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Some time in the early 1990's I was given a book about stained glass, an art form that has always intrigued. The friend who gave me the book knew I had an interest in both stained glass and tapestry.That's how yet another tapestry was conceived.

The artist Roger Fry (a member of the Bloomsbury Group) designed and created a stained glass roundel in 1914, on a theme after a painting by Cezanne. I found a print of it in my book, yet another visuaI experience in which spirituality, theology and image coalesced. The roundel has rich connotations of ploughed fields, seeds and plants growing towards harvest, perhaps a channelled river, two pillars of light suggestive of ripening grain, and the varied light of a sky mirroring the cycle of the seasons and the weather.

Drawn on to the canvas, and with the book photo for guidance I tried to make the copy as  exact as possible given that the medium was square canvas and the subject was a roundel! By now I was becoming much more aware of the relation between art and theology, and especially how colour, image and shape could provide a visual exegesis of those inner truths we struggle to articulate in words.

As a preacher and theologian, whose first degree is in moral philosophy, I had perhaps become too comfortable with abstract thought, too focused on intellectual constructs. Working with threads and immersing in colour was becoming a new way of moving into contemplative mode. I remember a comment from a very good friend, John, who trained as a ship's carpenter, one of the finest woodworkers I've known. "I widnae hae the patience for that – nor the eyesight!" I knew what he meant, but I was loving it. At no stage have I ever felt the need to hurry. Weeks can go past with little stitching done.

When I pick up the tapestry frame it becomes fairly obvious if I'm stressed. It's to do with the tension in the thread, the evenness of the stitching, the pull of needle and thread as itself an exercise in self-restraint, and therefore a willingness to let the materials and tools do their work on the canvas, and on the mind and spirit. It may be that the art of prayer is caught up into those activities in which we create, invest time, develop skills and become creatures ourselves made in the image of the Creator.

Back to the Cezanne inspired roundel. Roger Fry's Harvest roundel was created just as War broke out across Europe in 1914. Context matters when interpreting art, I think we all recognise that. This window celebrates the seasons of life, growth, fruitfulness, the beauty of earth, the fertility of soil, the life-giving sunlight that enables photo-synthesis. One critic described Fry's work: "His work was considered to give pleasure, communicating the delight of unexpected beauty and which tempers the spectator's sense to a keener consciousness of its presence."

Against the backdrop of militarism, the advent of war, a future in which millions of young lives were sacrificed on the say-so of Europe's political and military elites,this beautiful scene of cultivated human life and promised harvest is art at its most defiant, subversive and prophetic. The artist could not have imagined the immense tragedy about to engulf a generation of young Europeans. His window is a window into hopefulness, created as the world looked through a different window with the light diminishing rapidly towards darkness. 

Once again, the tapestry has faded in the 30 years since it was made. But it remains a favourite, mainly because of the contextual story it tells, of defiant hope in the face of impending tragedy. And add to that the implied contrast between human work on the land to bear fruitful harvest, and human industry creating machines for the explicit purposes of death. 

Monday

Proverbs 17.16 & 18.2 “A man of understanding sets his face towards wisdom, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing an opinion.”

I know. Facebook, Instagram, smart-phones and keyboards didn’t exist when these words were written. But the deficit of wisdom in high places remains. Everyone has an opinion, but understanding? Not so much. Wisdom is knowing how to live well, and the Book of Proverbs gathers in one place the wisdom of learning from experience, not making the same mistake twice, and giving God his place.

Tuesday

Proverbs 3.5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.”

This is not as daft as it sounds. Don’t rely on your own understanding doesn’t mean stop thinking for yourself. It means think rightly, wisely, with God on the horizon. To acknowledge God is about obedience; to use a well-used phrase, wisdom is about “doing the right thing”. Proverbs is full of warnings about lies, indifference to the poor, stabbing in the back, being a bad neighbour. We acknowledge and trust God when we live in ways that don’t embarrass God!

