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Something Understood

Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: Reunions and Recognitions

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Reunions and Recognitions

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Reunions and Recognitions

Dr Rowan Williams reflects on reunions and recognitions and the meaning of Easter.

Dr Rowan Williams reflects on reunions and recognitions with the help of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, the music of Mozart and the poetry of Wilfred Owen.

Dr Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College Cambridge and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, explores reunions and recognitions in the context of the Easter narratives.
 
The Sunday after Easter, traditionally known as Low Sunday, is a time when Christians reflect more deeply on the celebrations of the previous weekend.  Rowan Williams describes the human story as full of creating, breaking and restoring relationships and illustrates his thinking with powerful moments of reconciliation in War and Peace when Natasha seeks forgiveness from Prince Andrei, and in King Lear where the King is revisited by his daughter, as well as with the reuniting of Jacob and Esau in Genesis. 

It is this mending of brokenness that Dr Williams uses to link in to the Easter stories. “They move us – and challenge us as well,” he says, “because they echo these deep feelings around finding and losing, separating and reuniting, recognising and failing to recognise and discovering that what seemed completely lost has not been destroyed. They are good news for us because they say that there is no relationship beyond mending in God’s providence and God’s time – that even the most final of separations or the most bitter of betrayals will not stifle the possibility of the reconciliation we long for."

The programme also features the poetry of Wilfred Owen, as well as Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro where the unfaithful Count is forgiven by his wife, accompanied by music, which has been described as the sound of God absolving the world. 
 
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