The Red Admiral's Message

Winter lingers on with temperatures barely above 8ͦ C (46ͦ F) by day, freezing - or close to it - at night. The body craves warmth, the central heating is turned on earlier each evening; the mind too, seems chilled, stuttering along, taking refuge in a diet of tv news and documentaries, plus – hooray - the new series of Madame Secretary.

Lent arrived suddenly this year. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and we left Mass with large black crosses of ash traced on our foreheads. It’s always interesting to see if anyone remarks on the sight. Despite shopping in the local Sainsburys supermarket and popping into another store, no-one queried it; perhaps it was British reserve, perhaps I generally look unkept, perhaps all the customers and serving staff were Christians, perhaps no one really cares any more...who knows.    

Today was ‘get some exercise before you turn into a vegetable’ day so I walked three miles to the local W H Smith, stationers. Walking is a great opportunity to mull over things and there are strategic, tactical, and relationship issues that need addressing in some of the charities that I work with; indeed, as I walked, lost in thought, a fellow volunteer phoned and complained for 30 minutes about a particular issue he had.

Then it happened. From the corner of my eye I caught sight of a moth or butterfly flitting across my path. I followed it for a few yards until it settled on a wall. What a beautiful sight! This was a Red Admiral butterfly, mostly black but with orange-red stripes and white splotches.

 

I’m sure there are more colourful butterflies, larger ones, maybe more lively ones – but this fellow transformed my day. I did not realise that the Red Admiral is one of a very small number of butterflies that can be seen throughout the year - even in December, January and February when the temperature is in single digits.

I’m not sure why, but the sighting suddenly changed everything. Maybe it was a foretaste of summer; maybe it was a reminder of the beauty of nature; perhaps it was telling me that even butterflies can take winter and cold in their stride, a lesson in tenacity and optimism. Whatever the message, all my concerns vanished, I noticed the sun was shining, the sky was blue and it was suddenly warm. Thank you, Red Admiral.         
 

Our Lady of Consolation

For this Year of Mercy our Bishop has had the inspired idea of having the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy (one of her many titles), visit all the parishes of Arundel & Brighton Diocese  – not in person of course, but as an icon image of Our Lady of Consolation.

So it was that, on Monday evening this week, around 20 parishioners sat in the front few pews of the darkened church of the Sacred Heart. In front of us was the altar, on which stood two candles, and immediately before it were two more candles flanking the icon of Mary, Our Lady of Consolation, which was ours for 24 hours before moving on to the next parish. 

The icon normally resides in the Parish and Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in West Grinstead, which is about 20 miles NNW of Brighton. The Shrine was the first Catholic one to be built in honour of Our Lady since the Reformation. When the church was built in 1876 the priest, Mgr Jean-Marie-Denis, searching for a title for the shrine, chose one that was well-known on the continent as it would have the advantage of well-established prayers, privileges and blessings. His choice was the famous and long-venerated  Consolata of Turin. An artist was selected to paint a copy of the icon in Turin, which was then placed in the West Grinstead Shrine Church.

According to legend, the original icon in Turin (now in the minor basilica of the Santuario della Consolata, Turin) was painted by St. Eusebius of Vercelli in the fourth century. The picture was then lost sight of for several hundred years until the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Ardoin, the last King of Italy in 1004 and asked him to restore her image. He did so and it was visited by many pilgrims and numerous miracles were recorded.

Early writers such as St. Benignus state that the name ‘Our Lady of Consolation’ was specifically bestowed on the icon by the Blessed Virgin, the first (and only) time she has named an icon.

Around the year 1080 wars, invasions, famine and pestilence spread ruin and devastation throughout the land and many buildings, including the chapel in Turin that contained the icon, fell into ruin.   

In 1104 the Blessed Virgin appeared to a blind man and asked him, if he wished to restore his sight, to journey to Turin and search for the miraculous picture. As his brothers thought him mad, he prevailed upon a servant girl to accompany him and, when he was within a mile of Turin, his eyes were opened and he saw a brilliant sun shining over a ruined chapel. His sight lasted only momentarily but, undaunted, he was led to spot and knelt in prayer – whereupon his sight was immediately and permanently restored.

The local bishop was persuaded to excavate the area and the icon was soon found, the chapel was restored and lots of miraculous healings followed. And so it remained until the nineteenth century when they were looking for a patron for the new church in West Grinstead. Nice story, eh? 

