Background Between 1980 and 1997 I kept, sporadically, a spiritual journal. Entries were only made when I was deeply moved by some experience or idea.
In the early 1970s, having returned to church attendance in the wake of Honest to God and in the hope that Christianity might after all have a usable language for spiritual/aesthetic experience, I felt drawn to theological exploration. This became crystallised into a vocation for the preaching ministry. After two years structured study and practical experience, I became in 1976 an accredited lay preacher of the United Reformed Church. My commissioning service was like an ordination, yet I continued steadfastly to resist all pressures to become a full time, fully ordained, minister. Somehow I knew that was not the way for me. However, my Sunday ministry, taking services in many churches around the URC District, was clearly nourishing and inspiring my congregations and I took the preparation it required very seriously. It also stimulated my further reading and spiritual exploration. My modernist liberal and radical Christianity grew nearer to atheism. The Bible and the hymnbook both shrank for me, as I struggled to select material that I could use with integrity. The end was in sight. Yet how could I deny my own authentic religious experiences, and those of others from all cultures? [Explanatory words in square brackets have been added at a later date.] Extracts from the Journal August 1980 ‘Be good,’ said one. ‘You’re as good as gold,’ said another. But no: this is not what we seek. What is to be sought, exclusively, is Truth. Goodness is only a byproduct.
Evelyn Underhill: ‘The life of the minister of religion depends almost entirely for its value on the extent to which it is bathed in the Divine Light.’ Doubts are necessary. But we must be like Simone Weil, en hupomene, in attentive open waiting on God.
Compare the same activity in intellectual work: translation, solution of scientific problems, making sense of poetry.
Lesslie Newbigin: ‘A Christian has no right to ask where he is going.’ December 1980 Spending the night before Christmas on the floor in much discomfort on account of a back injury, and remembering the severe backache in labour pains, I felt closer to Mary in the draughty stable – more at one with the significance of incarnation.
January 1981 Peter Porter on Patricia Beer: ‘Her sense of the world as a place of annunciations and epiphanies.’ Here religion and poetry converge, as for me they must.
February 1981 Dean Inge: ‘Faith is a kind of climbing instinct.’ The spiritual ascent is the rightful activity of the soul. But the mountain is criss-crossed with tracks. The poet plunges sideways to gasp at waterfalls; he uses the mountain for his own purposes. The prophet scales a peak, shouts from a cave mouth, ‘This way!’ But the highest peaks are cloud-capped. Only the silent Zen monk, attending to his every footfall and not looking up, enters the cloud. If he returns, that mystic, his face is transfigured, but his silence remains. The air on the upper slopes is rarefied; we cannot breathe it for long. Most of us must, as Allison Peers said, be content to potter about on the lower slopes, plains dwellers yet encouraged and energised by the peak-scalers. [This later became the poem Mountain.] March 1981 In the cross of Christ I glory Towering o’er the wrecks of time. (hymn) So many wrecks, so much suffering. Pain, fear, hate, despair, cruelty, injustice, torture. What is this animal humankind? Unbearable. Open your heart to concern and prayer and it cracks and bursts with the intolerable pressure. Glory in the cross? Shake fists at heaven, rather.
Yet only the cross will do. In a way it’s not so much an answer as a redoubling of the question. But in face of so much suffering, a suffering God is the only kind one dares to believe in. An omnipotent God would be by definition infinitely wicked. The cross demonstrates vulnerability as the ultimate force. They are wrong who say Christianity would be acceptable without the cross.
Only the cross will do, when despair strips away all else.
It is hard to be a Christian, to open the heart to all the world’s passion, to dare the groaning prayer.
Part of a Pilgrimage Anne Ashworth, a long-time SOF member, kept a spiritual journal between 1980 and 1997. Here is the first of three extracts covering a period before she left the church.
April 1981 Thomas à Kempis: ‘Blessed are the eyes which are shut to outward things, but intent on things eternal.’ I read this on a halcyon spring day, sitting amid daffodils, watching birds on the apple blossom against a blue sky. No, Thomas, it won’t do! – unless we twist your statement and argue that response to beauty is an inward and eternal verity.
