On Wednesday the 16th of June, Carol O’Connor led a Spiritual Reading Group session via Zoom on the Welsh poet R.S. Thomas. Four poems were discussed, the fourth poem being ‘The Bright Field’.
I
have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor
hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
As far as I am aware we have no copies of any
sermon which RS Thomas delivered. We know, from parishioners, that his sermons
spoke to congregation members where they were at and met their needs. He himself
maintained that the job of a priest was to represent the church in its teaching.
However, in 1972 a film was made of RS Thomas by
John Ormond. In it, RS
Thomas created some controversy by statements
such as - ‘Poetry is religion and religion is poetry…Christ was a poet….The New
Testament is metaphor. Resurrection is metaphor….When one is discussing
Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects…..The
resurrection is a metaphorical use of language as in the Incarnation. My work
as a poet has to deal with presentation of imaginative truth. Christianity ems
to me is also the presentation of imaginative truth. So there is no necessary
conflict between these two things at all. And as a priest I am committed to the
ministry of Word and the ministry of the sacrament. Sacrament is language. The
combination is perfectly simple.’ (See Morgan & Williams)
The New Testament is metaphor. Resurrection is
metaphor.
When asked to comment on these words Rowan
Williams, ever helpful, offers a pathway through for us: when we hear such
statements people can tend to slip the word ‘just’ in there - the New Testament
is just a metaphor. However, such a statement from RS Thomas is tougher than
this. He is not saying that these are simply ways of talking about religion. But
here he is making a serious claim. Poetry and metaphor are ways of knowing. And
the word truth in the phrase ‘imaginative truth’ is not redundant.
So the expression of religion for RS Thomas
means the necessary employment of the imagination. Spirituality can never be
captured or pinned down (to use a recurring metaphor this morning) in language.
It is not literal but more than this: mystery, living, ever unfolding.
Perhaps these words of RS Thomas are close to
Jesus’ own use of parables, in which to teach and help open the spiritual mind
of those he met. Perhaps too, metaphor became a way for RS Thomas to open his
own mind into understanding the nature of our relationship with God.
The Bright Field came out in the volume ‘Laboratories
of the Spirit’ during RS Thomas’ last year at Aberdaron. The poem begins by
referencing two parables from St Matthew’s Gospel chapter 13: 44-46: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.
When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he
had and bought that field.” “Again,
the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who,
when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had
and bought it.”
RS Thomas brings immediacy and particularity to
the parables. Also, again his sense of time in this poem shifts. ’The kingdom
of heaven’ has been found when the world lit up in a field. It was only
for a moment and half-overlooked in that moment, even forgotten after. But at some
point later it is remembered and with that the realisation that this is in
fact, ‘the pearl of great price.’ The emotions of the poet swivel now from past
indifference to a strong need to ‘give everything I
have to possess it.’ What was overlooked is
realised subsequently to be extraordinary and the poet would give his life for
it. The illumination has been seen. It can be again. This is the kingdom of God.
The poem plays in the reader’s mind on the
paradox of linear time, chronos, the nature of its transitoriness, and kairos,
eternal time. Memory can call you back to remember, even your youth, but it can
never re-recreate what was. The kingdom is not about pining after a past that has
now gone. Nor, is it fixating our mind on with future dreams and desires:
Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined
past.
Looking forward or backwards is not seeing nor
living in the kingdom of God.
The voice in this poem again moves from a
subjective experience, through a learning gained, then becoming opened out as
object lesson to all: ’I have seen the sun…’ finally becomes ‘…the eternity that
awaits you.’ There is something humanly instinctive in the nature of
seeking this pearl, ‘the field that had treasure in it.’ Once glimpsed, it has the
capacity to awaken in any person, whether they notice it or not, the seed of
desire to seek eternity. But, another paradox, in order to possess it,
something inside the human self must be let go of. In fact,
everything must be given: ‘I must give all that
I have to possess it.’
Possession of the pearl involves complete
dispossession of self.
For the poet, the realisation has come that life
is found by truly making a home in the present. It’s found by making room for,
providing space in the currents of time to open our eye to the light of what’s
before us. To ‘turn aside’ like Moses, in this time present, and see the miracle
of the burning bush vision that so filled the Old Testament character, Moses.
The pearl is analogous to light. The sun
illuminates the bright field as the blaze of the lit bush illuminated the mind
of Moses. We can at first think this poem is about finding the pearl yet the
real pearl, like light itself, can be felt and experienced but never fully
owned. It is transitory, but also calls us on as we turn to gaze back.
Here is the very Celtic understanding that God’s kingdom is not that area above
and unreachable, but intensely close alongside us. It is the understanding that
the eternal is already genetically encoded into the present time we are living
in.
As human beings we have an extraordinarily
unique capacity to consciously reflect back over even experiences overlooked,
or project our thinking into an imagined future. This poem has had me reflect
on the last 12 months which due to Covid opened up a very difficult terrain to navigate
for so many of us in the whole world. It has been a time for many, of longing
to go back to what we had before and recognising the entry into a new normal.
Those privileged with wifi and computer access could go via youtube and zoom,
in one day say prayers with others in countries all over the world. I
have found that the very best of those prayer times weren’t the ones where we
longed for things to return and be fixed up, nor hankered to be in another
country as if that would take us away from our own problems, but those which
called us back to our present circumstances and place, and look alongside our
own locked down selves and surroundings, to find the bush of Moses burning
right beside us, no matter where.
The Bright Field is a poem about a way of seeing
the world. And it means the loveliness and joy cannot be held and caught, nor
pinned down or preserved in a book. How we choose to act in the world after we
have seen, is another story. But the first step is to see it.
Mark Oakley understands this well when he says: ‘What
we long for eludes us. If we ever think we possess God we will stop desiring
Him…We know information can be got at the press of a key, but we know too truth
is hard won, flinty and sharply digested in a lifetime’s search. God is always
revising our understanding of God as well as who we are: his gift to us is
being, our gift to him is becoming …. [RS Thomas] knew the inadequacies of
words but uses them as it were, like setting a trap for clarity and for his
God. He levels the ground of faith with honesty.’ (Oakley 9)
Sources
Barry Morgan
& Rowan Williams. Laboratories of the Spirit : R.S. Thomas’ religious
poetry. Public conversation conducted by the Learned
Society of Wales Cymdeithas Ddysgedig
Cymru. On Youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtgpHmEASj0
Mark Oakley. R.S.
Thomas and the hiddenness of God. University of Gloucestershire, Park Campus,
2017
R. S. Thomas. Collected poems 1945-1990. Phoenix Giants, 1993
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