It was a Good Friday service, nearly 40 years ago. The service was shaped around the use of the hands at the Passion. The hands that received the 30 silver coins and embraced Jesus; the hand of Peter grasping for a sword in Gethsemane; those same hands warming themselves at the charcoal fire in a Roman courtyard; the hands of Pilate washed for all to see, hoping to remove all guilt for the execution of the Galilean; the hands of Simon of Cyrene accosted and made to carry the cross for Jesus; and the hands of Jesus himself, nailed down, supporting his own weight when the cross was raised.
And those hands of Jesus that had broken bread on the mountain to feed the crowd, and had lifted and blessed children, had touched lepers and blind people, had overturned tables and sat at a table and broke bread yet again. Human hands, so expressive of human purpose and personality, so communicative of welcome or refusal, clenched in anger or opened in generous giving. And as the Easter story moves relentlessly towards Calvary, there are no clean hands, except those rendered immobile by nails.
It was in that service, I think 1985, I first heard, read with quiet firmness by my friend Kate, the R S Thomas poem 'The Musician.' In all the years since, I've never forgotten the impact of carefully written words read with no attempt to win the attention of the audience – read with practiced care the poem did that itself. We had just sung,
See from his head, his hands his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown.
Kate quietly walked to the front, and without introduction, read 'The Musician.' And so R S Thomas became a voice I listened to, a poet to be reckoned with, a doctor of the soul, especially the troubled soul, the doubting, uncertain and frankly God-questioning soul. Over the years I've read him, agreed with him, disagreed with him, been annoyed with him, but come to love and respect him as one for whom faith was never anything other than fighting the good fight, with perseverance, without self-pity and with a spirituality impatient of a too easy won assurance.
All of this by way of explaining I'm about to embark on a more extensive study of the poetry of R S Thomas, some of it shared here, much of it accumulating towards, who knows, a possible future publication.
We all have folk in our lives who have the gift of fertilising thought and energising imagination. Kate was like that. Over the near 40 years of our friendship we exchanged books, freely expressing like and dislike, each of us free to be critical in that constructive way that's fun as well as education. On all my subsequent reading of poetry from that Good Friday, Kate's judgment and guidance introduced me to so many other voices, books, poems and much else. But my abiding literary memory is of her reading a magnificent poem, in the context of the Passion, and Christian worship on Good Friday.
The three books are to my knowledge, the best treatments of the theological and religious context out of which Thomas wrote. None of them are an easy read; but neither is the poetry that wrestles like Jacob with the God who is elusive, and whose name we desperately seek to learn, and know.
The poem in calligraphy is 'The Musician', found in Collected Poems 1945-1990, J. M. Dent, 1993. page 104. The story of the calligraphy is for another time.
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