed.

A major problem in perceiving Jesus is the very name ‘Jesus’,  I acknowledge that I still have problems in using the personal name of ‘Jesus’; instead aiming for ‘Our Lord’, ‘Christ’, ‘The son of God’ etc. In this we are following traditional Judaism in refusing to use the name of God and instead we search for names and words that convey respect and discipleship without over familiarity. How the Spanish feel comfortable in calling their sons ‘Jesus’ I will never know although I respect their cultural traditions and the antiquity of this tradition. How Jesus as the meek and mild man came to be so associated with death is another mystery. The name of Jesus is charged with emotion and we can see that Europeans and the heirs to European culture in South America and The Philippines perceive the very name of Jesus differently from Northern Europeans. ‘Jesus’ is the name of a human person and so we have a fundamental problem in worship; are we thinking of Jesus the man or Jesus the Son of God and second person of The Trinity? How do we see the name that is 'enfolded with love' so associated with burials at the East End of the Church?

The Church surrounded by the
relics of the dead
© Godric Godricson

Depictions of Jesus carry the seeds of an inherent confusion between a ‘popular death culture’ and the ‘Gospel Jesus’. Such depictions amplify that existing confusion in that Jesus varies from the a weak and ambivalent ‘meek and mild’ sort of Jesus to the militant Jesus who turned out the money changers from the Temple. Pacifist or warrior; Jesus has been claimed for every camp and political shade of opinion.  Which Jesus are we comfortable with and which Jesus is ‘our’ Jesus as his image is carried with us to the grave. Do we create Jesus in our own image as humans or do we see Him as divine. The heretical status of  historical sects is  acknowledged and recognised as humanity struggled to resolve the dissonance between the idea of Jesus as human or divine.

Similarly, the hymns of the liturgy are often confused (or partisan) and we see  the ‘worship’ songs of the Evangelical tradition that often focus on ‘God’ compared to the more traditional Catholic hymns that often reflect a diverse and rich Catholic tradition. We have Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and a service of  Benediction and “Cor Dulce, Cor Amabile” for the ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’. We have songs for ‘Christ The king’. The hymns set a theme for worship and the liturgy is a means of sharing in the ministry of Christ through the seasonal readings. The funeral dirge is chanted for all eternity. In the same way that we have a separation in the Gospel version of Jesus and the Jesus of popular culture we also have a divergence in the ways that hymns give witness to the Earthly ministry of Jesus.  The humanity (or divinity) of Jesus is often played up or down in hymns and we often have a gap between the traditions of Catholicism and the more contemporary traditions of the Evangelicals.

  

The East End brings death to
the sacraments
© Godric Godricson

Prayers contain some of the greatest folly in the world and sometimes the greatest simplicity imaginable; all in the name of Jesus. We have naïve prayers that ask that 2+2=5 and more ‘sopisticated’ prayers that ask for the intentions of a specific person at the requiem. The name of Jesus is intoned but sometimes prayers reflect a monotheistic tradition and we are encouraged to see ‘God’.

In effect, there seems to be a continued confusion about the nature of Jesus in the liturgy. We see facets of humanity,  divinity, life and death being emphasised or diminished depending on seasons and tradition. The role  played by Jesus  seems to be ambivalent in popular imagination in the same way that he was the centre of a mystery during His life.