Thoughts on Brexit Day

This is one of the hardest days of my life. 

Brexit Day feels like a kind of dying. Born as I was of mixed parentage, to a native German mother married to a British father, I belong as much to continental Europe as I do to England. I am equally at home on both sides of the English Channel, the North Sea and the Irish Sea. From my earliest memories, Europe formed me, shaped me, made me aware. When this country chose to join the European Community in 1973, I had a sense of homecoming. I believed I saw the hand of God in this.

So to walk away from the European Union as a member state is a source of real grief. It’s not simply turning our back on one of the greatest projects of peace and reconciliation the world has ever seen. It’s not only giving up the economic, research and cultural benefits our belonging has brought us, the security and influence that come from pooling our sovereignty. Nor is it merely (!) collaborating in the pursuit of justice and human rights, and taking action together to address the climate emergency. Though all these things matter very much to all who care about the future of our world.

No, for me it’s very much a sentient, intangible, and I need to say, spiritual, matter. It’s to do with my personal history as well as our national history. My father was a Londoner, an Anglican by origin, while my mother an assimilated Jewess from the Rhineland who fled the Nazis and found refuge in this country. You’ll see why the idea of a Common European Home, a family of peoples and nations bound together for the sake of the common good, exerts such a powerful hold on my imagination. That Brexit should be happening in the week of Holocaust Memorial Day makes our departure feel especially poignant. 

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But what of today?

Brexit is perhaps the biggest rite of passage our nation is experiencing in our lifetimes, at least for those of us born since the last war. Which makes it a rite of passage for all of us who are citizens of the UK, and all who are citizens of EU27 countries who are living among us. (And, let’s not forget, for millions of people across the EU who care about Britain, love us British, and wanted us to stay.) 

Anthropologists warn us that we take risks when we cross thresholds. They are liminal places where landscapes shift, and roles and relationships change. At times of transition we can become disorientated. Questions are put to us about our direction of travel, emotions are heightened. We can find ourselves sad at the thought of what we are leaving behind, afraid of what lies ahead, perplexed, angry, longing to have reached the other side and find our feet on solid ground again. Every crossing over is a kind of bereavement - like my recent retirement or my mother’s death soon afterwards. We are never the same on the other side. 

This goes a long way towards explaining why our national psyche has felt so turbulent recently, why feelings of people on both sides of the Brexit debate have run high. We are still in this liminal phase. It’s too early to say how our international relations, domestic politics, trading arrangements and societal networks will settle down after this convulsion. And for some, their personal relationships too. Whatever we are destined to become, Britain will not be the same after Brexit. None of us will.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know why I believe Brexit could damage Britain irreparably. What will be lost could well, probably will, outweigh the gains. So I admit I’m despondent about how our country is going to fare during the rest of my lifetime. Yet we should have the best aspirations for our country that we can. I argued in a recent blog that Brexit could be good for us if it taught us to take a more realistic view of ourselves as a nation. I said we need to lay aside exceptionalism as if we were “special”, and learn to understand our place in the world as no longer a great imperial superpower but as an ordinary, middle-ranking country like scores of others. There’s no question of putting the “Great” back into Britain. Of all the unlovely slogans associated with Brexit, that self-aggrandising myth of pride is the most poisonous. I believe we badly need to learn the grace of humility. And that, of course, is a profoundly spiritual task. 

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And with humility goes the desire “not to be served but to serve” and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We don’t have any choice about this if we are serious about Christianity. How we look after the neediest people in our midst, be they of our race and faith and nationality or some other, is the acid test of our faith. How we care about peoples beyond our own shores is the plumb line against which our humanity is to be measured. To me, the EU was - still is - one of the noblest projects ever devised on our continent to put the virtues of love of neighbour and service of the other into practice in our relationships as nations. It grieves me more than I can say that Britain has chosen to walk away from these covenants of mutual self-giving. 

So it’s all the more important that after Brexit, we resist the temptation of isolation and throw ourselves all the more energetically into being a good neighbour to all the nations alongside which we live on this increasingly fraught, congested planet. Are we capable of this? Do we have a strong enough collective desire for it, the spiritual, moral will? Or will self-interest win out in the end? I really don’t know. I’m fearful if I’m honest. Nothing I’ve heard in the last three years is reassuring me that Britain will be a better, kinder, more principled country after Brexit than it was before. 