Easter Sunday April 1981 On Good Friday I wondered: how can I gather up all the world’s woe, not only into the cry of dereliction, but into affirmation of life for Easter Day? This morning I thought rather cynically – the congregation knows nothing of and cares less about the preacher’s Gethsemane. All they want is a bright spring festival.
I gave them laughter and liveliness, but in the sermon led them up the garden path into Ezekiel’s valley ( ‘Can these bones live?’) and the dead in the streets of El Salvador. They were spellbound.
Afterwards a woman from the holiday caravan site clung to me with tears. ‘I don’t know what made me come this morning. My faith has been dead for years. But something has happened here. You have restored it. “Can these bones live?” Pray for me. I think you’re great.’ ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m only ordinary,’ ‘I’m ordinary too. All this makeup’ (she was heavily veneered), ‘it’s all false. Part of the deadness. But I’m coming to life again.’ I am drained by her demands, and the unspoken demands of the 200 or so other worshippers who perhaps seek affirmation of life in a world of dry bones. Drained - but wiser. I was too cynical.
Affirmation is not only possible, it is contagious.
Easter can still work.
October 1981 From Carlo Caretti, The Desert in the City:
Of vocation, p.60: ‘God’s gifts are so marvellous that they tempt us to idolatry. Our vocation is making us proud. Without our love for God each of us sooner or later becomes the slave of his vocation. Do not be afraid when he asks you to perform some task, but do not be afraid when he asks for it back. God is greater than his call.’ Of frustration, p.49: ‘In the Kingdom it is deeds that count. There is, however, a fact that is not a deed, yet bestows the right of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. This is “the poor man’s longing”. Most men do not succeed in fulfilling themselves in action on this earth. Defeated, humiliated and unemployed…[but] in God’s eyes, doing or not doing, succeeding or not succeeding, are not the point, what matters is loving. And if my love has not been realised in action, then it is realising itself today in my poor man’s longing. [Otherwise] the Kingdom of Heaven would be the heritage of the strong, the intelligent, the competent and the clever – it would be a very small thing.’ December 1981 Truth of our life, Mary’s child, You tell us God is good.
Prove it is true, Mary’s child, Go to your cross of wood. (a carol) A cross to prove the goodness of God? Stated so, the idea appals.
The ‘truth of our life’ is that goodness is vulnerable; so much is clear. But that this proves God’s goodness – ! Paradox.
Suffering, is this the highest ideal we recognise? Well, the highest we know must be the nearest we can get to glimpsing the nature of God.
New Year’s Day 1982 Characters in conflict: AA poet, AA preacher, AA librarian, AA mother. [I had at the time a son and two student protégés who needed mothering.] AA poet and AA preacher ask questions; AA mother and AA librarian provide answers. AA preacher is a public persona; AA poet is excessively private. AA mother, AA preacher, AA librarian give themselves; AA poet conserves herself defensively. AA librarian is a conformist; AA poet is a rebel.
All are rivals for the 24 hours of the day. Each works at the expense of the others. If there can be any harmony between them, it must spring from their commitment to God – each to ‘that of God’ which she is able to apprehend. AA preacher offers her prophetic and priestly functions, AA librarian her service, AA mother her love, AA poet her truest insights. They must be content to echo Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘Who am I, Lord? Whatever I am, I am thine.’ January 1982 Is it true that the magnetic north pole attracts worldwide like a great magnet? God – the divine – the beyond – That Other – is like that. That of God in us responds to the magnet. There is the tiniest of iron Anne Ashworth filings embedded in me – enough to feel the pull and have no ease. Brahman to Atman – Self to self. [This later became a poem.] February 1983 For love of man and praise of God, a project: a poem sequence called Annunciations, beginning with my existing poem of that name and including others already written; but the structure to be provided by autobiographical incidents, moments of annunciation and epiphany. Can it be done without unwholesome self-absorption? If every session writing it is made a committed act of worship, will this help to safeguard, to keep self from obtruding? [The sequence was written but never published. It remains important to me.] July 1983 ‘Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ With these words Jesus is said to have discouraged would-be followers, or at least to have emphasised that his Way was a way of insecurity. Literally he was indicating the vagrant lifestyle of himself and his men. Yet reflecting on the words I see wider significance, which Jesus himself may or may not have intended. The comparison with the animal kingdom has only just struck me. Nests and foxholes are part of the natural order, the life of the instincts. Man, perilously and full of justified anxiety, has evolved beyond the instinctual.
