The contributions to this collection – 23 in prose and 16 poems – are personal, in some cases intimate, and largely autobiographical reflections on ‘this life on Earth’. In many cases the authors are known to the reviewer and have shared similar experiences, some of these together at SOF conferences in the 1990s. So a detached critical review of the book is neither possible nor appropriate: instead I shall offer, in the spirit of the whole enterprise, an account of my personal response as I read the pieces and reflected on them.
First of all, I was struck by how much of an age we were, the writers and their reader (with some representatives of the immediately previous generation, but no-one significantly younger). It set me to wondering how far my sense of being in tune with what I read was a result of having been brought up in the same immediate post-war period, and how much to do with being within ten years of life’s allotted span here on Earth. Would a 60-year-old in twenty years time, or a 40-year-old reading the book today, feel a similar resonance?
And which would be more likely to?
My second reaction was to the way a single word or phrase could trigger a whole raft of memories from my own past. Penny Mawdsley’s mention of Bodfari (the village in North Wales where she now lives) brought alive in sharp detail a long-forgotten family holiday there. As a stroppy teenager I refused to visit the Swallow Falls at Betws-y-coed, because there would be a charge, and it was immoral to make people pay to see a wonder of nature. Or Tony Windross’s reference to ‘the indefatigable Ronald Pearse, to whom many of us are hugely indebted’ – Amen and amen to that!
Other passages simply put into words exactly my own thoughts and feelings, such as this from fellow-priest David Paterson: “‘God” is totally unnecessary as an explanation of the world, but a wonderful aid to understanding our place in it. “Do you believe in God?” – “With all my heart and mind and strength.” “Do you think God exists?” – “No, I don’t think the question even makes sense”.’ Praise the Lord that, like me, David has found a welcoming priest and appreciative congregation now that his days of stipendiary ministry are over.
The poetry section I shall pass over, because my taste in verse (I use the word advisedly) falls far short of the poems selected by the book’s editor (herself a poet) and this is, after all, a personal reflection.
Unfashionable they may be, but boyhood favourites driven forward by strong rhythm and narrative, like Chesterton’s Lepanto and Macauley’s Horatius, still get my vote. I couldn’t help noting that for suitable poetic submissions Dinah had to go beyond the boundary of the SOF Network.
This gave me a slightly disconcerting sense of comfort (if that is not a contradiction) that my preference in this regard might be another characteristic shared by fellow SOFers.
Several contributors picked up on the ecological aspect of ‘this life on Earth’. These discussions challenged me to ask about the most appropriate perspective for those who ‘explore religious faith as a human creation’ to view the planet and its future: and the only answer I could make sense of was the human perspective. That immediately eliminates any concern for the long-term course of world – from ball of fire to block of ice in however-many-billion years – which is beyond our care or comprehension. Only the short-term fate of the environment concerns us, and note that it concerns only us. Ecology, sustainability, global warming – the whole shooting match – is a purely human problem and we need to be honest about this.
This is not to say we should not climb aboard the environmental bandwagon, but we do need to acknowledge that it is our environment, and we seek to protect it for our own sake and for no-one else’s. No other species worries about the future.
No other plant or animal cares about bio-diversity, or even about the future of its own kind, beyond the instinctive reproduction of the next generation.
We alone do care – and our language of a creator God shows how passionately we care – for ‘this life on Earth’; but let’s not tarnish our perfectly legitimate self-concern with the altruistic myth of doing it ‘for the planet’.
Anthony Freeman is honorary assistant priest at Crediton parish church and a former editor of this magazine.