I wish I could be hopeful. But today fills me with anxiety and foreboding. It has sapped what belief I had that our nation, inspired by our history, our instinct for law, justice and common sense, our traditions of courage, fairness and hospitality, could through a great act of the imagination rise above our self-serving agenda and look beyond ourselves in some new, life-changing way. This protracted debate could have been an opportunity for us to engage seriously with questions of identity, nationhood and our collective self-understanding as a people facing a choice between alternative destinies. Instead of which we locked ourselves into the strident rhetoric endlessly rehearsed during the referendum campaign, “What’s best for Britain? Take back control! Britain first!” When what we should have been asking is, “What does Britain have to give so that we may all work together for the good of our continent and our world?”

In fact, “what’s best for Britain” is whatever will make for our truest flourishing as the nations and peoples of the United Kingdom. And flourishing means a lot more than the economy, trade and the cost of living. I’m depressed on this 31st day of January that we never succeeded in putting at the heart of the Brexit agenda, who are we as a nation? What does it mean to be a Good Britain, if not a Great Britain? How can we become a more humane society? How can we be a better neighbour to the nations of our continent and beyond? How can we collaborate more effectively in facing the perils confronting our world?  These questions are not only the agenda of practical politics. They belong to the collective human soul. And therefore, they are questions of ultimate concern. What’s best for Britain is what matters most to God.

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I ask myself more personal questions too, today.

I began by saying that Brexit felt like a kind of dying, a severing of what I’d experienced as a positive, benign, life-affirming relationship. When politicians speak of our divorce from the EU, they are invoking a powerful metaphor. There are good divorces and painful ones, divorces of velvet and of barbed wire. We must hope that ours will be one of the kinder ones. But I every divorce involves hurt, the recognition that a relationship of loyalty, good will and trust has died or is in the process of doing so. That’s how I’m experiencing it right now. Don’t tell me I might feel differently tomorrow or in a month or two when the dust has settled. Today is all I have to go on. The dust makes it hard to see. 

The image that’s been in my mind ever since the referendum result has been that of exile. I’m well aware that for many, Brexit feels like the opposite of that, a homecoming, a resurrection even. Again, I can only reach into my heart and speak of what I find there. Desolation may seem a dramatic word. But it accurately describes what its literal meaning expresses, which is the sense of being alone, solus. Mystical theologians played on the way that word sounds as though it belonged to the vocabulary of the solum or soil. You could say that desolation is the forlorn experience of being severed from your native soil, just as consolation is to be reconnected, joined back, to it. When the Jewish exiles by the waters of Babylon cried out, “how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Psalm 137), their lament was called out of the bleakest desolation, disconnection and disorientation they had ever known as they reimagined their existence on unknown soil.

I’m not saying that most of us will experience an exile as painful as that, though for UK citizens living in the EU and EU27 citizens living in the UK, the consequences of Brexit may well be bitter indeed. But for me at any rate, today does invoke an echo of that Psalm as I find myself amputated against my will from so much that I loved and valued. The Hebrews were severed from all that had given their lives shape and meaning - their land, their temple, their institutions, their monarchy, their homes. Without these givens, they had to renegotiate life on a new set of terms. It’s clear from the prophets that it was a bewildering experience. After today I shall have to renegotiate life without the constants of my European Union citizenship. And especially the sentient environment that has been part of life simply because of my being a citizen of an EU member state. It’s hard to describe when it’s as pervasive as the air I breathe. But maybe you recognise that sense of connection to my own continent through the hard-won bonds of peace and friendship and everything else this time of gifts has brought.

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I said earlier that I wish I could be hopeful. Abraham, the scriptures tell me, “hoped against hope”. The exiles would indeed learn to find hope again, one day. But it took time. The psalm of lament would be their bitter cry for many days to come. They would need to learn the hard way not to trust voices that made easy speeches about an imminent brighter future against the evidence of history and the instincts of their own spirits. It’s too soon for me to speak of hope today. I need to be as present as I can to this disappointment, this journey of exile, try to find what meaning in it that I can. I won’t pretend it’s going to be easy. As I’ve said, this is one of the hardest days of my life.

But I want as a Christian citizen to do what I can to serve the common good. I may be at odds with what Britain has become as a result of Brexit, but it is still the country of my birth and upbringing. I owe it my love and loyalty. I want to do what’s in my power to help heal our divided nation and recover a sense of common purpose. Yet in just the same way I shall never stop thinking of myself as a European, a citizen of the continent that has so shaped my personal history and my understanding of what it means to be me. I owe love and loyalty to Europe too. Not least because by lifting my sights beyond my own nation’s shores, the EU taught me how to take the first steps towards becoming a citizen of the world, a child of God’s worldwide human family. 

