THOUGHTS FOR MAY 2016
Examples of the poetry of R.S Thomas
Reginald Stuart Thomas was a 20th century poet and Anglican priest. He was a Welshman, who did not learn the Welsh language until the age of 30. He loved the Welsh hill country and its farmers, whom he got to know well during his time as vicar in Monafon. Thomas, later in life became known as 'The Ogre' of Wales. Underneath his acerbic and introverted personality, he was overwhelmed with love and emotion. His poetry was the expression of this very private person. In his poem ‘A Marriage' he expressed his love for his first wife, to whom he was married for 51 years.
We met under a shadow of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed, love's moment in a world in servitude to time.
She was young; I kissed with my eyes closed and opened them on her wrinkles.
'Come' said death, choosing her as his partner for the last dance.
And she, who in life had done everything with a bird's grace, opened her bill now
for the shedding of one sigh no heavier than a feather.
All his life R.S. Thomas struggled with God, "whose absence is as his presence." He believed that the world needed the unifying presence of the imagination, and that the two things that provided it most were poetry and religion.
Thomas was not afraid to acknowledge the intermittent absence of God or the difficulty of faith.
He believed that God is so often leaving just as we arrive.
He also believed you had to wait, for you cannot control God.
He was deeply conscious that God was looking at him: the problem for him was to know how to look back at God.
God was a terrible mystery. He observed, "We stare into the eternal silence, that is the repose of God."
Here are two of his poems which reveal apophatic thinking.
VIA NEGATIVA
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is the 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 footsteps 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.
THE ABSENCE
It is this great absence
that is like a presence, that compels
me to address it without hope
of a reply. It is a room I enter
from which someone has just
gone, the vestibule for the arrival
of one who has not yet come.
I modernise the anachronism
of my language, but he is no more here
than before. Genes and molecules
have no more power to call
him up than the incense of the Hebrews
at their altars. My equations fall
as my words do. What resources have I
other than the emptiness without him of my whole
being, a vacuum he may not abhor?
"R.S. Thomas is a poet who in the modern age has done more than anyone to explore both the lure and the intense difficulty of prayer. Waiting on God, for a sense of God's presence, keeping going when there seems to be hardly a sign of response are hallmarks of his work.........but a well trodden journey for so many Christians who find prayer just very tough going, However a sense of God's absence is a completely different thing from the sense that there is no God and this vibrant emptiness is the subject of (these two) poems."
Janet Morley - haphazard by starlight
Alan
THOUGHTS FOR APRIL 2016
What is apophatic theology?
The word apophatic is derived from the Greek word apophemi meaning to deny and apophasis - to say 'no'. In Latin, apophaticus means negative or negation.
Apophatic theology is therefore a negative way of describing God; for God is transcendent, mysterious, ineffable, beyond thought, shrouded in silence and a divine darkness; which is beyond language and concept. We are only able to describe God by saying what we are unable to say, using positive language. God is beyond time, space and reality. Thus God is beyond definition. This manner of thinking about God is closely linked to mysticism. The mystic or the Quaker, at meeting for worship, endeavours, in silence, to enter into communion with the Light of God.
Diarmaid MacCulloch in his book Silence A Christian History asserts, "Apophatic Christianity or negative theology is a religion of spirit, looking inwards."........ "It portrays what God is not, rather than what he is."
TRANSCENDENCE
"But Moses said to God, 'If I come to the Israelites and say to them, the God
of your ancestors has sent me to you and they ask me ' what is his name?' 'What shall I say to them?' God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.' Exodus 2.14
"God is eternal, not in the sense of possessing limitless duration but in the sense of transcending time altogether." David Bentley Hart
"He is the infinite to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be subtracted." David Bentley Hart
"Transcendence is that which climbs beyond known reality and cannot be categorised." Karen Armstrong
Vedanta means knowledge and is one of the philosophical beliefs of Hinduism. It states, "God doesn't want anything of us. He doesn't want us to be found; he has no laws that we should obey; he never judges, punishes, or puts forth expectations."