 

Peter James Territory

Brighton is the home territory of best-selling crime fiction author Peter James, writer of 32 novels including 12 featuring Roy Grace, Detective Superintendent of Sussex Police. He has been published in 36 languages and is rarely out of the pages of the local newspaper, the Argus, being involved in many worthy local charities and most recently donating his second police car to Sussex Police – the livery of this car (alongside the police markings) changing to reflect the book jacket of the current Roy Grace novel.

I thought of him today when I saw a crime scene in North Street, in the centre of Brighton, as I was shopping. Police tape cordoned off about 100 yards of the pavement while forensics officers and photographers scoured the scene. A street sleeper, a young girl, was allowed to remain in situ behind the cordon.

 

According to the Argus’s website, an unconscious man was found lying in a pool of blood at around 7am this morning. He is still in a critical condition. Police have arrested three people, two, a man and a woman, on suspicion of robbery, and a third man on suspicion of GBH (Grevious Bodily Harm), all remain in custody.       

Two Brighton Memorials

 

 

Statue of King George IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland (and Hanover) from 1820 until his death in 1830. This statue of the creator of the Brighton Royal Pavilion was raised by public subscription in October 1828 and is now his memorial.

 

 

Memorial to ‘Casey,’ also known as ‘Taffy One Penny’ because of the amount he would beg for. Casey was in his 40s when he died in January 2016 and this tribute at the base of the Clock Tower in the centre of Brighton is his memorial.  

 

 





Julia Margaret Cameron

To London just two days before Christmas, unseasonably warm at 13 degrees, tempting fate with the hoards of zombie shoppers headed for London but keen to see the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition at the V&A before railway repair work begins at Christmas and cuts Brighton off from the rest of the world.

 

First stop, the neo-Byzantine Westminster Cathedral, ten minutes walk from Victoria Rail Station.

 

 

Through the Holy Door for 2016 and into the silence of the cathedral. It’s deep into Advent and extra confessors are hard at work, dispensing forgiveness and Grace with an especial joy this Holy Year of Mercy. Four confessionals are in operation and the queue of about 40 penitents are all healed within ten to fifteen minutes.

On to St Paul’s Bookshop; books, magazines, music, eBibles, statues, cards, holy pictures, crucifixes, rosaries, medals, candles, aromatic incenses, burners, priestly clothing...and 1.000 other things. It is a mystery how people manage to tear themselves away in time to spend some time in the Catholic Truth Society (CTS) bookshop, just two minutes away on the Cathedral Piazza. I managed it but had little money remaining when I left.

Then it was off to South Kensington Tube station and five minutes walking in the tunnel brought me to the exit for the Victoria & Albert (V&A), Science and Natural History Museums.

At the exit there was a statue I had never seen before, Subodh Gupta’s ‘When Soak Becomes Spill,’ a huge shiny stainless steel bucket filled with hundreds of equally shiny and attractive containers, a message about the cost to the earth’s resources of meeting the desires of a consumer society.

 

Then on to the imposing bulk of the V&A and the exhibition of over 100 prints by Julia Margaret Cameron.

Inside, through large echoing exhibition rooms, past groups of visitors taking photos and selfies...

 

 On, through halls populated only by statues...

 

Past the Chinese section with its glass cases of highly embroidered robes...

 

...and up the stairs to the Julia Margaret Cameron (JMC) exhibition. She is one of the 19^th century pioneers of photography in the UK, was born 200 years ago and held her first major exhibition 150 years ago - in this very museum.

To be frank, JMC is not one of my favourite photographers.

Yes, her body of work is impressive for someone who was only given a camera at the age of 48 and two years later in 1865 successfully convinced her contact Sir Henry Cole to provide an exhibition for her at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A). Certainly she devoted a huge amount of time to her craft and learned quickly – and these were days before digital photography when developing photographs was very physical, very time-consuming and involved dark rooms and multiple baths of dangerous chemicals.

But she was far from a perfectionist in the printing process. Her prints were usually out of focus and often bore scratches, smudges – even fingerprints. It’s clear from her letters - some of them, with distinctive large loopy handwriting, are on show – that she was convinced of her own genius.  

She was also a child of her time and, although renowned for her portraits, they are uniformly dull set pieces, mostly infants or young women (usually friends, family or servants) posing as mythological or ancient biblical figures...never a smile or a hint of normalcy in sight. Of course, these were the darkest days of Queen Victoria when folk’s minds were focused on higher things, such as (allegedly) covering up piano legs to avoid giving temptation...she is a creature of her time, as I imagine most of us are of ours.  