Wednesday

Proverbs 19.17 & 22.9 “He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and he will repay him for his deed. He who has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.”

“Lord grant me a bountiful eye.” Not sure I’ve ever heard that particular prayer! Compassion leads to kindness and generosity is kindness in practice. A bountiful eye is a way of seeing others that makes us act for their good. If you do that something happens you’d never believe, but it’s true – “He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord.” Imagine that! Out of our giving to others, God is in our debt – but God is no one’s debtor, and anything we could ever give to God, is nothing compared to all that God has already given to us.

Thursday

Proverbs 25.21-22 “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty give him water to drink; for you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”

Hatred based on grievances eventually leads to violence – verbal, psychological, physical. One of the ways to defuse enmity is to act kindly to those who are hostile. Coals of fire refer to the conscience; we talk about burning with shame. To return good for evil is to give the enemy a chance, and to give peace a chance. The reward will be turning an enemy into a friend, and if not, knowing God’s yes to our actions.

Friday

Proverbs 22.24-25 “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.”

Anger isn’t always wrong. Sometimes it is anger at injustice that properly channelled, creates the energy, imagination and determination to work for change. But there’s a lot of anger about; not righteous anger, but self-righteous anger. I’m right. You’re wrong. I’m offended. You’re to blame. My life isn’t working. It’s anybody’s fault but mine. Social media has been described as an anger factory. So, am I, are you, in danger of being a man or woman given to anger, habitually negative, eager to retaliate in words whether spoken or typed? If so, stop it. Now.  

Saturday

Proverbs 10.19 “When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is prudent.”

Have you ever counted how many words you speak in a day? Supposing there was a word counter app, same as for steps? These proverbs were first written for people in public life – so today, in the office, school, coffee shops, church, supermarket, pubs. Small talk is important and often innocent. When it veers into gossip, score-settling, talking that inflicts damage on others, then the fewer words the better. As Jesus said, we will answer for every word spoken on the day of judgement – I wonder how many of us actually believe that? Really (Check out Matthew 12.36)

Sunday

Proverbs 3.3 “Let not loyalty and faithfulness forsake you; bind them about your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart.”

Two words that sum up the best in human relationships – loyalty and faithfulness. Oh, I know, we want to know where love comes in. But love cannot survive without loyalty and faithfulness, and at the heart of both these words is trust. To keep our promises, to be there for someone no matter what, to persist in kindness, to not give up on someone – that’s to have their name, alongside those words loyalty and faithfulness, written on the heart. Trust works both ways, and when it does, we stay faithful and loyal. Love is then what we feel, what we think, and how we behave.

The Lesson

The bird man explains

how the male bird has to establish

territory, advertise, by singing,

his presence.(Have you heard God

sing?) He demonstrates

how where you had thought

there was nothing a bird

crouches. (Protective camouflage?)

There is not one bird but thousands

and thousands of species, each

separable by its feathers.

The comparison fails

Here, life, it is true, has its feathers

but they are not all part of the plumage

of the one God. (Perhaps history

has its nights, when that God

roosts with his head hidden.)

No matter, they are alike, these two,

in migratory behaviour.

One day the hedges are alive

with hurrying bodies as a mind

is with thoughts. On the morrow

they are deserted, another country

becomes jubilant with bird notes.

Where has God gone? The mind’s branches

are empty and without

song. Their leaves are encrusted

with town dust.Return, migrant,

so your listeners arising

on some May morning of the spirit

may hear you whistling again

softly but more musically than any of their inventions.

The poet-priest is an ornithologist, one who is used to spotting and identifying those elusive flashes of colour, who knows a bird by its call and song, and who is familiar with the habitats and hiding places of the 'thousands and thousands of species, each separable by its feathers.'

