R S Thomas: Mysticism and Meeting God on the Moor

We all meet God in our own way. There are moments of recognition that, brief as they are, touch those deepest longings we find it hard to name. In the encounter with God it is seldom clear whether we meet God, or God meets us, and in any case, to make such a distinction risks missing the mystery that challenges all such certainties.

Years ago, I sat at coffee with a man who was recovering from a stroke. He was as unmystical as anyone I ever met. Down to earth, a man of good humoured shrewdness, lived for his family and worked hard all his life to make things happen for them, his own unapologetic self-description, a working man.  He spoke of his time as a telephone engineer in Orkney, laying cables across the moorland. One day, unbidden, unexpected and unexplained, he was aware of the presence of God. And he knew. He knew he was known, and by Whom. His life, he said, was never the same after that. He remembered the cold wind, the cry of curlews, the unthreatening loneliness, and most of all - the space.

We talked a while about God, moorland, the cry of moorland birds, and the way such emptiness can suddenly be filled with presence. We agreed that the cry of the curlew is one of the most beautiful sounds in Scotland, a combination of longing and the cry of the heart that opens us up to the incredible, sometimes the ineffable.

At such moments of opening, I believe in the democratisation of mysticism, and the need to stop categorising and defining what in the end is the interruption of our lives by the God who invests those rare moments with transcendent significance. So in  one sense, my friend was unmystical - in another sense this most practical of men was alert to the invasion of gift, responsive to the call of God, and spoke only in quiet humility of what had happened to him. God had happened to him - and it is the sharing of such spiritual reality that is one of the most persuasive encouragements for the rest of us. We too have had our moments.  

The Moor

It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God there was made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In a movement of the wind over grass.
 
There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions — that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.

Years ago, I sat at coffee with a man who was recovering from a stroke. He was as unmystical as anyone I ever met. Down to earth, a man of good humoured shrewdness, lived for his family and worked hard all his life to make things happen for them, his own unapologetic self-description, a working man.  He spoke of his time as a telephone engineer in Orkney, laying cables across the moorland. One day, unbidden, unexpected and unexplained, he was aware of the presence of God. And he knew. He knew he was known, and by Whom. His life, he said, was never the same after that. He remembered the cold wind, the cry of curlews, the unthreatening loneliness, and most of all - the space.

We talked a while about God, moorland, the cry of moorland birds, and the way such emptiness can suddenly be filled with presence. We agreed that the cry of the curlew is one of the most beautiful sounds in Scotland, a combination of longing and the cry of the heart that opens us up to the incredible, sometimes the ineffable.

At such moments of opening, I believe in the democratisation of mysticism, and the need to stop categorising and defining what in the end is the interruption of our lives by the God who invests those rare moments with transcendent significance. So in  one sense, my friend was unmystical - in another sense this most practical of men was alert to the invasion of gift, responsive to the call of God, and spoke only in quiet humility of what had happened to him. God had happened to him - and it is the sharing of such spiritual reality that is one of the most persuasive encouragements for the rest of us. We too have had our moments.  

The Moor

It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God there was made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In a movement of the wind over grass.
 
There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions — that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.