NEGATIVE THEOLOGY
"Anything said truly of the divine essence can only have a negative meaning." Maimonides 13th century rabbi
"God is not
Not soul
Not imagination, opinion, Reason
Not intellect
Not life
Not being
Not eternity, not time
Not divinity
Not goodness." Dionysius the Areopogite
"God is beyond description, beyond words, beyond even a human concept of silence, He is beyond being."
"God does not exist, he is eternal." Kerkegaard
"There exists a cloud of unknowing between you and God." Cloud of Unknowing (anonymous)
"Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel." Isaiah 45.15
MYSTERY
"The search for God consists in arriving at a place and discovering that God has just left." Thomas Merton
"Religion is destroyed without mystery - and indeed without paradox ....... We worship a mysterious God not an anthropomorphic God." Francis Young
"If you comprehend God, it is not God." St Augustine
"When we speak of the goodness or wisdom of God we cannot imagine He is good or wise in the same manner as a finite person ....... When we speak of God's being we are speaking of something greater than that of a finite being." David Bentley Hart
Sister Wendy Beckett speaks of "the holiness of mystery."
"I pray God to rid me of God. "Meister Eckhart
"When God's light breaks in on my darkness, the first thing I know is that I don't know and never did." Rowan Williams
"Do not assume that God will act in ways that you can predict." E.P. Sauders
"To think of God as Creator is to think in human terms. How can we possibly
know what creation means to Him." Rowan Williams
"God is nameless, because no one can say anything or understand anything about Him." Meister Eckhart
SILENCE
"What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence." Wittgenstein
After Elijah's triumph over the priests of Baal on Mt Carmel, we find in 1 Kings 19.11f "Go and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by. Now there was a great wind ..... but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence." ("a still small voice" in the R.V.)
"Language falls silent before the infinite ,,,,,,,, it is a recognition that our journey is towards an ultimate reality that necessarily eludes human conceptual resources." John Cottingham
"Love silence above all things because it brings you nearer to the fruit that the tongue cannot express .... and from this silence something is born that leads to silence itself." Isaac of Nineveh (17th C)
"Silence is as much a sign of God's presence as of God's absence - divine silence is not a vacuum to be filled but a mystery to be entered into. "Barbara Brown Taylor
"Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46.10 ('Know' is knowledge that takes possession of a person. It is existential. It comes front the heart as well as the brain. It is knowledge that implies relationship and is not subject to philosophical proof.) But it is true nonetheless.
Some of the aphorisms included in the above might be placed in more than one apophatic category - but ALL of them speak of the reality of the TRANSCENDENT GOD!
Alan
Examples of the poetry of R.S Thomas
Reginald Stuart Thomas was a 20th century poet and Anglican priest. He was a Welshman, who did not learn the Welsh language until the age of 30. He loved the Welsh hill country and its farmers, whom he got to know well during his time as vicar in Monafon. Thomas, later in life became known as 'The Ogre' of Wales. Underneath his acerbic and introverted personality, he was overwhelmed with love and emotion. His poetry was the expression of this very private person. In his poem ‘A Marriage' he expressed his love for his first wife, to whom he was married for 51 years.
We met under a shadow of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed, love's moment in a world in servitude to time.
She was young; I kissed with my eyes closed and opened them on her wrinkles.
'Come' said death, choosing her as his partner for the last dance.
And she, who in life had done everything with a bird's grace, opened her bill now
for the shedding of one sigh no heavier than a feather.
All his life R.S. Thomas struggled with God, "whose absence is as his presence." He believed that the world needed the unifying presence of the imagination, and that the two things that provided it most were poetry and religion.
Thomas was not afraid to acknowledge the intermittent absence of God or the difficulty of faith.
He believed that God is so often leaving just as we arrive.
