Rowan Williams: “A poet for whom religious things matter intensely.’

DSC09782 (2)I've been slowly making my way through this. Williams is a complex thinker, and being a poet, theologian and philosopher, he is a formidable reader of poetry.
 
In an interview he said, "'I dislike the idea of being a religious poet. I would prefer to be a poet for whom religious things mattered intensely.'
 
Reading one of these poems a day, with Williams 2-3 page commentary, is like the health benefits of standing on each leg for a minimum of 10 seconds every day. It improves balance, strengthens key muscles, and slowly builds a more stable inner equilibrium!
 
As an example, his two pages on George Mackay Brown's ' Epiphany Poem' credits Mackay Brown with exactly the achievement the Orkney poet sought – a religious and moral case for creation care as only achievable when human hubris confronts God's Word of new creation, in the Christ child, and bows down.
 
"What the Epiphany discovery is has something to do with the Nativity or Incarnation as the start of a new creation. It is a passage between worlds, bugt ultimately a passage between chaos – the chaos of human achievement and power – and the new condition of openness in which God can be heard, and so life can be sustained." (Page 48)

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