Nevertheless, she did well to popularise the medium and her portraits of social luminaries such as Charles Dickens, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning are historically significant (although Dickens did not admire all of her pictures of him). Some of the photographs of her family (e.g. her niece Julia Jackson) have an unusually direct and quite modern immediacy.      

Frankly, it was a pleasure to escape into the fresh air after being submerged for an hour in the cloying kitsch of JMC’s world view. Outside, three girls were playing brass instruments, the shimmering notes soaring into the sky.

Further on, the lawn outside the Science Museum had been transformed into an ice rink and carnival. The excited cries of children coloured the air and warmed the soul. Wonderful - and a world away from JMC's pickled infants. 

Hong Kong has Gone to the Dogs

When I first came to Hong Kong about 30 years ago, many things were different. For one thing, pet dogs were rare. People focused on working hard, bringing up children, looking after grandchildren, saving money for a bigger home and, if they had any spare time and money, and wanted a pet, they bought a fish or a bird.

Pet fish and pet birds have a long pedigree in Hong Kong. There is a Bird Market and a Goldfish Market where you can take your time and select the sort of pet that will fill your days with pleasure and make little demand on you.

...but, now, Hong Kong folk are buying dogs as pets.

Go out and you will see ladies with a Chihuahawa or a Skye terrier in tow – or even two of three of them. Sometimes the dogs are straining on leases, sometimes they are carried. Then there is the energetic young man or lady with one or two or even three large dogs, boxers, Labrador retrievers or Alsatians, all straining on a leash.

What is happening?

It gets worse.

A couple of times I saw women pushing what looked like prams or buggies and when I got closer I saw that the passenger was – a dog!

You don't believe me? Look.

 

 

They even have pet shops that sell these...dog carriages.

Hong Kong has definitely gone to the dogs.

But it is still a wonderful, beautiful, crazy place.

COME AND VISIT IT BEFORE THE DOGS TAKE IT OVER COMPLETELY!!!

 

..and, by the way, a Very Happy Christmas to you!  and if you are shopping in Central, Hong Kong, why not pop into the Immaculate Heart of Mary Chapel in the Catholic Centre (17th floor) to say thanks?

The Many Faces of Religion in Hong Kong

Hong Kong folk are great consumers: the latest high-profile brands are pursued with vigour, everyday prices are obsessed over, salaries and compensation are bandied about, the stock market and housing prices are followed closely, money-making opportunities are discussed at every turn...you might be forgiven for thinking that the religion of Hong Kong was making (more) money. 

The position is rather more complicated. Hong Kong people are materialistic and spiritual at the same time, seeing no dichotomy in jointly pursuing gods and gilt.

It looks like, based on statistics from the last ten years and statements by HK agencies, that about half the population of Hong Kong belong to recognised and organised religious traditions. (That compares with about 68% self-categorised followers in the UK).

Using a survey from 2010 quoted on Wikipedia, the numbers stack up as follows:

Buddhists 21%
Taoists 14
Protestants 7
Catholics 5
Moslems 3
Total 50%

Interior of Catholic Cathedral

There are 600 Buddhist and Taoist temples, 800 Christian churches, five mosques, three synagogues, one Hindi temple and one Sikh one in the Territory...so the faiths of the major population groups are well catered for.

What of the remainder of the population, the other 50% who do not follow an organised religion? It is believed that the vast majority of these follow what is described as 'traditional religious practise' or 'Chinese Folk Religion,' a blend or 'pick and mix' of elements of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Folk here are immensely practical and give more than a nod to superstition, so belief follows results.

Altar to Guan Yu in restaurant. Guan Yu is worshipped by restauranteurs, police...and triad members!

Public expressions of worship range from attendance at the old traditional temples such as Man Mo or the Anglican Cathedral, to the more recent Wong Tai Sin or the plethora of evangelical churches, to miniature shrines outside businesses and homes, to elaborate shrines in flats.

 





shrine outside business





shrine outside business

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

shrines outside ordinary home in Cheung Chau

On the streets, among the multitude of in-your-face salesmen (for mobile phones, phone plans, tours, copy watches and tailoring shops) there are clusters of earnest Jehovah's Witnesses mutely offering copies of the Watchtower, occasional Buddhist monks begging for alms, and other groups making occasional public appearances, including the outlawed-in-China Falun Gong sect.

Yes, possessions are vital but the world beyond is not overlooked.