The Art Gallery of Western Australia, in 1983, acquired the entire collection with drawings of Stanley Spencer's series Christ in the Wilderness. The series celebrates the unity of all living things with the material world and with God.
Stanley Spencer has painted his 'Christ in the wilderness' in such a way as to bring out, in an unexpected key, the tone of Mark's 'and the wild beasts were with him'. Jesus sits on his heels in a desert empty of all life except a scorpion, which he holds in his hands and looks upon, meditatively. Isn't it a marvellous way of bringing to us both the value of solitude, of reflection, and the need for companionship in pilgrimage?
Yes, there is a sense of shame that is favourable to the Good, woe to the man who casts it off. This sense of shame is a saving companion through life. Woe to the man who breaks with it. It is in the service of sanctification and true freedom... Each one who is not more ashamed before himself than all others, if he is placed in difficulty and much tried in life, will in one way or another end by becoming the slave of men. For to be more ashamed in the presence of others than when alone, what else is this than to be more ashamed of seeming than being?
Yes, there is a sense of shame that is favourable to the Good, woe to the man who casts it off. This sense of shame is a saving companion through life. Woe to the man who breaks with it. It is in the service of sanctification and true freedom... Each one who is not more ashamed before himself than all others, if he is placed in difficulty and much tried in life, will in one way or another end by becoming the slave of men. For to be more ashamed in the presence of others than when alone, what else is this than to be more ashamed of seeming than being?
from Still Waters Deep Waters
edited by Rowland Croucher
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