Christ in the Abyss

A friend of ours, an Anglican minister, Jim Cotter, was parish priest in Aberdaron, North Wales until his death in 2014. He was influenced by the poet RS Thomas who had been parish priest of Aberdaron a few years before him. Jim Cotter faced many obstacles and experienced deep depression during his life. He composed many prayers and, particularly, an unfolding of the psalms for today called “Out of the Silence”. 'Christ in the Abyss' is inspired by a phrase from Psalm 93:

“A relentless pain throbs through our bones,

We scream in the night at the faces of terror,

Yet even as we plunge in the fearful abyss,

the face of the crucified is there in the void”[1]

The other inspiration for this painting is an icon of Christ which is taken from a picture of the icon in the Anglican sisters’ chapel in Wantage.

RS Thomas echoes what Jim Cotter says in psalm 93 in his poem “Counterpoint”:

“…a face staring,

as over twenty centuries

it has stared from unfathomable

darkness into unfathomable light.”[2]

God is there with us in our darkness. Jesus is with us in the abyss.

A recent writer Gerard W Hughes says in his “Cry of Wonder”:

"There is no depth of human despair, no intensity of human suffering where God is not, no sense of alienation, rejection or estrangement, which can prevent God from being, to quote St Augustine 'nearer to us than we are to ourselves.' "[3]

[1]©Jim Cotter, Paul Payton, page 278 Out of the Silence...Into the Silence Cairns Publications 2006 (now available from Canterbury Press)