Images of Christ: The Ruthwell Cross

Rowena Loverence continues her encounters with images of Christ

by Rowena Loverence 24th March 2017

‘When fishes flew and forests walked/And figs grew upon thorn…’ I must have learned GK Chesterton’s poem ‘The Donkey’ when I was about ten. I loved its magical opening. I thought he wildly overstated the donkey’s odd appearance – did he never ride on one at the seaside? But I got the punchline: that one way into the Christian story is by trying to see it through the eyes of the ‘lesser’ characters in it – even the non-human ones. I soon learned that Chesterton was following in a tradition that goes back in Britain at least thirteen hundred years.