The poem is about the mystery of 'migratory behaviour', the coming and going of birds through the seasons of the year. It's also about the advent and absence of God. Migration as metaphor, the migratory rhythms of coming and going helps the poet, and the reader, come to terms with those other anticipatory field trips looking for God, listening for the identifiable call, searching previously known habitats, trying to peer through the 'protective camouflage'.

'Have you heard God sing?' The first of three question marks is enclosed in parenthesis, as if "Well, reader, have you?". Thomas wants an answer. This first question is asked between the bird establishing the territorial imperative in the first four lines, and a warning to the bird-watcher that their search might reveal nothing, signalled by a second question mark – 'Protective camouflage?' The approach of humans is not to be trusted so birds hide, go silent, or take flight. 'The bird man' knows where the birds are to be found, and can identify them, see them, hear them.

'But the comparison fails.' God is not so easily spotted, or tracked down by our accumulated cleverness. God and birds are alike at least in this, their migratory behaviour; each can be here today and gone tomorrow. The poignant picture of bushes alive with colour and song one day, and deserted and silent the next, is a metaphor that uncovers the spiritual longing and frustrations of those who love God, seek God, need God; but who then discover God is not to be found on demand. At which point it might seem incongruous to introduce the astringent wisdom of Nanny McPhee: "When you need me, but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go."

But God's coming and going, this migratory behaviour of God, isn't comfortable, predictable, and reliable, a Nanny to the rescue. God is not defined or controlled by our needs. Sometimes in the places of deepest need, "history has its nights, when that God / roosts with his head hidden."

It is one of the most difficult and recurring seasons in any human life, and in the life of faith, "When the mind's / branches are empty / and without song," while adding hurt to sadness because "another country becomes jubilant with bird notes." 

"Where has God gone?" It's a mistake to think that theology is always, or even, about finding answers. Thomas's question is that potent mixture of existential quest, philosophical enquiry, theological reflection and in the background, the shadows of science and technological power. The poet has been asking, knocking and seeking for years. And all this within a mind sometimes alive with thoughts of God, and sometimes deserted, empty without song.

I think Thomas would have appreciated the caution of these words: "It does not seem to me that answers are an exhaustive style of proper Christian teaching…Hans Frei spoke of Scripture and theology as a “leisurely unfolding of the inner logic of Christian belief,”…Such a program does not yield tidy or plain or crisp answers." ¹ So Katherine Sonderegger, one of our finest writing theologians – in demanding, austere, passionate prose, that can sometimes read as poetry, she is utterly certain that God is who God is, not who or what we want Him to be. And God is where God is, not where we demand him to be. 

In 1995 when this poem was written, at the age of 82, Thomas asks the question he has been asking with relentless persistence, this time with the blunt rudeness of any one of us. "Where has God gone?" Is God there but not seen – behind protective camouflage? "Have you heard God sing?" Yes, but a while ago now. This is the Rev R S Thomas the priest ornithologist, in pastoral mode, reassuring the reader that God comes and goes, at least our sense of God's presence does. But the seasons turn, the migratory cycle is not broken, May is coming.

So while the ending of the poem includes Thomas's characteristic antipathy to human inventions and machines (and it may be that by 'inventions' he is referring to institutional religion, liturgical contrivance and either a too safe or too reductionist theology) – nevertheless, the last few lines read like an invocation strengthened by previous experience and present hopefulness:

Return, migrant,

so your listeners arising

on some May morning of the spirit

may hear you whistling again

softly but more musically than any of their inventions.

Those lines could stand as the first Collect on Pentecost Sunday! Now add to all of this, those evocative first lines about the bird who establishes territory by singing his presence, and the metaphor comes full circle; or at least the migratory cycle of the Divine is complete. 

1 'A Farewell to All That', Katherine Sonderegger, Pro Ecclesia, vol.31. Issue 4. Accessed Online, 25/02/23. This is a subscription only Journal. 

'The Lesson', from R.S.Thomas. Uncollected Poems, (Eds) Tony Brown & Jason Walford Davies, Bloodaxe, 2013, page 121.

