Beauty’s extraordinary masterpiece

Gathering like figures in a painting, a family grieves.

Katherine Amphlett

Katherine is a counsellor based in the West Midlands.

A rockpool on a beach reflects the sun, a castle stands beyond the sand dunes

Bamburgh beach, Northumberland.

Dan Russon on Unsplash.

There is one particular quality of light that I love above all other. You get it most in autumn or in spring, the times when change is on its way. It is a slightly softened light, faintly blue, which lays a muting wash over a golden afternoon. It’s as if there’s a teaspoon of milk stirred into the clarity of a May morning, a gossamer veil across a long view. Edges are merged and brushed, brilliance blends to dreaminess. It is opal, not diamond.

We had light like that today, and it was just right in its gentleness. Because this morning we took the cardboard tube containing my cousin Billy’s ashes, and we poured them into the sea. His wife Sarah drove down from Edinburgh to join us in Northumberland, and we gathered on the shore in a place sheltered from the wind by the rocks. The Farne Islands were before us and to the north lay the blue bulk of Bamburgh Castle, with Lindisfarne – Holy Island – showing wreathed in soft haze further beyond that.

He was too young to die, Billy, at 51. Too gifted, too clever, too kind. It was pancreatic cancer that got him, and it got him fast. Eleven months between diagnosis and death, that’s all – and here we are, shocked and saddened. It would have been his 52nd birthday today. We have had cake and prosecco. And yet we are casting what remains of him into the water – a tidal pool washed by waves and weather.

It’s not without its funny aspects, this solemn occasion. Billy’s beloved dog Obi is with us, only just out of puppyhood, and like all vigorous young creatures is unimpressed by ceremony. He finds a decaying guillemot and begins messy chewing. We manage to get it off him, but only after a chase and much commanding. Sarah picks it up by the tip of its wing; it spreads open like a glossy black fan. She swings it into the water where Obi can’t reach it. He doesn’t care anymore as he’s just found the corpse of a seal and is going to roll… we put his lead back on.

Dead bird, dead seal, dead man. Living place though, restless foam-flecked ocean, wheeling seagulls, wind in our hair, the beautiful light pouring over us all. And a lot of love. We make a close circle round Sarah, our arms around her and each other, absorbing her grief, sharing our own. We can’t fill the empty space, the echoing chasm of loneliness – but we can head for the pub instead, to fill our more everyday chasms with Sunday lunch. Roast beef and Yorkshires please, for everyone, and sticky toffee pud to follow. Sadness is hungry work.

We are like figures in a painting trying to cling to others in the same painting, not understanding that we cannot be lost.

Later on, much later, when everyone is gone, there is a spectacularly gorgeous sunset. I stand in the harbour watching it, mother of pearl colours melting silently from west to east, reflected in the sea and in the wet sand. My chest and throat and face and shoulders ache with sorrow, and a man on a bench sees me and asks if I am all right. I tell him about Billy. He asks if I would like to hear a poem he has written for his friend, who is lying in hospital with his neck broken. It is about a potter, shaping and moulding wet clay, collecting up and reusing shattered shards, creating new pieces seamed with gold. It is nice. The man is nice. And I have a sudden overwhelming feeling of being held. That underneath everything – the man, Billy’s death, the colours, the guillemot, Sarah’s aloneness, the wide wild sea – is a perfect, powerful sureness, holding all in balance. Me included. I am not a spectator in this situation, I am a part of it, one little detail in an extraordinary masterpiece. I don’t need to clutch and grasp and hold on to things. None of us do – because all are part of the same whole. We are like figures in a painting trying to cling to others in the same painting, not understanding that we cannot be lost. Creation remains complete, even when the pieces move around within it.

It is a feeling of absolute reassurance. Thomas Aquinas (revered scholar of the ancient church) says that along with truth and goodness, beauty is one of the three Transcendentals, the unchangeable foundations of reality and the surest evidence of the divine. And it is so very peaceful there in the harbour – the huge luminous sky, wavelets hushing onto the sand, oyster catchers calling in their wild voices as they prepare for the night – that I am perfectly certain of the presence of God. So finally I can cry… for Billy, for Sarah, for my sadness. But mostly, simply, because it is too beautiful not to.

Article

Change

6 June 2023

4 min read

Social prescribing for whole person care

Responding to an anxiety epidemic, there’s a growth in social prescribing with a spiritual wellbeing element. Esther Platt explores how it's working out locally.

