JAJ Essay: Concerning "A Priest to His People"

Concerning "A Priest to His People"

Essay Posted October 2, 2007 by James E. Nelson

In last week’s essay I extolled the virtues of Welsh culture. Like all the Celtic cultures, the Welsh have a rich musical and poetic heritage. Here in America, I argue that the Welsh are appreciated especially for their church music and religious poetry. While Irish and Scottish music is most appropriate in the pub, and best appreciated by a rowdy, drinking crowd, the Welsh music best known in America is sung in churches. While famous Irish and Scottish poets include Seamus Heaney and Robert Fergusson, The best known Welsh poets, such as George Herbert and Henry Vaughn, were ministers and primarily wrote hymns.

Given this religious orientation, one would expect the Welsh might be both pious and faithful as a whole. It was therefore surprising when R. S. Thomas, in his poem, “A Priest to His People,” complains about their irreligion. (The complete poem can be found here.)

Men of the hills, wantoners, men of Wales,

With your sheep and your pigs and your ponies, your sweaty females,

How I have hated you for your irreverence, your scorn . . .

In fact Debbie Koritsas, writing in the Rambles e-zine, observes that while his style is nearly always “brutally direct, even bitter,” in this poem “he hits even harder at the amorality and the atheism that surrounds him.” But a careful reading of the poem shows that she completely misses the point. Let’s finish the last line quoted above and continue:

How I have hated you for your irreverence, your scorn even

Of the refinements of art and the mysteries of the Church,

I whose invective would spurt like a flame of fire

To be quenched always in the coldness of your stare.

The word order is critical. He hated them for their scorn of his own personal refinements first and for their seeming scorn of the church second. As we continue through the poem we discover that it is their ordinariness that riles him. It is only by extension that he assumes they are therefore irreverent: “You are curt and graceless, yet your sudden laughter / Is sharp and bright as a whipped pool, / When the wind strikes or the clouds are flying.” “All the devices of church and school Have failed to . . . put a halter on your wild soul.”

In short, Thomas, the Anglican priest with a most excellent higher education, is offended that they don’t appreciate the fineness of his education nor his cultured ways. He then confuses their lack of respect for his training with lack of respect for God. He finally comes to terms with this reality as best he can, and concludes the poem, saying:

With your pigs and your sheep and your sons and holly-cheeked daughters

You will still continue to unwind your days

In a crude tapestry under the jealous heavens

To affront, bewilder, yet compel my gaze.

R. S. Thomas says it baldly and seemingly without shame (although with a great deal of regret): he not only doesn’t fit in with his congregations, he doesn’t even like them very well and only gives them grudging respect. This is why he fails to recognize them as Christians. They don’t look like him.

At this point I am tempted to take this essay in two different directions. On the one hand, I could rail against professionalized church ministry. We take our young men (and in some denominations, young women) and send them away to the city to train them and re-enculturate them into something which is foreign to the culture of the people. When they return as “ministers to their people,” they are unable to connect to the people because of cultural distance which now exists. These newly trained clerics inevitably belong to the society of clerics rather than the society of mortals. When I was a Presbyterian, I derisively called it “the preachers union.” In the Orthodox Church (where the priests traditionally wear black) I’ve heard the same sentiment expressed in reference to the annual clergy retreat: “I see it’s time for the annual migration of that flock of crows,” a disenfranchised parishioner observed.

But it’s easy to snipe, and this poem is neither about a preacher’s contempt for his people nor about their contempt for the preacher, so I’ll stop.

Thomas puts his finger on a much more significant issue in this poem. If we want to be oblique about it, we might ask, “Just what does Jesus look like when the stained glass is removed?” To be more direct, just what does a group of Christians really look like? Strip away the steeple that can be seen two miles out of town. Strip away the filigree that offsets the pulpit and pews. Remove the vestments and antependia that hang from the holy things and holy people, reminding us that they represent the holy, and what remains?

In the words of R. S. Thomas, “a crude tapestry” devoid of the fineness of gold, and silk, and shining word carefully wrought in the solitude of the pastor’s study.

Of course, since the God we love is holy, we’re a bit embarrassed by our “crude tapestry” so we enhance it with our attempts to represent God’s glory: the poetic and magnificent language of the Anglicans, the polished phrases and deep thoughts of the Presbyterians, the sweating earnestness of a Revival preacher, the ornate beauty of a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church.

That’s an honorable sensibility, but if we become enamored with our own representations of God’s glory, we can forget that God has deigned to dwell in human flesh—a “crude tapestry” indeed!

Who is God? What does God look like in this world? That question lies at the heart of Thomas’s poetry. If we give our own representations too much credence, the very presence of God becomes offensive:

You are lean and spare, yet your strength is a mockery

Of the pale words in the black Book,

And why should you come like sparrows for prayer crumbs,

Whose hands can dabble in the world’s blood?

And yet, hidden in this “crude tapestry” is the very glory of God. And finally Thomas recognizes it:

I have taxed your ignorance of rhyme and sonnet,

Your want of deference to the painter’s skill,

But I know, as I listen, that your speech has in it

The source of all poetry, clear as a rill

Bubbling from your lips; and what brushwork could equal

The artistry of your dwelling on the bare hill?

The source of poetry is this “crude tapestry” of humanity. And like the lilies of the field that King David praises, the beauty of this unshaped and untrained poetry “bubbling from our lips” is far superior in the purity of its divine grace than the purist lines that R. S. Thomas, or King David himself, could write.

So, Jesus Christ, what do you look like? (Let’s turn to Thomas again.)

You are curt and graceless, yet your sudden laughter

Is sharp and bright as a whipped pool,

When the wind strikes or the clouds are flying;

And all the devices of church and school

Have failed to cripple your unhallowed movements,

Or put a halter on your wild soul.

Or as the ancient prophet said it:

Behold, my servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. As many were astonished at him—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the sons of men—so shall he startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they shall see, and that which they have not heard they shall understand.

Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? (Isaiah 5213-53:1)

So Jesus Christ, what do you look like? How have you been revealed? As R. S. Thomas concludes:

You will forgive, then, my initial hatred,

My first intolerance of your uncouth ways,

You who are indifferent to all that I can offer,

Caring not whether I blame or praise.