I’m done raging against this “dying of the light”. So I ask myself, is some transformation possible? Could this exile that I do not want to contemplate, this parting of friends, become a grace-filled pilgrimage in time? Who knows? Only by setting out will I begin to glimpse what this journey could become. I dare not call it hope just now. But if I can’t find hope at this moment, can I perhaps hope to have hope again one day? For the nation I mean, and for the world, as well as for myself? On Sunday, the First Sunday after Brexit, the church celebrates Candlemas. We light candles to honour the Holy Child who came into the world as a light for all the nations, who makes us glad because God is among us. This Kindly Light will teach me to walk this unfamiliar landscape and travel safely across it.

“Hope to have hope.” I can live with that for now. One step enough for me. 

The Ten-Fifty to Newcastle: Clergy and the Railways

It's every schoolboy's dream, at least it was when I was that age - living by a railway. A few years ago we retired to Haydon Bridge, a village in South Tynedale midway between the North Sea and the Irish. In the 1830s, the first east-west railway line in Britain was constructed between Newcastle and Carlisle and brought trains into the valley. On 28 June 1836 Haydon Bridge station was opened. It is still open (unstaffed) and we are lucky enough to live opposite, near the level crossing. The original station-master's house survives as a private home.

You will have heard a lot about Northern Rail in the past few months. It runs a service every hour or so in each direction. Two-coach sprinters, or if you are unlucky, cordially disliked Pacer trains, get you to either end of the line in about three-quarters of an hour. There are even a few direct services that will take you to exotic destinations like Dumfries, Glasgow (thanks to Scotrail), Middlesbrough or Whitby. The railway passes through lovely valley and upland landscapes and runs close to the Roman Wall for most of its length (so it’s now marketed as the Hadrian's Wall Line).

Sometimes the East Coast or West Coast Main Lines through Newcastle or Carlisle are closed for engineering work, and then Inter-City 125s power along our railway, and even East Coast electrics ignominiously hauled by diesels. Steam specials bring sightseers and photographers to the lineside. When Flying Scotsman and Tornado (above) came through, the platforms were as thronged as a tube station in rush hour. The last train to stop at Haydon Bridge every weekday is the 22.50 to Newcastle. The roar of the Pacer as it sets out eastwards can clearly be heard from our house. That’s my signal for bedtime. It’s strangely reassuring to hear freight trains rumble through at night.

I blogged about the Line in 2017 so I won't repeat myself. What prompts me to write now is an assignment that is coming up next month. I have to speak to a local railway circle about why the clergy, or many of us, are famously fascinated by railways. It's been debated in church circles from time to time. "What draws clerics to railways?" asked David Self in the Church Times ten years ago or so. He discusses Bishop Eric Treacy, the distinguished railway photographer who died in 1978 on Appleby station photographing a steam special on the Settle to Carlisle line. I've yet to discover if the Bishop ever spoke or wrote about why he loved railways. I'd be surprised if he hadn't reflected on it.

The Reverend Wilbert Vere Audrey features of course, the begetter of Thomas the Tank Engine et al. I've got to know these stories all over again as a granddad, not just from the books but now from hundreds of YouTube videos. I have just read his biography by Brian Sibley. He draws attention to the moral world presided over by the Fat Controller where right and wrong are clearly delineated. Unlike our world, on the Island of Sodor there are no grey areas. On the last page he records a conversation with the author in which he asks how far these stories about railway engines are a statement of his personal philosophy. He quotes Audrey's reply. "This world is God's world. He makes the rules. We have a free choice, we can obey him or disobey him, but we cannot choose to disobey him and live happily our way....Like us humans, they go their own way and inevitably come to a sticky end. Then the offender has to show that he is sorry and accept his punishment. But the point is they are punished but they are NEVER scrapped." Sibley adds that "in the world depicted in the Railway Series, there is always redemption and forgiveness, another opportunity to try harder to become a Really Useful Engine". So Pelagianism is avoided. Just.