The son of man (all of us) has to live in the freedom of humanity, a terrifying state. He has to make decisions. He builds, not simple mindless repetitive nests and holes, but cities and schools and hospitals, bridges and barriers and ghettoes and sports stadia, churches and temples and theatres and prisons and houses of parliament. He must live like a gipsy, always agonising over the decision ‘Where next?’ The challenge of Christ is to a commitment which sits loose to all other commitments. We are the Exodus people.
July 1983 ‘Blessed are the meek’ does not commend itself to the temper of the age. But what about Phillips’ translation ‘Happy are those who claim nothing, for the whole earth will belong to them’? Set that in the light of claims for territory, oil resources, income differentials, against land use and abuse.
September 1983 [After a severe accident] Leg in plaster, arm out of joint, body shocked and shattered; upheld by the prayers and love of others.
Within, love in greater quantity and quality, greater strength of soul, growth in prayer. Grace!
I am addressed as ‘plaster saint’ and laugh. No saint, in the modern sense! Yet in the ancient sense of sanctus, hagios, holy – set aside for God? I am a temporary saint, set aside for God; waiting on God, but also active for God, if active contemplation is an acceptable oxymoron.
Prayer: for grace to be used, now and afterwards, in the invisible movements of love. This newly acquired mental strength – I must not seek to use it, only to offer it for use. And submit to accepting uselessness too!
October 1983 Reading Frank Topping, The Words of Christ. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.” According to Topping, poor, ptokos, is a translation of an Aramaic word used to describe a Hebrew concept of the ani or anaw which meant the humble, the pious, those close to God, or those who seek God. So the first beatitude might read ‘Blessed are those who seek God in spirit.’ Now look at ‘in spirit’. Luke does not use it at all, and Matthew has pneumatikos, belonging to the wind, or freely, in spirit, or willingly. So the whole verse could say “Blessed are those who seek God willingly, freely.’ Jesus is saying this directly to his disciples who have given up everything to follow him: ‘Blessed are you, who have willingly put yourselves in the path of the wind of God,’ is Topping’s final suggestion. Oh for courage to step out willingly into the path of the wind!
September 1984 Sixty-six wrens are recorded as crowding into a standard RSPB nesting box for winter warmth. They lived. What an amazing phenomenon life is.
Poustinia [hermitage – the name of my home], a life system. The garden, a semi-natural ecosystem of plants, insects, birds. A nesting box is its focal point, a fostering of life. Indoors, a fostering of life in all my poustinic visitors. Within, the deepest realest poustinia of all, the poustinia of the heart, where in the heart’s silence burns the intense silence of God. And that flame is the same life that fosters all other life.
Breathe in the life of God, breathe out the love of God. And the silence and the flame and the breath are one.
Why am I not an atheist? Because no matter what my reason may shout, its cleverness is ignorance. To know is to partake of immediacy which cannot be denied.
God inhaled, exhaled. Light, new and glistening.
Air sweet scented, morning washed. To pray is to be silent with joy, enfolded in the beloved. To pray is to agonise in pain over suffering friends, suffering world.
Both prayers co-exist, intertwine, cannot exist without each other.
Joy! Help! Joy! Help!
Incomprehensibly both ways (thus Hughes’ ‘Skylarks’) I suppose you just gape and let your raspings Rip in and out through your voicebox O lark And sing inwards as well as outwards Like a breaker of ocean milling the shingle O lark O song, incomprehensibly both ways - Joy! Help! Joy! Help!
October 1984 To love the earth and its phenomena and its creatures is the sine qua non for a poet and for a lover of God; both of which, dimly and falteringly and intermittently, I claim to be. Yet does the earth show us God?
Earth and its creatures are confused and confusing, absurd (both silly and absurd in Sartre’s sense), terrible and tragic and wild and random. When I try to impose the notion of God on such a picture it is like imposing another colour in a series of colour-overprintings, when the imposition is askew and the whole picture blurs and jars and hurts the eyes. Yet not entirely so.
