Threads Laid Bare - Stones & Uncut Bricks

By The Reverend Canon Camellia Flanagan TSSF

How were stone and brick buildings made in ancient times?

The most primitive method of stone cutting involved simply hitting a soft stone with a harder one.

When more substantial buildings were made for religious purposes, we find prescriptions as to the use of brick and stone. Moses instructed the Children of Israel in building for worship. Deuteronomy 27:4-6. So when you have crossed over the Jordan, you shall set up these stones, about which I am commanding you today, on Mount Ebal, and you shall cover them with plaster. And you shall build an altar there to the LORD your God, an altar of stones on which you have not used an iron tool. You must build the altar of the LORD your God of unhewn stones.

Is this saying that what is used for worship should not be polluted by the work of human hands? And that we need to come to God in weakness with no efforts on our own behalf?

A wander about Grafton Cathedral, is a masterclass in masonry, designed by Architect John Horbury Hunt, an eccentric whose work was distinctive. The bricks used in the building are made from local salmon pink clay, not the fashionable grey stone of the time, and not one of them is cut, honouring the symbolism of uncut stones.

There are one hundred different shapes and sizes of bricks fashioned in timber moulds. They are laid in a pattern known to bricklayers as old English style. Everything about the brickwork in the Cathedral is designed to point to God. The huge gothic style arches, the Angel wing gothic doors and the many arches in the interior of the Cathedral loosely styled Arts and Crafts with their decoratively shaped bricks, call to mind various passages of scripture when one ponders the scale of the building.

Ephesians 3 17-19 - 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The building calls us even to acknowledge our Creator God in the footprint of the cat who walked on the still wet clay brick before it was fired in the kiln, and as the wind, like the breath of God, flows through the western louvres to the eastern ceiling above the high altar we are called to Psalm 46:10a ‘Be still, and know that I am God!’

Iam pleased to announce that following a comprehensive recruitment process, the Bishop-in-Council has appointed Mrs Angela Mula (pictured above) as Diocesan Registrar/General Manager. Angela will take up this appointment on Monday 10 July, following Mr Chris Nelson’s retirement on 7 July.

Angela is an experienced and competent leader with a diverse background gathered in the church and in the secondary and higher education sectors.

Starting her professional career as a secondary teacher at various Anglican Schools across Australia and in the UK, Angela joined the Australian National University in 2006 to focus on educational design. At the University of Canberra (UC) she first led a team of educational designers to engage with faculties in a federally funded structural adjustment project to increase the flexibility and innovation of courses to improve retention and engagement of students. Transitioning to educational partnerships, she played a leading role in establishing a partnerships team to begin the central coordination and management of the University’s partnership arrangements. In this key portfolio, she led the Partnerships Engagement Team to enable UC’s growth through education partnerships with domestic and international third party providers.

Angela joined the Diocese in September 2020 as Deputy Registrar / Executive Officer - Schools and since that time has enabled improved governance, management systems & administrative actions to provide continuous and robust services to ministry units and schools. With