The Beveridge Memorial Cross is a small cross is mounted on the east wall of the south transept of St Peter Mancroft.Ìý In 1990, the sculptor Charles Gurrey of Yorkshire, was commissioned by the vicar to produce a work of art for the church. The brief was simple: that it should be a cross, without the figure of Jesus, in memory of a young man John Beveridge, who was raised in the parish and who, in 1988, took his own life, aged 25. Challenging commission The artist found this a challenging commission, not least because he was working in something of a vacuum: knowing the circumstances of the young man’s death, but not knowing the family, the church or the proposed location of the finished work.Ìý
 | | The Beveridge Memorial Cross |
His response was to produce a cross which spoke not so much of suffering, but of loss. The result is a cross moulded in wax and then cast in bronze. Changes through loss This sculpture has made a considerable impression on me over the 18 months that I have been at St Peter Mancroft.Ìý First, the bronze work catches the day-long light in this south-facing chapel, continually transforming it as the sun moves across the sky. The cross is not static, just as our lives are not static and loss is not static: our understanding of God, ourselves and loss changes throughout the course of our lives. The wax-work model allowed for the artist's fingers and thumbs to shape the cross, pressing and moulding warm wax.ÌýSo it has an intimate, organic look: indeed, its texture has been likened to the tree of the Cross.Ìý This reminds me of the extraordinary intimacy of our creation, as described in chapter two of the biblical book Genesis.Ìý We are not created by God in some divine laboratory or created out of nothing.Ìý Rather, God lovingly moulds Adam out of clay (A-dam literally means 'red earth') and breathes into his nostrils of the breath of life. God is a 'hands-on' parent. Intimacy with God
 | | South transept at St Peter Mancroft |
So, this cross speaks to me of our organic, earthy intimacy with God. The raised arms of the cross give it the look of a human figure.Ìý Raised arms express many human emotions: despair, prayer, love, embrace and letting-go.Ìý We experience all of these through any loss, often all at once because the people we loose are both absent and profoundly present. Raised arms remind us ofÌýGod's loss as humanity chose to leave the Garden of Eden.Ìý Raised arms, too, are the very actions of Jesus on the Cross.Ìý Through the Cross and his Resurrection, Jesus is both absent and truly present.ÌýSo, the raised arms of this cross reassure us that God knows what it is to suffer loss and He embraces us through his beloved Son, Jesus.Ìý So, for me, this cross demonstrates the earthy, emotional response to loss, shared by both God and humans.Ìý In turn, then, it profoundly describes the reality of the much-loved young man it commemorates. | 
Ìý
