St Hywyn’s Church, where Thomas served, by mike keel, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link
I subscribe to Alan Jacobs’ newsletter and his last edition contained several items I enjoyed, including this piece of artwork by Pawel Kuczynski and this post on the different interfaces in the LEGO universe and what they teach us about console design. He also shared a poem by R. S. Thomas offered in his collection The Echoes Return Slow:
I was vicar of large things
in a small parish. Small-minded
I will not say, there were depths
in some of them I shrank back
from, wells that the word “God”
fell into and died away,
and for all I know is still
falling. Who goes for water
to such must prepare for a long
wait. Their eyes looked at me
and were the remains of flowers
on an old grave. I was there,
I felt, to blow on ashes
that were too long cold. Often,
when I thought they were about
to unbar to me, the draught
out of their empty places
came whistling so that I wrapped
myself in the heavier clothing
of my calling, speaking of light and love
in the thickening shadows of their kitchens.
In digging around for more information about Thomas, a Welsh poet, Anglican priest, and none-too-cheery-looking fellow, I found a prose piece that accompanied the poem above:
What had been blue shadows on a longed-for horizon, traced on an inherited background, were shown in time to contain this valley, this village and a church built with stones from the river, where the rectory stood, plangent as a mahogany piano. The stream was a bright tuning-fork in the moonlight. The hay-fields ran with a dark current. The young man was sent unprepared to expose his ignorance of life in a leafless pulpit.
What an image.
The pulpit does expose you, and service in ministry reveals to you how little you actually know. Indeed, you do represent “large things” even in small places–which really turn out to not be so small–and the people there contain depths profound and unfathomable. There are surprising moments, and unanticipated exchanges of words filled with tremendous meaning, not only about everyday moments, but about God, not only in the light, but in the shadows of life.