David Self's article is kind enough to see off the assumption that rail-loving clergy are necessarily anoraks, pedants, juvenile fantasists or just plain cranks (moi?). He does think that railways represent an ordered world that runs to schedule, and this appeals to clergy whose daily experience of the parish is of  setting where little if anything is predictable. And if railway modelling is their thing, as it was for The Reverend Teddy Boston, a friend of Audrey whose remarkable garden railway is described in Font to Footplate, then the satisfaction of creating and presiding over such an environment no doubt reflects a theology of creation. This theme is explored by Canon Bill Vanstone in his book Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense where precisely because of the infinite care the Creator invests in his creation, he becomes vulnerable to anything that would damage or spoil it. I well recall that feeling from childhood. Our oversized cat (Jupiter by name) trampled all over my beloved OOO layout and left a trail of destruction across my handiwork. I must have been ten or eleven and wept copiously.

I'm not sure I've yet answered the question of clergy and railways to my satisfaction. It's true that a proud moment in my time as Dean of Durham was when an East Coast Class 91 Electric was named Durham Cathedral. In its latest incarnation, 91114 still has my name on the driver door. But why should that bring immense pleasure? Perhaps the big railway stations are a bit like cathedrals. Yes, they are of course grand, imposing and often beautiful. St Pancras, King's Cross, Paddington, Liverpool Street, Bristol Temple Meads, York, Newcastle are among the great stations of England, cathedrals of the industrial era. I recall Euston being the best of them all until it was ignominiously demolished by wicked modernisers in the 1960s.

But architecture isn't all. It's what goes on in railway stations from the grandest to the humblest where the analogies are perhaps strongest. Stations are places of comings and goings, journeys begun, journeys ended, journeys that are still in progress. They are points of connection. They are liminal - locations where temporary communities come into being and thresholds are crossed. Here, people have to wait, surrender themselves to forms of control beyond themselves, embark on or conclude journeys that may bring them to unknown places or new experiences. They are places where the “other” is inchoate in the here and now, whether anticipated, hoped for or feared. That makes them suggestive of transcendence.

And they are also places of ceremony where rituals of greeting and farewell take place, where trains arrive and depart in accordance with well rehearsed rules and passengers (a much more suggestive word theologically than customers) understand the rules of engagement in relation to the rituals of buying tickets, negotiating barriers, locating the correct platform and time to catch a train. All this, I think, appeals to people who inhabit ceremonial worlds as clergy do when we preside at the liturgy and at the occasional offices, those rites of passage that mark the human journey and offer it to God.

Perhaps too, power comes into things. One of my tutors at theological college, Dr Jim Packer, a west country man, loved his native GWR and cheerfully joined in praise of "God's Wonderful Railway". My protestations in defence of the North Eastern Railway, its successor the LNER, Flying Scotsman and Mallard fell on deaf ears. I once heard him say that a steam locomotive was the quintessential expression of how enormous power is put to work through the discipline of its own engineering and of the rails that constrain it. Power that is purposeful was to him a way of speaking about God, an eloquent image of teleology, that which has direction and strives toward a clear end or telos. He put it more subtly than that, but you get the point.

I suspect that the precision with which railways have to operate carries an eschatological message for those who think in such ways. Divine order in which everything knows its place is what people of faith look for in the new creation that the gospel proclaims. A well-run railway could, perhaps, be a metaphor of what humanity longs for as the goal of creation. Could we call it the kingdom of God? I'm not talking about cold perfection, a chiselled, mechanised (and now digitised) but impersonal efficiency that cares nothing for flesh and blood. Rather, I mean that because railways at their best are a demonstration of how human beings flourish in a symbiotic relationship with their environment, they seem to epitomise a state of order that is both elegant and humane - beautiful even.

These analogies are far from perfect. But maybe they are worth exploring in a playful kind of way. Playfulness is a good quality to cultivate when we do theology. "The kingdom of heaven is like...the happiness of passengers when the trains run on time." Amen. Amen.

Last Words from France: a rite of passage

Well, these are possibly not my last words ever from France, a country I have loved since childhood. But for the time being. This summer we went to our beloved hill-top town of Vézelay for one final visit. We have sold the little house I inherited seventeen years ago near the Basilica. Why did we decide to part with it? It seemed like the right time. In retirement it becomes necessary to simplify things.

But there's no denying the sense of loss. Not least the associations it came to acquire of peacefulness, spirituality and retreat, happy memories of family holidays, rites of passage it had been present to in our lives like the marriages of our children, the births of our grandchildren, our retirement, the breaking news of family deaths, the preparation for their funerals. When say farewell to a house you have had a long connection with (in this case, longer than any other I've known), things become charged with symbolism. To take a final cup of coffee in such familiar surrounding, switch off the lights, turn off the boiler, shut the front door, lock it for the last time, get into the car and drive away - what significance those everyday actions suddenly acquire!

