The morning started with a large plate of cereal – muesli and crunchy nut cornflakes, healthy and not so healthy balancing each other:) Then a walk up Glen Dye – not too long but far enough; and saw a golden eagle doing the lunch patrol, a sight always worth a long walk. Back in time to creep into Old Aberdeen bookshop and browse for a while amongst the shelves. And came away with three books, which will occupy around three inches of shelf space. Yes. I've started counting the inches and feet of shelving needed to home my books. But these ones are worth the space.
This is one of the best books on R S Thomas – recommended highly by that unapologetic evangelist for all things RST, Chris over on Blethers – see sidebar for the link.
The poetry of Thomas is amongst the most poignant and perceptive formulations of those unsettling and inevitable questions about faith, God and ourselves that human life and circumstance can push at us. It is poetry that can be tender and angry, wistful and defiant, playful and cynical, hopeful and resigned, gentle and harsh – but the darker wing of these four pairs tends to dominate. And that gives his poetry an authority and credibility for those who have walked through valleys of deep darkness, those who have braved disappointment without inner capitulation to self pity, and those for whom God is love, but love that is tough, at times mystifyingly so.
Maggie Fergusson's biography of George Mackay Brown has been on my get it list for a while. Too busy with other things, and reading other stuff. But mint hardback for a quarter of the new price means it now dispalces other holiday reading plans.
Brown's poetry is cherished by those who read him and stay with him. I remember first reading "Song for St Magnus", written in 1993, and asking the Orkney saint to intercede for the women of Bosnia and Somalia. At the time a friend in our church had known Brown as a personal friend while working in the second hand bookshop around which he often lingered. She and Charlie Senior (Mentioned often in this book) had befriended Brown, and now and again we read his poetry together when life had become a bit much for her. In the Song of St Magnus the poet asks for priests:
In this time of hate
(Never such hate and anger over the earth)
May they light candles at their altars
This day and all days,
Till history is steeped in light.
And while we are talking about poets and their poems, this book by R F Capon is a celebrated exploration of Jesus' parables. I have no hesitation whatsoever in describing Jesus as a poet – both in his use of words, in parable and story, and in the way his own life enacted human experience with attractive persuasion, so that words and actions came together in a natural rhythm, a harmony of the spoken and the demonstrably real.
One of the best blurbs I've read adorns the back of this book:
"Capon releases the parables out of their right-handed prison and frees them into the land of left handed mystery where they belong. He reminds us that these parables are not theological propositions calling for analysis or requiring systems of thought. They are pictures, images, poetry – left handed communication calling for faith and demanding obedience." Jesus the poet – in words and life – he is the picture, the image, the poetry, of God. A thought that Paul had long before me – Colossians 1.15, now there's a poem! And Luke 15 – there's another one!!
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