| Veil in the vale
WHY ARE WE more aware of the Beyond in some places than in others? Why is the veil so thin on Iona and so thick in Ruislip? These ruminations are prompted by a recent pilgrimage I made with a dozen or so others through Llanthony Valley, the loveliest valley in the Brecon Beacons.
The valley is wild and lonely, and has long attracted monks and mystics, poets and artists, and all who wonder what it all means. They pause in this secluded vale, lingering in its folds for a few days or a lifetime, because here the unseen is disclosed.
Our pilgrimage — in truth, a half-day’s walk — was led by David Alston, Secretary to the Arts Council of Wales, who talked to us as we went along about the history of the valley and about some of the artists who have made it their studio.
Location, location
TWO religious houses were established in Llanthony Valley; one to flourish for centuries, one swiftly to founder. In the Middle Ages, Augustinian canons established a great abbey here.
“It is a site most suited to the practice of religion, and better chosen for canonical discipline than that of any of the other monasteries in the island of Britain,” said Geoffrey of Wales.
The canons were sensible, practical men. They built their abbey in a sheltered and fertile field close to running water. By contrast, 700 years later, the insecurely hinged Fr Ignatius built his more-Roman-than-Rome Anglican monastery high on the sunless side of the valley — a bleak location that ensured that most of his community of malnourished oddballs suffered acute Vitamin-D deficiency.
Then Eric Gill took the place over, and gathered around him an assortment of artists and craftsmen who, if possible, got even less to eat than Fr Ignatius’s monks. The most gifted of that half-starved company was David Jones, for whom the valley was “a place of questioning, where you must ask the question and the answer questions you”.
Jones’s sublime Sanctus Christus de Capel-y-ffin hangs in the Tate.
Book of Esther
I FELL into conversation during our walk with Esther de Waal, someone who knows about the religious life and humanity’s desperate need of monks and nuns. We talked about Thomas Merton, and agreed that he was never a CIA agent, and that, after his enlightenment before the great Buddhas of Polunnaruwa, there was nothing left for him to do but to die in a Bangkok bathroom. I have now ordered a copy of Esther’s Seeking God: The way of St Benedict.
All that jazz
OUR DAYS in Brecon included the weekend of the jazz festival. We got to as many gigs as we could. We secured last-minute return tickets for the “hot opening night party” with Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra. Some boogied in the aisle. I stayed in my seat and jerked.
The festival ended with Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine “celebrating their 80th birthday year”. As the programme promised, they proved “as hip and relevant today as they were all those years ago”. Their audience, many of whom looked well into their own 80s, responded ecstatically. That night many a pacemaker felt the pressure.
I am new to jazz. What delighted me in this first encounter with it was its wonderful marriage of freedom and framework. Soaring improvisations stay within a structure and serve, as John Donne said, “one equal music”. There’s really no problem about predestination and free-will.
Breath of God
THE OCCASIONAL childcare required of me as a granddad makes demands for which my extended theological formation ill-prepares me. Brighton’s summer took place this year on Friday 15 August. We seized the day and took Alex, 5, and Max, 3, to the play-pool on the front. The boys brought with them an enormous inflatable prawn. My job was to blow it up. I found the task of bringing this six-foot crustacean to life completely exhausting.
It occurred to me, as I collapsed afterwards with an ice cream, that using lung-power to inflate a giant plastic prawn is much like what happened at creation. Creation, we read and believe, was by the breath of God. What had never struck me before was that, for God too, the work of creation must have been — and must continue to be — utterly draining.
“Breathe on me, breath of God,” we pray — and, unless we have blown up a giant prawn, we know not what we ask.
But now I see
FOR 50 years I have preached on the parable of the Prodigal Son without beginning to understand what I have been talking about. Now that one of our own children is “in a far country” and has, as yet, shown no sign of “coming to herself”, I begin to sense something of what was suffered in the household of which Jesus so famously spoke.
For 50 years I have claimed and proclaimed that the story of the Prodigal Son is about God’s patient and unswerving love and his readiness to forgive — “the waiting father”, and all that. Perhaps it is. What I do now at last see — rereading Luke 15 through my tears — is that the parable is as much about human parenting as it is about divine attributes. It is as much to do with what is asked of mums and dads as it is with what we can hope from God.
The Revd Dr John Pridmore, a former Rector of Hackney, has retired to Brighton. |
back to Pastimes
previous story
|
next story 
.gif "Caris Magazine for girls aged 11 to 16 © site")
