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Out of the question
Write, if you have any answers to the questions listed at the end of this section, or would like to add to the answers below Your answers The Anglo-Catholic artist Martin Travers drew a beautiful device of the Crucifixion, which he encircled with the legend “He has set me in a furnace of love. Love has set me in a furnace.” This sounds to me like something from the Song of Songs, but it isn’t. Could someone please identify the source of this text? Some years ago (25 May 1997), I heard this phrase in a sermon, and the priest said that it came from Jan van Ruysbroeck: ‘“Love,’ he said, ‘Love has set me in a furnace. He has set me in a furnace of love.’ And you and I can catch fire — we are ignited by that furnace as we kneel at the altar, and receive the holy communion.” I have not yet found this phrase in Ruysbroeck’s writings, but in Oliver Davies’s The Rhineland Mystics (SPCK, 1989) there appears the following (taken from The Seven Enclosures 182): “. . .the Spirit of Our Lord comes like a mighty fire that burns, consumes and devours all that is in us so that we are no longer aware of ourselves and our devotions but we experience ourselves as if we were one spirit and one love with God.” This is only a partial answer, I am afraid, and — like the questioner —I, too, would very much like to find full details of this quotation, and hope someone may be able to supply the exact source.(Mrs) Alison Rollin Ruislip, Middlesex I cannot help P.B.C. with the specific enquiry, but would question his or her description of Martin Travers as an Anglo-Catholic artist. While quite a lot of Travers’s work was for Anglo-Catholic commissions, he was agnostic and seems to have regarded the purpose of some of his work almost with distaste, especially as he grew older. He may have been imbued with a spirit of Anglo-Catholicism either at home or (more likely) in his schooldays at Tonbridge, but it does not seem to have survived into adulthood. Colin Menzies London W1 Your questions Are there guidelines for stipendiary clergy (male and female) with a working spouse and young children about the ratio of their “parish” to their “childcare” time? M. G. Who is entitled by law to see the annual accounts and PCC minutes? Do those on the church electoral roll have a right to see them? B. C. Address for answers and more questions: Out of the Question, Church Times, 13-17 Long Lane, London EC1A 9PN. questions@churchtimes.co.uk |
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