St Levan Church (Lady Chapel) Land End Cornwall
Moments of great calm…Poetry, Prayer and God.
I came across this poem by R S Thomas a few years ago. Possibly it may speak to you as it does to me.
Moments of great calm,
Kneeling before an altar
Of wood in a stone church
In summer, waiting for the God
To speak; the air a staircase
For silence; the sun’s light
Ringing me, as though I acted
A great rôle. And the audiences
Still; all that close throng
Of spirits waiting, as I,
For the message.
Prompt me, God;
But not yet. When I speak,
Though it be you who speak
Through me, something is lost.
The meaning is in the waiting.
R S Thomas’s poem speaks for many of us who in similar circumstances enter a church – perhaps on a weekday when no service is taking place. A church or cathedral in a town is an oasis for prayer and meditation.
Those wonderful lines – “the air a staircase for silence,” find an echo in my own heart. There are many folk that never attend liturgical services, who, nevertheless pray alone to God in the silence of an empty church building. Sometimes they’re not even sure whether or not they believe in him, but they pray just the same.
R S Thomas was an Anglican priest and a Welshman. He was born in 1913 and died in 2000. Many of his poems explore the search for a God, now absent, now present.
I often celebrate the Eucharist here. It, like the Lord, has been a part of my life as long as I can remember.
St Levan preaching to the fishes.
RS Thomas is one of my favourite poets – I used to love teaching him to the lads at School – and they would ‘get’ him – a sure sign of his honest integrity. Beautiful photographs Malcolm.
Thanks Geoff. I’m glad you like my photos. R S Thomas is also one of my favourite poets. There’s a unique quality about him that really gets into one’s soul.
This one especially
The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
He’s a fine poet, Malcolm – don’t know if you ever caught this programme:
Lovely photographs and a new (to me) poet whom I like a great deal. Thanks
Geoffrey,
Many many thanks for that remarkable and beautiful youtube about RS THomas. I hadn’t seen it before and it spoke to me most profoundly. I can echo much that he said in my own ministry.
That last poem that he read -”The Other” – There are nights that are so still…It is then that i lie awake listening to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic. I too can hear the surf pounding the beach from where I live. Many is the time that I’ve lain awake in similar circumstances.
The poem Via Negativa is particularly meaningful to me.
Via Negativa
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.
Neo, The Collected Poems 1945-1990 is well worth reading.