He also believed you had to wait, for you cannot control God.
He was deeply conscious that God was looking at him: the problem for him was to know how to look back at God.
God was a terrible mystery. He observed, "We stare into the eternal silence, that is the repose of God."
Here are two of his poems which reveal apophatic thinking.
VIA NEGATIVA
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is the 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 footsteps 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.
THE ABSENCE
It is this great absence
that is like a presence, that compels
me to address it without hope
of a reply. It is a room I enter
from which someone has just
gone, the vestibule for the arrival
of one who has not yet come.
I modernise the anachronism
of my language, but he is no more here
than before. Genes and molecules
have no more power to call
him up than the incense of the Hebrews
at their altars. My equations fall
as my words do. What resources have I
other than the emptiness without him of my whole
being, a vacuum he may not abhor?
"R.S. Thomas is a poet who in the modern age has done more than anyone to explore both the lure and the intense difficulty of prayer. Waiting on God, for a sense of God's presence, keeping going when there seems to be hardly a sign of response are hallmarks of his work.........but a well trodden journey for so many Christians who find prayer just very tough going, However a sense of God's absence is a completely different thing from the sense that there is no God and this vibrant emptiness is the subject of (these two) poems."
Janet Morley - haphazard by starlight
Alan
THOUGHTS FOR APRIL 2016
What is apophatic theology?
The word apophatic is derived from the Greek word apophemi meaning to deny and apophasis - to say 'no'. In Latin, apophaticus means negative or negation.
Apophatic theology is therefore a negative way of describing God; for God is transcendent, mysterious, ineffable, beyond thought, shrouded in silence and a divine darkness; which is beyond language and concept. We are only able to describe God by saying what we are unable to say, using positive language. God is beyond time, space and reality. Thus God is beyond definition. This manner of thinking about God is closely linked to mysticism. The mystic or the Quaker, at meeting for worship, endeavours, in silence, to enter into communion with the Light of God.
Diarmaid MacCulloch in his book Silence A Christian History asserts, "Apophatic Christianity or negative theology is a religion of spirit, looking inwards."........ "It portrays what God is not, rather than what he is."
TRANSCENDENCE
"But Moses said to God, 'If I come to the Israelites and say to them, the God
of your ancestors has sent me to you and they ask me ' what is his name?' 'What shall I say to them?' God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.' Exodus 2.14
"God is eternal, not in the sense of possessing limitless duration but in the sense of transcending time altogether." David Bentley Hart
"He is the infinite to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be subtracted." David Bentley Hart
"Transcendence is that which climbs beyond known reality and cannot be categorised." Karen Armstrong
Vedanta means knowledge and is one of the philosophical beliefs of Hinduism. It states, "God doesn't want anything of us. He doesn't want us to be found; he has no laws that we should obey; he never judges, punishes, or puts forth expectations."
NEGATIVE THEOLOGY
"Anything said truly of the divine essence can only have a negative meaning." Maimonides 13th century rabbi
"God is not
Not soul
Not imagination, opinion, Reason
Not intellect
Not life
Not being
Not eternity, not time
Not divinity
Not goodness." Dionysius the Areopogite
"God is beyond description, beyond words, beyond even a human concept of silence, He is beyond being."
"God does not exist, he is eternal." Kerkegaard
"There exists a cloud of unknowing between you and God." Cloud of Unknowing (anonymous)
"Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel." Isaiah 45.15
MYSTERY
"The search for God consists in arriving at a place and discovering that God has just left." Thomas Merton
"Religion is destroyed without mystery - and indeed without paradox ....... We worship a mysterious God not an anthropomorphic God." Francis Young
"If you comprehend God, it is not God." St Augustine
"When we speak of the goodness or wisdom of God we cannot imagine He is good or wise in the same manner as a finite person ....... When we speak of God's being we are speaking of something greater than that of a finite being." David Bentley Hart
Sister Wendy Beckett speaks of "the holiness of mystery."
