Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: albert camus, pilgrimage, poetry, RS Thomas, summer, winter
There is an August
within us, aeons
of preparation for a few
kingfisher days. We fly
the diameter of a circle.
- RS Thomas from The Seasons: Summer
In the depth of winter,
I finally learned that within me
there lay an invincible summer.
- Albert Camus ‘Return to Tipasa‘
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Kingdom of God, poetry, RS Thomas, strengthening estates ministry, urban ministry
One of the real pleasures of my work is spending some time convening Strengthening Estates Ministry, the group for clergy and church workers in the Diocese of Birmingham who minister in outer housing estates (you can find more details and explanation of this here). I’m just back from a wonderful 24 hour conference of SEM where 24 of us gathered for a structured conversation based around stories of ministry in these wonderful and tough areas of multiple deprivation. This was excellent theological reflection and comradeship, really grounded, inspiring, humbling, challenging and tiring. It will be fascinating to try to catch the difference this makes to me and the other participants and to see what effects this has on our ministry and parishes.
My mind is full of a huge wodge of stuff that I need to spend time examining and to let sink in and to sift, but two things shine out for me, things I had not really noticed before or which have been brought much more to the fore. One of these is that in amongst the darkness and difficulty we see glimpses of God which we must pay attention to and which can give us the strength to keep going. The other is that sense of call that many of us felt to our particular churches and communities, something else that makes it possible to stay and flourish when things are against us.
This brought to my mind RS Thomas’s poem The Bright Field:
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
Plenty here for me to reflect on about how it applies to the difficult and complex life of the city and to the deep, quiet joy of ministry here.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Camino de Santiago, gisela raines, pilgrimage, RS Thomas, the guardian, the moor, via de la plata
There is a very good piece by Gisela Raines in The Guardian reflecting on her pilgrimage to Santiago along the Via de la Plata here.
She introduces me to RS Thomas’ poem ‘The Moor’ which I had not read before:
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God was there made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In movement of the wind over grass.
There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions — that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christmas, pilgrimage, poetry, prayer, RS Thomas, the echoes return slow
A Christmas meditation and poem from RS Thomas’ remarkable book ‘The Echoes Return Slow’
Town Christmases, country ones, sea Christmases are all transcended, perhaps, in nativities of the spirit. If one cannot have the lights and festivities of the town, one can celebrate the coming of three waves from afar, who fall down, offering their gifts to what they do not understand.
This is the wrong Christmas
in the right place: mistletoe
water there is no kissing
under, the soused holly
.
of the wrack, and birds coming
to the bird-table with
no red on their breast. All
night it has snowed
.
foam on the splintering
beaches, but the dawn-
wind carries it away, load
after load, and look,
.
the sand at the year’s
solstice is young flesh
in a green crib, product
of an immaculate conception.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Kingdom of God, poetry, RS Thomas, vision
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Camino de Santiago, pilgrimage, poetry, prayer, RS Thomas
I’ve been mulling over The Solitary Walker’s thoughtful comment on my Hints and Glimpses post a couple of days ago. Rather than answering it directly, I want to share some oblique thoughts it has sparked off. I hope they make some sort of sense.
I suppose for myself – and people vary a lot on this – there have been moments of overwhelming clarity, when the veil has been lifted. I could not do without them, I am not strong enough, but much of the time, most of the time, it has been hints and glimpses.
A phrase that has been important to me comes from the Book of Isaiah:
I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places (Isaiah 45:3).
This has led me to think a lot about the hard times, the appalling difficult things so many of us go through, or the times when we cannot see at all, when there are not even hints or glimpses. My first impulse is to turn away, to want all to be well, but the real thing, the right thing, is to embrace it, to enter in, to mine the treasures of the darkness.
In terms of the Camino in Spain, the first hard week of illness and settling, followed by the long hard solitary days through La Mancha were the times of hardness and darkness. Yet I would not swap this time for anything; and of course the stripped back starkness of the Camino can illuminate so many other passages in the Pilgrimage that is our life. These times are difficult, but the difficulty allows us to discover who we are, who we meant to be.
RS Thomas alludes to this in my favourite poem:
Kneeling
Moments of great calm,
Kneeling before an altar
Of wood in a stone church
In summer, waiting for the God
To speak; the air a staircase
For silence; the sun’s light
Ringing me, as though I acted
A great rôle. And the audiences
Still; all that close throng
Of spirits waiting, as I,
For the message.
………………………Prompt me, God;
But not yet. When I speak,
Though it be you who speak
Through me, something is lost.
The meaning is in the waiting.
.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Easter, Holy Week, poetry, prayer, RS Thomas
Suddenly
RS Thomas
As I had always known
he would come, unannounced,
remarkable merely for the absence
of clamour. So truth must appear
to the thinker; so, at a stage
of the experiment, the answer
must quietly emerge. I looked
at him, not with the eye
only, but with the whole
of my being, overflowing with
him as a chalice would
with the sea. Yet was he
no more there than before,
his area occupied
by the unhaloed presences.
You could put your hand
in him without consciousness
of his wounds. The gamblers
at the foot of the unnoticed
cross went on with
their dicing; yet the invisible
garment for which they played
was no longer at stake, but worn
by him in this risen existence.
Thanks to The Solitary Walker for his comment on RS Thomas. I have to resist the temptation to fill this blog with Thomas’ poems, but here is Pilgrimages:
There is an island there is no going
to but in a small boat, the way
the saints went, travelling the gallery
of the frightened faces of
the long-drowned, munching the gravel
of its beaches. So I have gone
up the salt lane to the building
with the stone altar, and the candles
gone out, and kneeled and lifted
my eyes to the furious gargoyle
of the owl that is like a god
gone small and resentful. There
is no body in the stained window
of the sky now. Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims? He is such a fast
God, always before us, and
leaving as we arrive.
There are those here
not given to prayer, whose office
is the blank sea that they say daily.
What they listen to is not
hymns, but the slow chemistry of the soil,
that turns saints’ bones into dust,
dust to an irritant of the nostril.
There is no time on this island.
The swinging pendulum of the tide
has no clock; the events
are dateless. These people are not
late or soon; they are just
here, with only the one question
to ask, which life answers
by being in them. It is I
who ask. Was the pilgrimage
I made to come to my own
self, to learn that, in times
like these, and for one like me,
God will never be plain and
out there, but dark rather, and
inexplicable, as though he were in here?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Environment, haiti, Kingdom of God, poetry, RS Thomas
as I think about Haiti, about the environment, about my commitment to justice and peace, I reflect on this poem by RS Thomas:
The Kingdom
It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