"Is God worshipped only in cathedrals, where blood drips from regimental standards as from the crucified body of love? Is there a need for a revised liturgy, for bathetic renderings of the scriptures? The Cross always is avante-garde."¹

R S Thomas lamented the modernisation of liturgy, suspicious of the modern fear of any terminology that is not current, contemporary, accessible, or, God help us, relevant. Against Thomas's apparent liturgical conservationist tendencies it may be argued, and often is, that there is nothing to be gained by Christianity sounding like a mystery religion, or the Church adhering to a language no longer spoken, and now seldom understood outside the walls of a Christian sanctuary. 

But at the same time, in Thomas's defence, he feared that there may be a great deal to be lost if we surrender the language of faith, the vocabulary of the Spirit, the rhythms and cadences of hymn and liturgy which carry the freight of the Divine promises and presences and which sustain through those times of Divine absence. Thomas was a theologian of God's absence, a pilgrim familiar with the quiet and desolate places, and with an eye and ear observant of emptiness as of fullness. Not for him the easily recited propositions of the over-certain; not for him the substitution of banality and overfamiliarity with the Almighty, often considered by their exponents as informality and demonstrated intimacy, but which are in reality evidence of an absconded reverence and a trivialisation of the Transcendent.

Whatever arguments Thomas had with God, and there were many – fierce, persistent, unrelenting one to one combat, resulting in inner anguish and spiritual wrestling with the One whose name was withheld and whose touch wounded to the quick – whatever the arguments, Thomas knew his place in the presence, or absence of the Divine. Like the great preacher Qoheleth Thomas knew, he just knew, "God is in heaven, and you are on earth, so let your words be few." Quite.

The quotation at the start of this post is from a prose poem which introduces his reflections on entering a church and looking at the altar, the cross and then beyond these to the God revealed in such transiently simple and eternally durable realities. The brilliance of the last line in the following poem, illumines the whole.

The church is small.
The walls inside
White. On the altar
a cross, with behind it
its shadow and behind
that the shadow of its shadow.

The world outside
knows nothing of this
nor cares. The two shadows
are because of the shining
of two candles: as many
the lights, so many
the shadows. So we learn
something of the nature
of God, the endlessness
of whose recessions
are brought up short
by the contemporaneity of the Cross.²

(The photo is of the small central panel of my tapestry, "Eucharist and Pentecost." 

1. The Echoes Return Slow, R.S.Thomas, (MacMillan,London, 1989, page 82.
2.  Collected Later Poems, R.S.Thomas, (Bloodaxe Books, 2004, page 53.

Over the years I have written a number of posts on the poems of R S Thomas. I've decided to gather them together and post them here regularly, though not daily throughout Lent 2023. I have found writing my response to some of Thomas's poems helps me clarify, or at least dig deeper into, some of the most profound poetry on specifically Christian faith, in its most interrogative mood. 

Poetry is a gift with words that take us to places beyond words. When poetry is written as letters from a far country, they can become life-saving  missives for those of us who must eventually travel there. When it comes to faith, God, sin, love, loss, suffering, hope, grief and much else that confirms our transience, poetry often brings clarification and consolation, providing description of what seemed to us indescribable.

The relations of poetry to theology, and of both to philosophy and science, have seldom been better configured than in the poems of R S Thomas. In a note on his poetry on my Facebook page I wrote:

"They are so sharp, combining theological precision with theological hesitation – for Thomas, faith is not certainty, and God is not to be encapsulated in our words nor reducible to our cleverly constructed concepts. But at the centre of these poems is the Cross, the question mark, worship offered through open lips and gritted teeth, and a man whose cantankerous complexity was the vehicle for some of the loveliest lines I know about love, and that great Love that "moves the sun and other stars."