"I pray God to rid me of God. "Meister Eckhart
"When God's light breaks in on my darkness, the first thing I know is that I don't know and never did." Rowan Williams
"Do not assume that God will act in ways that you can predict." E.P. Sauders
"To think of God as Creator is to think in human terms. How can we possibly
know what creation means to Him." Rowan Williams
"God is nameless, because no one can say anything or understand anything about Him." Meister Eckhart
SILENCE
"What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence." Wittgenstein
After Elijah's triumph over the priests of Baal on Mt Carmel, we find in 1 Kings 19.11f "Go and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by. Now there was a great wind ..... but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence." ("a still small voice" in the R.V.)
"Language falls silent before the infinite ,,,,,,,, it is a recognition that our journey is towards an ultimate reality that necessarily eludes human conceptual resources." John Cottingham
"Love silence above all things because it brings you nearer to the fruit that the tongue cannot express .... and from this silence something is born that leads to silence itself." Isaac of Nineveh (17th C)
"Silence is as much a sign of God's presence as of God's absence - divine silence is not a vacuum to be filled but a mystery to be entered into. "Barbara Brown Taylor
"Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46.10 ('Know' is knowledge that takes possession of a person. It is existential. It comes front the heart as well as the brain. It is knowledge that implies relationship and is not subject to philosophical proof.) But it is true nonetheless.
Some of the aphorisms included in the above might be placed in more than one apophatic category - but ALL of them speak of the reality of the TRANSCENDENT GOD!
Alan
THOUGHTS FOR MARCH 2016
Psalm 23
This is one of the best known and best loved psalm in the Psalter. It is a psalm that depicts God as a shepherd and also as a host and inculcates in the reader a vision of God's love and protective care. It presents a picture which is both simple and sophisticated. Its sentiment is timeless.
1 The LORD is my shepherd I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff - they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint me with oil; my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.
v1 "LORD" - The name for God in Hebrew was written with the letters jhvh. It must never be spoken, because it is too HOLY. It is ineffable. So when the scriptures were read out loud, the Hebrew word adonai was substituted: translated 'Lord', in our Old Testament, signifying God as Sovereign, the Ruler of the world.
v1/2 A shepherd's job was an onerous one. He took the sheep out of the village in search of pasture and water; which might mean walking up to ten miles a day. Israel is a hot, dry and arid country; so the shepherd had to endure the heat of the day, the cold nights and the inhospitable terrain. He had to be brave, for there were wild animals that would attack the sheep. The shepherd was therefore required to fight mountain lions and bears. The shepherd was caring and protective. It is inevitable that the psalmist uses the simile of God as a shepherd and people as his flock.
v3 As the shepherd leads his sheep along the right paths, which may sometimes be over hazardous terrain, so humankind are led by God along paths of righteousness, signifying His care and protection; but there is no guarantee that the paths will be trouble free. This image is rich in spiritual meaning.
v4 The narrow and dangerous ravine which the flock must sometimes pass through is for God's people 'the valley of the shadow of death.' Thus God is present to give strength in the dark places of human beings' lives; in the pain and sadness of failure, danger, illness, loneliness, fear, doubt and in death. As the Good Shepherd, God is always caring, loving and comforting , as He knows best.
v5 God is now depicted as a host. "My cup overflows" is a sign of festivity and hospitable entertainment.
C.S. Rodd in his written sermon in the Expository Times (1998) says of the psalm "It is probably the best-known part of scripture, second only to the Lord's Prayer. Down the ages of the Christian Church it has comforted the dying, and given hope to the bereaved. To the anxious it has offered reassurance. To the lonely it has been a friend. To those overwhelmed by the pressures and troubles of life it has brought strong support...... So familiar, so greatly loved - yet how little we know about it. We have no idea who wrote it, how it was sung in ancient Israel, what occasions it was linked with. In fact we know almost nothing about it at all ....... The psalm is not an argument for the goodness of God. Those who read and sing it were convinced that God exists and cares for them....... To cherish the palm does not mean that we shall abandon our searching questions and casually push aside our doubts. The questions must be asked and doubts are what confidence in God is. And today we need that reminder more often than they did in the great ages of faith."
