Waiting - 3 To die before we die- and find it to be Life!

 

 The Moon in Lleyn

By R.S. Thomas

The last quarter of the moon
of Jesus gives way
to the dark; the serpent
digests the egg. Here
on my knees in this stone
church, that is full only
of the silent congregation
of shadows and the sea’s
sound, it is easy to believe
Yeats was right. Just as though
choirs had not sung, shells
have swallowed them; the tide laps
at the Bible; the bell fetches
no people to the brittle miracle
of the bread. The sand is waiting
for the running back of the grains
in the wall into its blond
glass. Religion is over, and
what will emerge from the body
of the new moon, no one
can say.
                  But a voice sounds
in my ear: Why so fast,
mortal? These very seas
are baptized. The parish
has a saint’s name time cannot
unfrock. In cities that
have outgrown their promise people
are becoming pilgrims
again, if not to this place,

then to the recreation of it
in their own spirits. You must remain
kneeling. Even as this moon
making its way through the earth’s
cumbersome shadow, prayer, too,
has its phases.

R.S. Thomas, “The Moon in Lleyn” from Collected Poems 1945-1990. Copyright © by Elodie Thomas.

Much has been said and written about  R S Thomas, poet and Vicar of Aberdaron, on the Lleyn peninsula, North Wales.

He could, by all accounts be grumpy and distant. He was an ardent pacifist, and hated the fact the English people were buying holiday cottages and supported burning them down, it seems. But he could also be a great listener and counsellor.

He was a contradiction in terms. He loathed all modern gadgets ... his son remembers him preaching and "droning on" about the evil of refrigerators to people who would have loved to have the money to buy them!

The disconnection between human beings and the natural world  was a major theme in his thought and writing.

He also struggled with the closeness of God. In this he touches many people's experience. He complains in another poem that God. In another poem he says...

He is such a fast God, always before us, and
leaving as we arrive.

(Pilgrimages)

Far from devaluing his poetry I think his character was inevitable in someone who was so prophetic and deep in faith and thought.

In The Moon in Lleyn he struggles with the changes he see around him. Especially he sees that Religion is over ... and what is about to emerge we don't know. He was saying this half a century ago... and we see it coming true today everywhere as institutional and traditional forms of Christianity lose numbers rapidly.

But although God might be fast ... human beings need to slow down. 

But a voice sounds
in my ear: Why so fast,
mortal? 

The very seas are baptised...

Thomas sees the natural world as bearing salvation in its very materiality.

The parish
has a saint’s name time cannot
unfrock. In cities that
have outgrown their promise people
are becoming pilgrims
again, if not to this place,

then to the recreation of it
in their own spirits.

And we see this - new forms of Christianity are emerging, and, some of those forms are reaching down deep into our Christian roots to the ancient ways of prayer.

You must remain
kneeling. Even as this moon
making its way through the earth’s
cumbersome shadow, prayer, too,
has its phases.

Let's remaining kneeling - in our hearts if not on bent legs!

Christianity is, like a godly Phoenix, dying only to rise from the ashes, for the universe is shot through with death ... and resurrection.