During Lent I am reading through this volume of his later poems. The poems were likened by Denis Healey to Beethoven's later Quartets in their "fearless exploration of the mysteries of life and death." For years now I have listened to Thomas give  voice to profound uncertainty, hesitant faith, pessimism which stops this side of despair, the elusive miracle of human love which transcends the best of the human intellect to define, delimit or explain away. His exploration of the outer landscape gives him clues to the changing inner climates, the varied landscapes of the mind and the heart and the spirit – I'm not sure Thomas would bother much about the anomalies and theological perplexities of such a tripartite view of the inner life of any one of us. He could be acid and ascerbic about theologians too quick with their answers.

So if Lent is a time for deep thinking; for stripping away illusion to better see what is, or is not, real; for re-aligning the loves of our life so that they nourish rather than devour each other; for facing the failures of faith, confronting bad faith, recovering good faith in God, and in ourselves and our sisters and brothers; then I know few guides more qualified to lead the mind, the heart and the Spirit through Lent and towards Calvary and beyond to resurrection.

Throughout Lent I'll post some meditations on these late poems, these late Quartets of the Welsh composer who, like Beethoven, understood the De Profundis, and the Alleluia of those for whom faith comes hard, and is all the more cherished for that truth.

Monday

Revelation 3.20 “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with them, and they with me.”

Jesus has never been a gate-crasher. God is not sheer force banging on the door of our lives. God is love. Not sentimental, hand-wringing love, but the strong, patient love that has existed eternally in the heart of God. The one who knocks on the door of our lives, comes in the humility of God, seeking our answering love. And the hand that knocks bears the scars that are the proof of that love.

Tuesday

Revelation 3.8 “I know your deeds. See, I place before you an open door that no-one can shut. I know you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”

God is our strength, and there is an ever-open door into Gods presence. All around the world Christians face opposition, persecution, all kinds of closed doors. The door that no one can shut is the door into the presence of the God who is “an ever present help in time of trouble.” We don’t always have strength, but we do have God’s words of promise, and he knows our deeds, and our hearts.

Wednesday

John 20.26 “A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Read that again. Locked doors can’t keep Jesus out. Normally we lock doors to stay safe, to keep us in. The disciples were scared, demoralised and finding safety in numbers. Their real safety was the discovery that Jesus was loose in the world, their world. Faith in the resurrection isn’t just believing in the empty tomb; it’s believing that just as the rock solid door of the grave gave way to the Risen Christ, that same Lord comes to us no matter how strong the barriers of our fears.

Thursday

Acts 16.25-26 “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly a strong earthquake shook the foundations of the prison. At once all the doors flew open and everyone’s chains came loose.”

“For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Gal. 5.1) I wonder if Paul was remembering that night in Philippi when he wrote those words. Charles Wesley likewise, “My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.” When Jesus comes chains fall off, and doors fly open!

Friday

1 Corinthians 16.7-9 “I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.”

“If the Lord permits”. Christian life isn’t about always getting what we want. Sometimes the Lord opens doors and in saying yes, we have to say no to other things. Obedience to God’s call is the only way to serve God effectively. “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

Saturday

James 5.8-9 “Be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. Don’t grumble against each other brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door.”

James is a no nonsense apostle. He knows that grumbling is an inner form of judging others. The judgmental spirit is like friction that wears away the woven fabric of a community. The Lord is near. God knows our hearts, inside out. The opposite of grumbling is gratitude. Grumbling, is when we pay too much attention to other people’s faults, and too little attention to our own inner critical spirit. The Judge is standing at the door – of our home, office, church, heart.

Sunday

Revelation 4.1 “After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this."

The open door is a window. Revelation gives us a glimpse into the worship of heaven. We hear hymns, reverberating around the throne, giving glory to the Lamb of God. That door standing open, is like us standing at the door of a crowded auditorium, hearing the most glorious music vibrate through our souls. And we are invited to join in, our voices blending with theirs in the biggest ever scratch Messiah!

‘You are worthy, our Lord and God,
    to receive glory and honour and power,
for you created all things,
    and by your will they existed and were created.’

