Way back in my early twenties (1970s), I remember a young art student – or her mother- giving my mother this sculpture, as a gift. It was pure white at the time. I cannot recall how it ended up in my possession. I wish I knew the name of the student and what she went on to achieve in her life. Our home was in St James Vicarage, Upper Bangor, NW Wales.

Fast forward to my parish in southern Snowdonia or Eryri, Wales. I created a small inter-faith chapel above the garage, next to the Rectory. A building dating back to the 1770s, known as The Granner, because it was a local granary. The garage below housed a large bread oven. I well remember the day I re-discovered the old oven, but that’s another story.’

Only one of the two dozen or so bakeries in Gaza is operational by today.

The sculpture joined numerous religious artefacts, sculptures and paintings within the chapel dedicated to the Divine Feminine, Hagia or Sancta Sophia. Then one afternoon, in the late eighties, tragedy. The building burnt to the ground. Everything gone., including the altar, iconostasis, prayer stools etc. A holocaust, lasting many hours, destroyed everything … well, almost everything.

Having arrived in record time, a fireman’s hose must have hit the balsa wood buddha, immediately soaking it in water, while the fire raged around it. We found it the next day, perched above the rubble. Still soaking wet. Then, working for a local builder, two of his men started clearing the site. As I looked on, from behind the security fence, two items were found. It was as if the lads were engaged in an archaeological dig. Dyfrig found a small silver Holy Communion set, belonging originally to my father, who was also a priest. I had never seen black silver before! I’ll never forget the smile when he handed it to me.

Many shovels later, one of the lads found ‘The Mother and Child, under a pile of dirty wet rubble. No longer pure white, but intact. Not damaged? Of course it was damaged, because it’s purity had gone. Blackened. But not dirty. Maybe it’s a different kind of purity? In a mysterious way, ‘Mother and Child’ felt holy: ‘set-apart’ for a purpose, which is what ‘holy’ means.

Was the baby originally alive or dead? I’ll never know what the young artist or sculptress was thinking of. But the mother is clearly horrified. Traumatized. Did it’s creator become a mother herself? What sort of artist did she become? I will never know.

What I do know is this: fifty years or so later, her sculpture has taken on a new life. It now encapsulates a tragic moment, not just in Gaza but also in the so-called ‘civilized West’, our own government and parliament included: champions of the rule of law, justice and humanitarian care and compassion.

Gaza! 2023! Genocide? Of course it’s not genocide, because our leaders tell us so.

I hope that the young student from Bangor won’t mind if I now give a name to her art work of long ago. I’m calling it ‘The Gaze of Gaza’. It’s not so much that we are looking at ‘them’ (which, of course, we are), but that ‘they’, in their stark horror, are looking at us. Every one of us, including our parliamentarians and religious leaders.

And when Christmas and the festive season arrives in a few weeks, ‘She’ will still be looking at us. ‘They’ will still be ‘gazing’ at us from Gaza, not in admiration but still in horror!

‘The Gaze of Gaza’ by an unknown sculptress around fifty years ago