Sidelined, marginal, out of place and ignored: where better to find God?
Memorial to Colonel William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson, Horatio St, Newcastle
Where do you expect to find God’s love at work?
There is something profoundly incongruous about seeing a late Edwardian era statue located within an ultra-modern 21st century milieu of concrete and steel. The dissonant styles put me in mind of an unresolved clash of cultures. A deep sense of poignancy and neglect is added to this by the lush growth of weeds, which acts as a sad front-of-house curtain to the drama staged beyond.
This can hardly be what was envisioned by those who gave to the fund for the memorial to Colonel William Lisle Blenkinsop Coulson, in Newcastle, when it was installed in its original location in the Haymarket. The inscription on the memorial explains that is was “erected by public subscription in memory of his efforts to assist the weak and defenceless among mankind and in the animal world”. But in 1950 it was moved out of the city centre to Horatio St, down by the River Tyne. Now the memorial seems sidelined, marginal, out of place and ignored. As a drinking fountain for people and animals it is redundant, being long disconnected from the water supply.
Walking by, it was this sense of sad displacement that really struck home to me, followed at once by the realisation that here was a discomfiting metaphor for the place of God in contemporary society. As someone who is passionate about their faith I have long struggled with the decline of the church and the marginalisation of religion within both the public and personal domains. The image I framed seemed to encapsulate all of these conflicted feelings with just one press of the shutter button.
Why is God so marginal, so sidelined, seemingly so out of place in our society and just so ignored? Such thoughts are entirely appropriate during Advent as we lead up to Christmas. Because it is in just such places and spaces, on the edges and at the margins where the struggle is greatest and the anguish deepest, that we should expect to discover God’s presence, jarring in its grace in Christ and dissonant in the depth of love revealed where least expected to be found. Where better to find the truth than there?
In December our biblical narratives are full of a sense of great displacement, and of even greater longing, all bound up within the wrapping paper of promise and hope. For me the Coulson memorial was a timely reminder of this fact and a pointer as to where to look to find encouragement. The old, seemingly out of favour and uber-unstylish teachings and practices of Christianity are being re-expresssed and re-discovered in our time with a profound sense of relevance and purpose. Not at the flashy centre of things, but where faith has always taken root and flourished, in the cracks and at the margins, out of the way and overlooked.
Whether its Church at the Margins or New Places for New People, there is a refreshing movement of the Spirit at work, which is drawing our attention away from church and narratives of decline, pointing us instead to the circumstances in which the gospel was first born. As we do justice and live loving kindness there is a frisson in the air of ancient promises coming alive and love being birthed afresh. The old displaced ‘statue’ of faith presages a living hope at work amongst us, which is radically new; because it is of God, it is massively challenging and hugely exciting in equal measure. Living water, fresh, life-giving and abundant, is flowing again for those whose lives are dry and spirit’s parched. It is Advent in action before our eyes. What could be more encouraging at Christmas than that?