Esther Platt

Esther works as a Senior Consultant for the Good Faith Partnership. She sits in the secretariat for the ChurchWorks Commission.

Two people sit at a table with their hands resting on top of it. One speaks to the other

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Since 2001, Mental Health Awareness Week has been marked once a year in May. This year, the theme was anxiety - an increasingly relevant topic in a country that has endured three years of world-changing crises and the soaring cost of living. Research from the Mental Health Foundation has found that 1 in 10 UK adults feel hopeless about financial circumstances and more than one-third feel anxious.

For centuries, it has been recognised that spiritual well-being is closely tied to mental well-being. By spiritual wellbeing, I don’t mean organised religion. I mean our sense of relationship to a higher-power or reality beyond our own, and our sense of purpose and meaning in life, as Craig Ellison outlines it as in his paper Spiritual Well-Being: Conceptualization and Measurement.

In Man’s Search for Meaning holocaust survivor Victor Frankl compellingly makes the case that in a world of suffering, our survival depends on our sense of purpose, meaning and hope. Frankl coined the term ‘the self-transcendence of human existence’ by which he explained that human beings look for meaning beyond themselves, either in a cause, a person to love, or a higher power.

With an increased understanding of the holistic nature of wellbeing, and the value of spirituality, a new way of looking at health is emerging.

While modern psychologists are still building a clinical-grade evidence base on the value of spirituality, there is clear agreement that spiritual wellbeing is crucial for a good quality of life, especially for those who are facing adverse life events, as you can read on the US National Library of Medicine web site. Traditionally, health provision in the UK has focused exclusively on the physical, and more recently the mental. However, with an increased understanding of the holistic nature of wellbeing, and the value of spirituality, a new way of looking at health is emerging.

Social prescribing is one way in which this is being done, and across the country.

In social prescribing, local agencies such as charities, social care and health services refer people to a social prescribing link worker. Social prescribing link workers give people time, focusing on ‘what matters to me?’ to coproduce a simple personalised care and support plan. This involves ‘prescribing’ individuals to local community groups such as walking clubs, art classes, gardening groups and many other activities.

Churches are playing a crucial role making social prescribing happen. St Mary’s Church in Andover, offer a wellbeing course to members of the community who have been directed to them through the local GP surgery.

Members of Revival Fires Church in Dudley have been trained to offer Listening and Guidance support to those who are referred by a GP.

Beyond social prescribing, St John’s Hoxton in London offer the Sanctuary Mental Health course to their community which gives people an opportunity to share their experiences and find solidarity in their struggles.

Church provides a space where the breadth of our wellbeing, our desire for purpose, community and hope can be supported in a way that the NHS does not have capacity or experience to deliver. As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, writes

"The issue of mental health is one that requires a holistic approach on an individual basis, incorporating as appropriate psychiatric, medical and religious support’.

Olivia Amartey, Executive Director for Elim, an international movement of Pentecostal churches adds,

‘I am convinced that there is no other organisation on earth that cares for the whole person, as well as the church. Its engagement with the statutory authorities, focussed on individuals’ well-being, provides an invaluable opportunity for a synchronised partnership to the benefit of all our communities.’

Jesus told his followers, ‘I have come so that you can have life and have it to the full’. This is the hope that animates churches. Christians find meaning and purpose in the hope of life, peace and justice that Jesus gives. Church can be a space where the complexity of hurt and suffering is acknowledged, and where we can find solidarity and support in the presence of those who can help us find purpose and meaning.

At ChurchWorks, a commission of leaders from the 15 biggest church denominations in the UK, we are excited by the prospect of more churches providing this space. On 18th May we held ChurchWorks for Wellbeing, in which we gathered over 300 church leaders to explore how the church can bring hope to our communities in this time. We shared stories of small and simple conversations, where offering a listening service, an art class or a food pantry enabled churches to give people in their community space to be, to grieve, to process and to grow. From the conference, it is our hope that we will see hundreds more churches start to engage in social prescribing and welcome their communities to access holistic wellbeing support.

At a time when anxiety is rife, and it is so easy to feel despair and hopelessness, the church offers a vital resource to us: a place where our spiritual wellbeing can be nurtured, where we can find purpose, where we can find community, where we can find hope.