The image of the sheep and the shepherd is picked up in the New Testament, when the Letter to the Hebrews states, "our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep" Heb 13.20. In similar vein, 1 Peter states, "For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian
of our souls." 2.25, and also "When the chief shepherd appears you will win the crown of glory that never fades away" 5.4. The most glorious statement of this image, of course appears in St John's Gospel when Jesus is described, "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. And I lay down my life for the sheep." 10.14f
Alan
Psalm 23
This is one of the best known and best loved psalm in the Psalter. It is a psalm that depicts God as a shepherd and also as a host and inculcates in the reader a vision of God's love and protective care. It presents a picture which is both simple and sophisticated. Its sentiment is timeless.
1 The LORD is my shepherd I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff - they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint me with oil; my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.
v1 "LORD" - The name for God in Hebrew was written with the letters jhvh. It must never be spoken, because it is too HOLY. It is ineffable. So when the scriptures were read out loud, the Hebrew word adonai was substituted: translated 'Lord', in our Old Testament, signifying God as Sovereign, the Ruler of the world.
v1/2 A shepherd's job was an onerous one. He took the sheep out of the village in search of pasture and water; which might mean walking up to ten miles a day. Israel is a hot, dry and arid country; so the shepherd had to endure the heat of the day, the cold nights and the inhospitable terrain. He had to be brave, for there were wild animals that would attack the sheep. The shepherd was therefore required to fight mountain lions and bears. The shepherd was caring and protective. It is inevitable that the psalmist uses the simile of God as a shepherd and people as his flock.
v3 As the shepherd leads his sheep along the right paths, which may sometimes be over hazardous terrain, so humankind are led by God along paths of righteousness, signifying His care and protection; but there is no guarantee that the paths will be trouble free. This image is rich in spiritual meaning.
v4 The narrow and dangerous ravine which the flock must sometimes pass through is for God's people 'the valley of the shadow of death.' Thus God is present to give strength in the dark places of human beings' lives; in the pain and sadness of failure, danger, illness, loneliness, fear, doubt and in death. As the Good Shepherd, God is always caring, loving and comforting , as He knows best.
v5 God is now depicted as a host. "My cup overflows" is a sign of festivity and hospitable entertainment.
C.S. Rodd in his written sermon in the Expository Times (1998) says of the psalm "It is probably the best-known part of scripture, second only to the Lord's Prayer. Down the ages of the Christian Church it has comforted the dying, and given hope to the bereaved. To the anxious it has offered reassurance. To the lonely it has been a friend. To those overwhelmed by the pressures and troubles of life it has brought strong support...... So familiar, so greatly loved - yet how little we know about it. We have no idea who wrote it, how it was sung in ancient Israel, what occasions it was linked with. In fact we know almost nothing about it at all ....... The psalm is not an argument for the goodness of God. Those who read and sing it were convinced that God exists and cares for them....... To cherish the palm does not mean that we shall abandon our searching questions and casually push aside our doubts. The questions must be asked and doubts are what confidence in God is. And today we need that reminder more often than they did in the great ages of faith."
The image of the sheep and the shepherd is picked up in the New Testament, when the Letter to the Hebrews states, "our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep" Heb 13.20. In similar vein, 1 Peter states, "For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian
of our souls." 2.25, and also "When the chief shepherd appears you will win the crown of glory that never fades away" 5.4. The most glorious statement of this image, of course appears in St John's Gospel when Jesus is described, "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. And I lay down my life for the sheep." 10.14f
Alan
THOUGHTS FOR FEBRUARY 2016
I know! I know! I know I shall never be a castaway on the 'Desert Island Discs' programme. But I have played the game and chosen my eight pieces of music; and the book(s) I shall take with me onto the island are Neville Cardus' 'Autobiography' and 'Second Innings'. They are books I have read a number of times over the years and at each re-reading, I discover something new. They are beautifully written, fluent and elegant. They capture the culture of the era about which they speak; they stagger me with profound observations; and when Cardus talks about some incidents on the cricket field, I cannot help but laugh out loud. They are a joy, scholarly and humane!!
