In The Dance of Love, Classics scholar Bishop Stephen Verney
revisits the ancient Hebrew and Greek to explore the original
meaning of key Christian words such as 'glory', 'repentance' and
'forgiveness'; words that have lost their original significance and
are often diametrically opposed to their true meaning; words that
will unlock the doors that block us from knowing God, others or our
true selves. Verney's God is not a vengeful God, but a God of love.
When people call for repentance they should not grovel in front of
an angry and powerful God but instead forge new relationships. They
do not hear the truth in the noise of materialistic culture and ask
the questions to which these key words provide the answer -
questions about relationships with God, one another and Nature, or
the question: 'who am I?'. Verney urges us to return to the
traditional truth of Christ and rediscover his words in the true
context of today. Christ's truth can save the world but people must
know how to read the signs that point to the true mystery of God.
Stephen Verney (1919-2009) was born at Claydon House in
Buckinghamshire, where his family had lived since 1456. He went to
Harrow School and then on to Balliol College, Oxford where he read
Classics. During the Second World War he served with the Friends
Ambulance Unit during which he drove ambulances across The Artic
and then ran a hospital in Aleppo where he worked as an
anaesthetist and was then recruited into the Greek Resistance. He
was sent to Crete where his brief was to undermine the morale of
the Germans who had occupied the island, and to persuade German
soldiers there to defect. He was made a Citizen of Athens in 1990
when Kostas Mitsotakis, a member of his Cretan gang, became Prime
Minister of Greece. After the war he returned to Oxford to continue
to read Classics and he was ordained as an Anglican clergyman in
1951. In 1964 he became Canon Residentary of Coventry Cathedral,
and wrote Fire in Coventry, his first book. While in Coventry he
brought together people from thirty-three nations - people who were
searching for a positive version of the city of the future - in a
conference called 'People and Cities'. His second book, People and
Cities, was published in 1969. From Coventry he went to Windsor
Castle as one of the Queen's Canons where he shared responsibility
for worship at St George's Chapel, and the training of new clergy
and laity at the College of St George. He wrote Into the New Age at
Windsor following the death of his first wife, Scilla. Between 1977
and 1986 he was Bishop of Repton, during which time he became the
first bishop to marry a divorcee. He wrote Water into Wine, his
best-known book, after the birth and death of his son Harry in
1982. He and his wife Sandra moved to Blewbury in Oxfordshire in
1986 and he began running conferences at The Abbey in Sutton
Courtney where he gathered together groups of people with opposing
points of view - nuclear physicists and Greenpeace activists,
proponents and protagonists of the ordination of women and decision
makers from all political parties. His vision of The Abbey was as a
place where people could stop and think, voice their differences,
learn to listen to each other and begin to understand different
points of view. He spent the last ten years of his life exploring
in depth themes involving the coexistence of opposites, such as
good and evil, war and peace, sexuality and spirituality,
masculinity and femininity and relates these themes to his own
personal experience of life. This fascinating exploration will be
realised in the publication of his last book Snakes and Ladders in
2014.
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