7th September 2022

BLACK AND WHITE TOGETHER.

This mug was given to me by an old friend who was for many years our GP in Stoke. Bill was Anglo-Ghanaian, an alumnus of Achimota College where the ideas of the Great African educator, Dr James Aggrey, were worked out.

‘Ut omnes unum sint’ is a Latin translation of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 v 21 – that his disciples should all be one. And the piano keyboard is there forming the school’s crest, because Aggrey argued that you can play some kind of music using only the white notes – perhaps too sharp – and you can play some kind of music using only the black notes – perhaps too flat – but to obtain the most outstanding music, boasting great beauty and perfect harmony, black and white need to be played together.

Keith Clements makes the same point reflecting on I Corinthians 12 v 13 in his hymn: 

In Christ are no colours, no slaves now nor free
No outcastes, no favourites, no Gentile, no Jew
But one human family, united in you.

Here at Tyndale we have a suggestion of the same inclusiveness in the Dorothy Porteus window in the vestibule with its depiction of the children of the world in a variety of colours, all needed for the great music of human co-operation serving the need for the creative harmony played out in the great symphony of all humankind.

John Briggs