Not much comment needed on this poem.1 Just three by way of context, and a comment on Jurgen Moltmann, the theologian whose work most closely mirrors some of Thomas's theological questions.
1. By juxtaposing the inspired, disciplined agony of the artist, with the creative suffering love of God, Thomas revitalises theological imaginations smothered by the tedium of the overfamiliar. Ever since a friend chose to read this at a Good Friday service years ago, I've never again been able to listen to solo violin music with previous innocence, or been able to separate the vision of a musician giving his or her all, from the God who does the same.
2. The copy you are reading was written by a man who attended that service, wrote out the poem and presented it to me. It is for me a literary Icon. Alistair first started doing calligraphy in an Asian POW camp, sharing accommodation with Laurens van der Post. His first tools were split bamboo nibs, with mud and water as ink. Though he almost never spoke of those experiences, he knew more than a little about suffering, and that in human faith and experience which makes "such music as lives still".
3. That Good Friday reading of 'The Musician' alerted me to the theological profundity and complexity of the mind of this poet who composed and played such poems. Repeatedly, as poet-priest, Thomas returns to the Cross, the place where the mystery of the God who speaks through suffering love, and the place where the God who listens closely to the music of heart-broken humanity, performs the unoriginate music of the Passion of God.
I finish with some words from Jurgen Moltmann, from whom I continue to learn not so much by way of satisfying answers, as by a fellowship rooted in both honest perplexity and steadfast refusal to give up on truth that is beyond the grasp of human reach.
"The Son suffers death in this forsakenness. The Father suffers the death of the Son. So the pain of the Father corresponds to the death of the Son. And when in his descent to hell the Son loses the Father, then in his judgement the Father also loses the Son. Here the innermost life of the Trinity is at stake. Here the communicating love of the Father turns into infinite pain over the sacrifice of the Son. Here the responding love of the Son becomes infinite suffering over his repulsion and rejection by the Father. What happens on Golgotha reaches into the innermost depths of the Godhead, putting its impress on the trinitarian life in eternity." 2
One of the most controversial elements in Moltmann's theological explorations is the way he takes with utmost seriousness, Jesus' cry of abandonment, and its implications for the inner life of the Triune God. Not everyone is comfortable with Moltmann's theology of divine agonising and his insistence that the death of the Son implies the grievous bereavement of the Father, borne and absorbed into the life of God through the Spirit, embedded within the divine love from all eternity.
But here is mystery beyond all our efforts at lucid coherence and systematic control. The truth is, no honest grappling with such searing realities should leave us feeling other than uncomfortable – because all honest and prayerful struggle to understand, and adore and surrender should be recognised for what it is – taking off the shoes of our intellect in acknowledgement of Love's eternal and redemptive and patient purpose.
The phrase most closely associated with Jurgen Moltmann's theology, and the title of his most famous book, could just as easily describe much of the poetry and implied theology of R.S. Thomas, and could stand as a sub-title of his poem 'The Musician.' – The Crucified God.
- R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems. 1945-1990, (London: J M Dent, 1993), p.104.
- The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, Jurgen Moltmann, (London: SCM Press, 1981), p.81
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