蜜芽传媒

Good morning. A couple of weeks ago I visited Tate Britain to view works by artists shortlisted for this year鈥檚 Turner prize, for which all the artists have to be under 50. There was one I particularly liked because it had that combination of originality and aesthetic appeal that I look for in art. The rest I was tempted to dismiss as a load of old rubbish, indeed some of it really did look like rubbish littered around. This week the winner was announced-it wasn鈥檛 the artist I liked best-and a photo of the winner鈥檚 work was shown in the paper. Looking at that photo I could begin to see something of what the judges had seen in it, and I realised I had been much too quick to dismiss those other works that had made no immediate appeal. I hadn鈥檛 taken time to look properly. It was a moment of reappraisal.

And that for me is what this Advent period can be. The key person is that rather austere figure John the Baptist coming out of the desert with his call to repent. Repentance is not about beating your breast and trying to make yourself feel sorry for the things you don鈥檛 really feel sorry about at all. In Greek it is related to the word 鈥渕ind鈥�- it means rethinking things, looking again, looking longer and reappraising them.

A few days ago I was speaking to a girl who had just come back from her first visit to India. She was understandably excited, but what she actually said to me was 鈥淚 have changed, I am different.鈥� Because of currency problems she and her partner had got stuck for three days without any money. What overwhelmed her was the generosity and joy of the poor. Of course she had not overlooked the slums and terrible poverty, but the support she received and the happiness she experienced in people who had so little made her question I think not just herself but much of the Western culture from which she came.

You can鈥檛 plan for those experiences which bring about a fundamental rethink or reappraisal. They take us by surprise. The German Poet Rilke once looked at an ancient torso of the god Apollo. He must have been taken very much by surprise by the experience because when he wrote a poem about it he ended with the rather startling words 鈥淗ere there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.鈥� Changing your life is easier said than done. We can however be open to experience, to the possibility of change. Not dismissing things, especially people, out of hand; alert, awake, expectant, all the Advent things.

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