I've blogged about Vézelay before. So I won't write about the landscapes of northern Burgundy, its Christian history, the golden limestone churches that adorn the villages, the wines (of course) and our life in the village. But let me say something about the Basilica where we have worshipped so often, and in particular, a carving just outside the north door that seems to me to symbolise life's transitions, not least how we let go, lay aside and travel into a new and unknown future.

The marvellous Basilica of the Madeleine that crowns the hill is one of the treasures of Romanesque architecture in Europe. It is to France what Durham Cathedral is to England, an incomparable masterpiece. In the middle ages pilgrims flocked here both to reverence the relics of Mary Magdalen (long story, that) and to set off on the Camino to Compostela. After the Revolution it been allowed to fall into decay. It was fortunate to find in Viollet le Duc a gifted young architect who set about restoring it - a major commission that brought him fame, fortune and some critical opprobrium too.

The west front was so decayed that much of it had to be completely rebuilt. So only one of the original Romanesque sculptures remains visible on the outside. But that single survivor on the south door jamb of the north portal is highly significant. It depicts Jacob struggling with the angel in the famous story in Genesis.

Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The man asked him, “What is your name?”“Jacob,” he answered. Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”  Jacob said, “Tell me your name, I pray.” But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”  (Genesis 32.22-30 NRSV). 

It's a mysterious story with many layers of meaning. But the symbolism of placing the sculpted capital right next to the church door helps explain it. It is clearly about travelling across a threshold, facing the risks and uncertainties of transition and liminality. Jacob is facing a journey and an encounter that he knows will be crucial in his life. He needs to be reconciled to his brother Esau from he stole both his birthright and his inheritance. He is all alone, and frightened of this imminent meeting that could prove to bring with it great suffering, even death. The awful journey through water in the dead of night, his struggle with the nameless adversary, his emerging as the sun rose with a new name to mark a new identity, and a limp to remember the ordeal - it all speaks of a rite of passage from one stage of life to the next. Interpret it as you will: Jacob facing his demons and (partially) overcoming them, or encountering God in all his numinous mystery and grace (or both of these) - it is one of the most powerful narratives in the Bible.

The sculpted capital and its story came to mean a lot to me in that final week in our house not many metres down the hill. I kept going back to it to contemplate it and photograph it (difficult to do because it stands, literally and figuratively, at the junction of light and shadow). While not comparing myself to Jacob-Israel, I recognised that even a little rite of passage like saying goodbye to a place and the home you have made there is still an ordeal to be faced up to and travelled across. I guess that it felt significant partly because saying goodbye to my working life as a priest, closing the door of the Deanery at Durham and walking away from the Cathedral and all that it stood for in my life was - still is - all very recent. Just as one bereavement triggers memories of others, so it is with saying farewell to a place and its people and the home you have made there and the friends you have got to know.

And, I have to say, getting on the ferry and leaving France behind did feel like our own personal Brexit. It wasn't of course, and still isn't now that we are back in Britain. But there's no denying that it was often on our minds during our summer on the hill. We frequently discussed it with both French and British friends, the latter mostly expats living in Burgundy, far from certain what the future after Brexit will mean for them. One of them told us about their son's recent visit to the UK in his (French) car. On parking it in a place he knows well in England (I'd better not say where), he realised that his French number plates had drawn attention to the car, and that he was being subjected to a volley of booing and hissing. Is this the generous decent country we were brought up in, the England that has shaped and nurtured us? - that was the unspoken thought. The Referendum was itself a rite of passage for Britain and for Europe, for all of us however we voted, I thought as I gazed on Jacob and the angel. And we have emerged on the other side unhealed, limping badly, more broken than we were before, not with a hope-filled sunrise to walk into but a gloomy sunset to walk away from as it gets dark.

Ah well. We are where we are, in a truly liminal place. But whatever our future in Europe, we are grateful to have glowing memories of our Burgundian adventure to bring with us. On our last day, I wrote to the Mairie and to the Jerusalem brothers and sisters whose spiritual home the Basilica is, to thank them for these wonderful years in Vézelay. It will always have a special place in our hearts. Adieu. And Deo gratias!
 

