February 1993: Unitarians will stress Jesus is human, hence my reference to Daffy, but of course some Anglicans need reminding of his complete humanity (even according to received doctrine!). A long time ago I was a sort of Jesu-centric atheist (which made my adaptation to liberal God-stressing Unitarianism difficult) but that was slowly lost as Jesus had no uniqueness. Later CONTINUED ON PAGE 19 POETS AND THE QUEST FOR MEANING 1. Kathleen Raine Anne Ashworth If SoF is to tackle its so-called "second threshold" - discovering fresh ways of using language - we should look to the skilled practitioners, the poets. But may I suggest that there is no need to subject your chosen poet to an ideological scrutiny. Few, perhaps, of those who lift language into that celebratory mode we require would sign up as SoF adherents. But non-realism, post-theism, Christian humanism (call it what you will) is not a closed system. We can range freely, picking with eclectic relish from any source that suits our purpose.
Let me commend an unlikely one. Kathleen Raine is a distinguished poet, critic, autobiographer and Blake scholar. She has been, and remains, a lifelong neoPlatonist. Certainly she separates soul and body, certainly she postulates a higher order of Reality. Who could be further from Don Cupitt?
Yet the poems of her old age - she is now in her eighties - admit to much that their author's philosophy would hardly seem to allow: that we create our world with language; that "human" is the interpretation of "divine"; that transience and the void are to be celebrated.
Raine is a contemporary Romantic behind whom stand Shelley and Yeats. She is not afraid to use words like. grief, remorse, hope, joy. None of this is fashionable. But her poetry has a timeless quality. It is rich, emotive, honest, above all celebratory.
However, enough of my words. Let us attend to the poet.
Here are some appetite-whetting notes and quotes from Raine's 1992 collection Living with mystery: poems 1987-91 (Golgonooza Press). I link them to some recent SoF conference and Cupittian themes.
On the quest for meaning (from Meaning):
No matter what words, Our human meaning Will speak itself - In Sanskrit, Hebrew, sacred Language of desert nomads, In accent of the court The Lord Krishna taught His cousin on the battlefield Jesus in demotic Aramaic...
On inventing God (from Short Poems 1):
Because the heart must love, I, being human, Address as if there were One whom all hearts desire.
An absence that eludes Summons and shapes the soul...
On stories (from All this):
All this - a story we have told one another And in the telling made to be A world - the Book of Life, raised altar and tower...
Told the thousand-and-one stories to enchant ourselves...
Age-long our quest for the Holy Grail...
As we declaim our tragedies, line by irretractable line...
We, who have seen the Holy Face, the holocaust Still must press on to know what happens in the end...
On the use of liturgy (from Loss of memory):
The words: why did we let them go?
Whose are our children, who no longer know "Our father who art in heaven"?
For words create that heaven and that father...
The thousand stories of our great human story.
What but the word...
Made Mary the Mother of God?
On language (from Words):
This human language, so briefly ours, received and given Treasury of words to praise, understand, Remind, enchant, delight and know and comfort one another.
On the void (first from Soliloquies VIII, second from In praise II):
The blind leap into the void Becomes the peace of those who have nothing to lose, The moment of freedom when all is understood.
Not void but blue sky Not space and distance but this Here and now...
On the no-self (from Metaphors of Eros IV):
Then who was? No-one!
Who free? Not I!
That bliss Music's transience...
On transience (from In praise XXVI):
I... in this time and place Must praise the everywhere and always Moment's momentary ever-presence ...this day's Offering of what passes to what is.
On mortality (from Immortal joy):
Remorse, despair. But never While blackbird's voice Sings in my empty garden Shall joy cease, though I Pass and die.
Joy that is not mine...
On human creation (from Trying to think about death):
But is not illusion a kind of truth, Our human kind, for we create a world's beauty At heart, and earth is real enough to love.
Convinced? SoF ideas are not such avant garde esoteric notions as some of us fear, but have their echoes in unlikely places. Freed from the tyrannies of Bible and liturgy, we can use what we choose. You won't agree with all of Living with mystery but you will find much of it enriching. And we need all the means of grace we can find.