To one kneeling down no word came,
Only the wind’s song, saddening the lips
Of the grave saints, rigid in glass;
Or the dry whisper of unseen wings,
Bats not angels, in the high roof.
Was he balked by silence? He kneeled long
And saw love in a dark crown
Of thorns blazing, and a winter tree
Golden with fruit of a man’s body.
R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), Song at the Year’s Turning, 1955.
As I read those words I thought of what the Welsh-loving R.S. Thomas found when he became vicar of Eglwys-fach in 1954: 'When the English colonise a parish, a vicar's is chaplain's work... officers mess, receptions....' How different from the experience of G.A. Studdert Kennedy when he found himself chaplain on the front-line in World War One. He discovered the the message both of them had to live and share: 'Jesus is the name of God, that is the eternal Truth.... The goodness of Jesus is the truth about the world in which we now live: and all our troubles, tragedies and sorrows are the result of rebellion against that truth.'
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