Jacob and the Angel: meditation on a doorstep

There's a striking medieval sculpture on the door-jamb of the north west door as you go inside the great Basilica at Vézelay in Burgundy. It's the only piece of Romanesque you'll see outside - all the rest is imitation by the nineteenth century architect Viollet le Duc who restored the crumbling church. This one sculpture is worth pausing by before you venture into the narthex and the glories that are there.

It shows Jacob wrestling with the angel. It's derived from the story that is told in Genesis 32.

The same night he [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.  He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.  When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. (New Revised Standard Version, quoted with acknowledgment.)

It's a strange, unsettling story that's given plenty of scope to the commentators - whole books have been written about it. But the context in Genesis makes it clear that it's a pivotal experience for Jacob. He is anxious at the prospect of meeting his elder twin Esau whom he has defrauded of both his birthright and his inheritance. This night-time watery struggle with an unknown visitant seems to symbolise a profound inward uncertainty, not to say conflict, about both his identity and destiny. It's as if he needs to become aware that life is far more mysterious and elusive than he has hitherto grasped. Only when he has come to this point of recognition is he capable of coming out of the water and continuing his journey. He has prevailed and found blessing, yet his unknown - unknowable? - assailant will not disclose himself. Why is it that you ask my name? Yet Jacob acquire a new name for himself, that of a victor. Israel means "a prince with God". This, and the sun rising upon him, both suggest that a defining and life-changing rite of passage has taken place.


Let's look at it as the sculpture presents it, particularly in relation to its position at the entrance of the church. (We must bear in mind that this may not be its original medieval setting - I've not been able to find out whether the or not the Victorian restoration may be responsible for placing it there.) To see the capital squarely, you have to face across the doorway and look south. That's to say, you need to stop and turn to it. I find that in itself significant. Crossing any threshold is always an action that is significant - that's why gates and doorways are so often highlighted architecturally as places of special symbolism. And when it's a doorway into a sacred space, you can expect it to be particularly charged with life-meanings.


So what is this beautiful sculpture saying to us who enter (or leave) the church?

I think it's something like this. When you cross this threshold of a church, you are entering a world that is not altogether like our everyday lives. Here, we grasp how life is about more than what we can see or touch or handle. The mystery of things is recognised and acknowledged, what Rudolph Otto in his book on religious experience The Idea of the Holy famously described as Mysterium Tremens et Fascinans. Religion is not all light and certain conviction - far from it. There is a shadow, a night-time aspect in which unknowing, doubt, struggle and even fear rise to the surface. We long for the sunrise and the clear light of day, and we imagine that this is what will be vouchsafed in the sacred space set apart for the worship of God. After all, isn't religion supposed to be about illumination and enlightenment? Instead, we often find ourselves immersed into even greater mystery where big questions are opened up - about the world, about ourselves, about what life is all about, about suffering and pain, about God himself.

All this, I think, is symbolised by the sculpture that guards the portal of the church. As you look at it, the angel has his back to the light so that he casts a shadow across Jacob. (Paradoxically, the only time Jacob's face is lit up is when the setting sun in the west illuminates the west front of the Basilica.) That angelic shadow contains both a warning and a promise. It warns us: don't expect easy answers in here. Religious faith won't provide them. It may be a discomforting place where you will feel your anxieties and dilemmas - if, that is, you come in as a truth-seeker rather than a pretender or play-actor.

But there's a promise too in Jacob's face and the sun that lights it up. It assures us that by crossing this threshold and entering into the mystery of the "holy" on the other side, we shall be given what we need more than anything else to negotiate the complexities of life: courage, hope, the sense of not being alone, confidence in a future (symbolised by the sunrise) that we are drawn towards, reassurance that all shall be well. We shall be given tools to make important connections. Religion is not an easy rescue from our troubles but a way of facing them with integrity and faith.

Charles Wesley wrote a famous hymn Come, O thou Traveller Unknown based on this story. One of its verses goes thus:

Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair;
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
Be conquered by my instant prayer;
Speak, or Thou never hence shalt move,
And tell me if Thy Name is Love.

And in the next verse comes the marvellous discovery: Thy nature and Thy Name is Love! In the story, in the sculpture, in the hymn, it has taken a life-and-death struggle to reach this point. Faith is hard-won, and the older we get, the more we are right to suspect that it is not always going to be easy. But that's precisely what makes the journey worth travelling. And if we are limping because the struggle has been hard, it's evidence that we have experienced something real. In the dark, it was "a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God". But when the day breaks and the shadows flee away, we know that this is precisely where our humanity, our safety and our healing lie.