NC was born in 1888 in an impoverished area of Manchester and died in Australia in 1978. He left school at the age of 13 with little education. He became self taught through his own programme of reading and became one of the outstanding critics of the times. He eventually became a journalist, working for the Manchester Guardian (today's Guardian newspaper). During the summer months he rose to the post of the MG's cricket correspondent and during the winter months the chief music critic. His writing style, in both spheres, was subjective, romantic and deeply challenging.
From ‘Autobiography -
"The beginning of education sets in, I imagine, when one realises that one's ego and one's orbit do not comprise the whole of the world."
"I was and remain to this day, incapable of an anthropomorphic belief in God or in a hereafter."
"I have met far more interesting characters amongst the cricketers than among the musicians of England..... No living English musician, critic or performer of my acquaintance is half the work of art to look at and to experience as C.B. Fry.... I would rather go into a pub with half a dozen North-country professional cricketers than into all studios or pent-houses or Athenaeum and Savile clubs in London. I have tried both so I know."
"To go to a cricket match for nothing but cricket is as though a man were to go into an inn for nothing but drink ...... Emmott Robinson of Yorkshire; Rhodes and Hirst; Maurice Leyland and Parkin all come back to my mind with the gusto of humorous genius."
"I believe as much in a logic of the heart as in a logic of the head ..... Music has to be experienced first by the ear of imagination; the critical process, the translating into definition and metaphor, cannot begin until the writer has been in the mind of the creative artist."
"When we listen to music, if we listen properly, we take part in a communion; we taste the body of genius, enter into the mind of the man."
"An extrovert is for me the last word in tedium."
"I have since received confirmation of my early intuitions: reason and the rationality formed credo can deliver no opinions until the imagination has been seduced by the creative act."
"There is for me no accounting in terms of evolution or survival-value for the sense of beauty, for laughter and tears that come and go without material prompting, for the ache after the perfect form and the ineluctable vision. If I know that my Redeemer liveth it is not on the church's testimony, but because of what Handel affirms. As Jowett put it to Margot: 'My dear child, you must believe in God in spite of what the clergy may tell you."
From 'Second Innings'.
"It is from imagination and not from ideas or a 'body of thought' that the power comes which makes a book live with us all our lives to the chimney-corner of age."
"How many books do we read in a lifetime which we can say that they open doors in our consciousness, that after reading them we are different, and that even as we turn over the pages we feel sight coming where there has been no sight.”??
"Only the material, the rare stuff for imagination's manufacture, is given to us, whether by Bach or by the Matterhorn or by Cesar Franck or by the stillness of snow at Christmas or by Dickens. We must ourselves fashion it into spirit and sensibility and weave it into the texture of our being. Whether the shape or symbol be sonnet or sunset, curve of fiddle-bow or curve of cricket bat, only with our own vision may we see the light and be free to say, 'I was for that time lifted above earth, / And posset joys not promised in my birth.'"
"One summer afternoon towards evening I played records of the Requiem of Faure; and after the music came to a close the place was quieter than ever......On my writing-desk my white cat shaped out of porcelain stared with eyeless sight into a void. I came now as near as ever in my life to the peace that passeth all understanding. I nearly saw God, but not quite. It is as well that He shows us no more than His hinder parts; for if He were to ever reveal to us His full countenance there would be an end to faith and the meaning and the inspiration of faith. We cannot be too hot for certainties in this our life."
