"Preach so that the old woman in the back pew can understand you," is one of those dodgy anecdotes in the oral tradition of homiletic guidance for aspiring clergy that is almost certainly apocryphal, and undoubtedly misguided. If it was ever offered as advice from the voices of experience, it remains condescending, ill-informed and frankly ridiculous.
He spoke with slow deliberation, and from a remarkable memory of what he had read, absorbed and assimilated into his own understanding of God and the ways of God with a sinner grateful for love and mercy beyond understanding. But that didn't stop him from trying to 'sound the depths of love divine', words from a hymn he knew by heart, the verses of which were the narrative of his own heart's pilgrimage.
Over long years of contemplative and intellectual harvesting, Bill had become a repository of the kind of theology that works an inner transformation of thought, affection, and life goals. To sit and talk with Bill was an education in Christian experience understood as a quest 'to know the love of God which is beyond understanding." This humble man knew so much about the love of God because he had determined to know the God who loved him, and to live in the love that had made, redeemed and sustained him. To be his minister was not only a sacred privilege, it was an education; and to talk with him was to be given a one on one tutorial in 'humble love and fervent praise', a line from another of the hymns he knew by heart.
Which brings me to this prose poem by R. S. Thomas.
"'The holiness of the heart's affections.' Never tamper with them. In an age of science everything is analysable but a tear. Everywhere he went, despite his round collar and his licence, he was there to learn rather than teach love. In the simplest of homes there were those who with little schooling and less college had come out top in that sweet examination." 1
As a priest of the Church of Wales, Thomas encountered people like Bill, working folk who never had the chance of college or university, but whose knowledge of God and spirituality transcended the constraints of theological discourse. In the final examinations on love and devotion, however, they were post-graduates, and at times were guided by a priest who at times was still learning to spell, and who had considerable difficulty parsing the grammar of God for themselves.
It's a common Scottish comment on such deep spirituality that someone might be described as "Far ben with God." It means someone who has come to know God as home, who feels welcome in the inner room and has become familiar with whoever dwells there. Such were the people I think Thomas had in mind, people who when their lives were examined in the things that matter most, were found to be in the cum laude bracket of graduates.
If I had to find a one line description of people like Bill, and that long list of people I have known who are like him, then Thomas's quotation from Keats would fit the bill: "The holiness of the heart's affections." The Echoes Return Slow is both autobiographical and effectively a memoir of a priest recalling the years of his vocation, at times evaluative, tinged with regrets, unsparing in his own self-presentation as he is revealed through the prose and poems. And I'm left wondering what a conversation might have been like between R. S. Thomas, and my old friend Bill. I think they might have found common ground in "the holiness of the heart's affections."
1 This is from my favourite single volume of RST's poems. The Echoes Return Slow, R. S. Thomas (London: Macmillan Papermac, 1988, p.92)
2 Drawing, 'Prayer before the meal'. Vincent Van Gogh.
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