June 2024
By James Woodward
It is a long way from Salisbury to the Llyn Peninsula. This was a pilgrimage of sorts to the RS Thomas Poetry Festival The slow and wet journey north was worth every turn and queue along the way. A number of speakers broke open the poet’s words for the gathered pilgrims.
RS Thomas ministered in a number of parishes in Wales before he reached the last village before Ireland. The journey down to Aberdaron is noteworthy for a number of reasons. At the peninsular the land becomes more stark – it looks and feels less cluttered! You move down to the headland where the sea takes over almost completely. This place and its landscape have drawn pilgrims, writers, poets, artists and those in need of space. Here people breathe more deeply and slow themselves to listen. In the space, the soul asks questions. The raw beauty enlarges the heart and disturbs us out of complacency.
In his 15 June lecture, Mark Pryce invited his audience to consider RS (as I learnt he was referred to here) as a spiritual guide – an interrogator, an animator and steerer of the soul as his poetry captures the mystery of God. The still and steady hand of Thomas opens up of vistas of the mystery of God as both present and absent. We glimpsed in this lecture the ‘pilgrim tenacity’ of Thomas in his search and perseverance for the truth. In an unreligious time, Pryce showed us how Thomas bears witness to the gift of the steadiness of endeavour.
I found this a helpful way to understand the shifting shape of the religious landscape. Where are we to find truth? How do we listen to our spiritual longings? Pryce captured this by inviting us to consider questioning as a spiritual practice. This is a pilgrimage of the spirit which can never be trapped in buildings – or even the landscape! In the struggle, there is hope and solidarity.
We must therefore be ready with RS to ask questions and to know that finding God is difficult. We must stay with the journey, however challenging, and perhaps find companions along this way. I was taken back into the life of Sarum and its learning that is shaped by a multiplicity of traditions and stories of the lives of faith. Rooted in the Christian tradition we must be careful of the constraints of ecclesiological structures as we discover our own voice and vocation. This can be the wellspring of our commitment to social change. This is theology and spirituality that shapes, transforms and liberates. In the space between the lines we wrestle and meet the Divine.
There was much more – Nicola Slee on the priest poet Jim Cotter, a 60-strong choir singing hymns and the irrepressible and highly organised Susan Fogarty, founder and director of the RS Thomas & ME Eldridge Society.
Perhaps it is appropriate to leave the last words with RS Thomas’s poem, Kneeling – read it here
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The Revd Canon James Woodward is Principal of Sarum College. This article has been adapted from the original which appeared on James Woodward’s website.
Mark Pryce and Nicola Slee are Visiting Scholars at Sarum College.
James is co-leading the day course, Environment, Art Theology & Action on 18 September 2024.
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