Alan
I know! I know! I know I shall never be a castaway on the 'Desert Island Discs' programme. But I have played the game and chosen my eight pieces of music; and the book(s) I shall take with me onto the island are Neville Cardus' 'Autobiography' and 'Second Innings'. They are books I have read a number of times over the years and at each re-reading, I discover something new. They are beautifully written, fluent and elegant. They capture the culture of the era about which they speak; they stagger me with profound observations; and when Cardus talks about some incidents on the cricket field, I cannot help but laugh out loud. They are a joy, scholarly and humane!!
NC was born in 1888 in an impoverished area of Manchester and died in Australia in 1978. He left school at the age of 13 with little education. He became self taught through his own programme of reading and became one of the outstanding critics of the times. He eventually became a journalist, working for the Manchester Guardian (today's Guardian newspaper). During the summer months he rose to the post of the MG's cricket correspondent and during the winter months the chief music critic. His writing style, in both spheres, was subjective, romantic and deeply challenging.
From ‘Autobiography -
"The beginning of education sets in, I imagine, when one realises that one's ego and one's orbit do not comprise the whole of the world."
"I was and remain to this day, incapable of an anthropomorphic belief in God or in a hereafter."
"I have met far more interesting characters amongst the cricketers than among the musicians of England..... No living English musician, critic or performer of my acquaintance is half the work of art to look at and to experience as C.B. Fry.... I would rather go into a pub with half a dozen North-country professional cricketers than into all studios or pent-houses or Athenaeum and Savile clubs in London. I have tried both so I know."
"To go to a cricket match for nothing but cricket is as though a man were to go into an inn for nothing but drink ...... Emmott Robinson of Yorkshire; Rhodes and Hirst; Maurice Leyland and Parkin all come back to my mind with the gusto of humorous genius."
"I believe as much in a logic of the heart as in a logic of the head ..... Music has to be experienced first by the ear of imagination; the critical process, the translating into definition and metaphor, cannot begin until the writer has been in the mind of the creative artist."
"When we listen to music, if we listen properly, we take part in a communion; we taste the body of genius, enter into the mind of the man."
"An extrovert is for me the last word in tedium."
"I have since received confirmation of my early intuitions: reason and the rationality formed credo can deliver no opinions until the imagination has been seduced by the creative act."
"There is for me no accounting in terms of evolution or survival-value for the sense of beauty, for laughter and tears that come and go without material prompting, for the ache after the perfect form and the ineluctable vision. If I know that my Redeemer liveth it is not on the church's testimony, but because of what Handel affirms. As Jowett put it to Margot: 'My dear child, you must believe in God in spite of what the clergy may tell you."
From 'Second Innings'.
"It is from imagination and not from ideas or a 'body of thought' that the power comes which makes a book live with us all our lives to the chimney-corner of age."
"How many books do we read in a lifetime which we can say that they open doors in our consciousness, that after reading them we are different, and that even as we turn over the pages we feel sight coming where there has been no sight.”??
"Only the material, the rare stuff for imagination's manufacture, is given to us, whether by Bach or by the Matterhorn or by Cesar Franck or by the stillness of snow at Christmas or by Dickens. We must ourselves fashion it into spirit and sensibility and weave it into the texture of our being. Whether the shape or symbol be sonnet or sunset, curve of fiddle-bow or curve of cricket bat, only with our own vision may we see the light and be free to say, 'I was for that time lifted above earth, / And posset joys not promised in my birth.'"
"One summer afternoon towards evening I played records of the Requiem of Faure; and after the music came to a close the place was quieter than ever......On my writing-desk my white cat shaped out of porcelain stared with eyeless sight into a void. I came now as near as ever in my life to the peace that passeth all understanding. I nearly saw God, but not quite. It is as well that He shows us no more than His hinder parts; for if He were to ever reveal to us His full countenance there would be an end to faith and the meaning and the inspiration of faith. We cannot be too hot for certainties in this our life."
Alan