Here and there the superimposition is correct and revealing. When I think of God as dynamic energy; as beauty; particularly as vulnerable and kenotic ( ‘the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing’ – Eliot) – then the concept is more analogous to one of those 3D viewing aids which bring depth and perspective and clarity and life to a muddled picture.
Theology seems to be a matter of superimposition.
We begin with our experience of earth and humankind and then try various filters of interpretation to see which suits best. We make myths and dreams and doctrines, and sometimes we worship them; but they are us, our projections. That doesn’t necessarily invalidate their objective truth. They could have actual referents: philosophy and psychology can’t disprove that, only point out its unlikelihood.
Why do I use religious language and concepts?
Born into a Christian culture (as opposed to any other), certain notions were available to me and formed part of my adolescent awareness. These dropped away, under the scrutiny of what intellectual honesty I could muster, and left me in an agnostic wilderness. But then I had to reckon with poetic experience, and that was undeniable. Like C.S.Lewis, I was too often ‘surprised by joy’ to disregard the claims of That Other. And That Other challenged and called and wooed and would not let me go. I had to find language for It, for how else do we come to terms with anything? So I turned back to Christian language, and began to find new meanings there – and a way of universalising a private experience so that it stood in line with Everyman’s.
I do not want to dichotomise soul and body, material and spiritual. I know that is false. Away with the ghost in the machine. Still less do I want to suppress and subdue the physical in order to promote the spiritual: the ascetic fallacy. I do not aspire to become a quark or reach a negative Nirvana. But nor can I be satisfied with a totally this-worldly apprehension of the divine – pantheism or animism.
The world is work for wonder, but there is more:
The earth is enough and the air is enough For our wonder and our war, But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings, And our peace is put in impossible things Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings Round an incredible star. (Chesterton) Pantheism, or even ‘the divine in the commonplace’ fail to account for – not ‘the flight of the alone to the Alone’, which is nonsense, but the flight of the one to the One – and also the terrified flight of the one from the One. The fear of, and the finding of, kinship with all that is, in a communion blazingly personal and maddeningly impersonal. Am I a Hindu Vedantist masquerading as a Christian? No, because I value the perspective of the cross and the theology of incarnation and the scandal of particularity and the inscrutable and ambiguous but disturbing challenges of Jesus. And the rhythm and dynamic of resurrection.
April 1986 The young man with the camera was running from viewpoint to viewpoint above Honister Pass, hurrying as the light fled. ‘You are working against time,’ I observed. ‘Yes,’ he replied, smiling happily enough. ‘The light has gone from everything I care for.’ He did not mean the words to carry the weight of human sorrow or Wordsworth’s fading glory – but what a line!
It is not true for me. The light does not go from anything I really care for. But the light changes, as at evening, altering emphases, bringing into salience parts of a known landscape hitherto not given due attention; shadowing others, enlarging and diminishing as the mind’s elastic stretches this way and that; adding new colours to the anonymous white light of noon. To grow old is not frustrating but enlarging – in both senses, expansion and liberation.
September 1986 A poet protégé writes about unconditional love: ‘I’ve learned the value of the love offered me, by yourself and others. I can only love you back, and try to learn that the worth you offer has its own name: forgiveness. It was once easier to make a bitterness out of love. Now I’ve your example to draw from – as good a gift as the poetry you taught me to write.’ A Christian statement from a non-Christian who is where it matters? ‘My soul swings from the hooked sky,’ he writes.
In Don Cupitt’s earlier books, there was ample evidence of an author intensely preoccupied with the anxiety of speech.1 This began to wane, however, and has now been pretty well reversed. Also, Cupitt did not stay long with what might be called his ‘Heidegger period’, a brief flirtation with the notion of pre-linguistic being, something not literally outside language but the necessary (primordial) obverse of it.2 He was clearly wary of Heidegger’s antipathy towards humanism, yet the family resemblance between the two men is evident in their fondness for things that flit in and out of existence, things that are delicate and light, things that are not instrumental.