Church Times: Where Love & Sorrow Meet, A fractious and yet fruitful embrace & From the Polish spirit

This week's edition of Church Times has much that is of interest beginning with its report on the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which reduced the grounds on which homosexual men could be sent to prison. This includes 'Where Love & Sorrow Meet', a service in St Martin-in-the-Fields, which looked forward as well as back. Click here to read the addresses from that service, including a powerful sermon from Mark Oakley.

Ayla Lepine, an art historian and ordinand, reflects on the idea of the artist-in-residence, and looks at some examples of how it works for churches. Ayla, with Alastair McKay, will also be facilitating taster sessions at Greenbelt from the new online interactive discipleship resource from St Martin-in-the-Fields and the National Gallery, ‘Art and the Bible Story: Inspired to Follow’, which looks at the Biblical story through fine art paintings.

I enter into the world of Polish émigré art, and its link to the hospice pioneer Dame Cicely Saunders, through a review of Art Out of the Bloodlands at Ben Uri Gallery. I have written a wide range of pieces of émigré artists, particularly Polish artists in Britain, and these supplementary articles and posts can be found at:

• http://www.artlyst.com/features/polish-art-britain-centenary-marked-londons-ben-uri-gallery/; 
• http://joninbetween.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/exile; 
• http://www.artlyst.com/features/refugee-artists-learning-from-the-lives-of-others-revd-jonathan-evens/; 
• http://www.artway.eu/content.php?id=1395&action=show&lang=en; 
• http://www.artway.eu/artway.php?id=532&action=show&lang=en; and https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2013/3-may/features/features/united-in-life-art-and-death.

In this review I note that the current exhibition of Polish art at the Ben Uri Gallery, a recent exhibition by Jamaican artists at St Stephen Walbrook, and the current exhibition “I Am” of work by Middle Eastern women artists at St Martin-in-the-Fields (until 20 August) — all opened within days of each other. London is nothing if not cosmopolitan, and the churches continue to contribute to that diversity and our reflection upon it.

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London Gay Men's Chorus - Bridge Over Troubled Water.