What are the sources of hope in a world as broken as ours seems to be? We need no help to list the items quickly filling the huge in-tray of the world's crises that need attending to. We have 24/7 news, online and off, as the background music of life as it is these days. We know enough, and have seen more than enough.

Someone said the other day they were sick of hearing about the world's problems. I know what they meant, and mean. There is a sickness brought on by exposure to more anxiety, fear, sadness and anger than the human mind and heart can comfortably process, manage, or cope with.  

Despair is not a Christian disposition, but it certainly is a human experience, and can sometimes become a cultural mood that depresses and distresses whole communities. As a Christian I'm not immune to the same sickness, the sense of being overwhelmed by circumstances and events I can neither control nor cure. 

But. As a Christian I believe in a God who has no intention of abandoning the world, or us humans, to our own devices. One night in Bethlehem, one afternoon on Calvary and one early morning in a garden, God lifted up this broken world, enfolded it in love, and promised creation's future.

This is a world where cruelty and tragedy, hatred and corruption, greed and injustice, conspired to silence the voice of God and extinguish the light of God, and negate the love of God. But the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us; the light shone in the darkness and the darkness could not extinguish it – death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered.

So, then. What are the sources of hope in a world as broken as ours seems to be? There is an element of defiance in Christian hope, a defiance of despair. Faith this side of the resurrection is faith in the God of hope. These words of Walter Brueggemann were written 30 years ago. My coy of the book is, in booksellers' terms, disbound. Cracked, multiple loose pages, a loose leaf folder of a book. Texts Under Negotiation. The Bible and Postmodern Imagination. (Augsburg Fortress, 1993)

"Hope, the conviction that God will bring things to full, glorious completion, is not an explanation of anything. Indeed, biblical hope most often has little suggestion about how to get from here to there. It is rather an exultant, celebrative conviction that God will not quit until God has had God's way in the world. 

Hope is an act that cedes our existence over to God, in the trusting assurance that God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all that we can think or imagine' (Eph.3.20) 

As with creation, so consummation as a faith affirmation is essentially an act of doxology, which takes its assurance not from anything observable, but from God's own character that issues in God's own promises. Thus I propose that an evangelical infrastructure requires the regular voicing of the most extravagant and outrageous promises of God." (pages 40-41) 

My study window is whistling.

The gales forecast for most of today have arrived sounding like a particularly belligerent orchestra tuning up in front of live microphones and the mixer at full volume.

The yellow warning includes the advice to stay at home 'unless your journey is essential.'

So I suppose washing the car isn't an option either, unless I stand upwind when throwing the odd bucket of water to rinse it.

And there comes a stage in life when walking into the wind, with my jacket open and held above my head like a sail, is not OK for someone my age – which is a pity. 

It isn't even Lent, but already the sound of the wind pushing at the windows, whistling through the window vents, is a foretaste of Pentecost.

"Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them." Acts 2.

No Yellow weather warnings in those days!

Or like that night when an embarrassed Nicodemus came for a confidential counselling session with Jesus and was told what he should already have known: 

"You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”

Wild. Unpredictable. Powerful. Unseen but visible in its effects. Invisible but most audible in words of wonder, love and praise. Wind whistling at the window, renewable energy looking for people to renew.

The tapestry was done some years ago. Eucharist and Pentecost. Thanksgiving and Gift. Comfort and Comforter. Wind, fire and wine, the energisers of community.

And maybe the boy in me that remembers using my jacket as a sail is one of those playful parables for those different stages of life when we have been impelled, shoved, given an impetus not our own. The Holy Spirit as boisterous companion, swirling around us with gusto and encouraging a kind of abandon that takes us out of ourselves.

And the exhilaration of running down a hill, jacket up, with the wind in our sails, not sure when or even how we would stop.

My study window is still whistling; the wind still blows; up to 60 mph says the yellow warning. Like the Spirit of God, "we have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next."

Veni Spiritus Sanctus.