Lent with R S Thomas: "...love questioning is love blinded with excess of light."

There is no surprise that the eucharist is an important theme in the poetry of R S Thomas. Well of course it is, he is a priest, and when all else fails him there is substance and reality in the bread and the chalice. Again and again he alludes to the broken bread and body, the blood of Christ, the Cross and the chalice.  Likewise the sea and in particular its movement and noise, the waves and the wind, the tides ebbing and flowing, the unseen depths of an ocean filled with mystery and dark with secrets.

The two images of restless sea and celebrated eucharist are brought together in a brief poem

The breaking of the wave
outside echoed the breaking
of the bread in his hands.

The crying of the seagulls
was the cry from the Cross;
Lama Sabachthani. He lifted

the chalice, that crystal in
which love questioning is love
blinded with excess of light.¹

Here, in an ascetic economy of words, Thomas tells the double drama - breaking waves and breaking bread; seagull's cry and Jesus cry of dereliction; sun reflecting on the sea and light radiating from the silver chalice, and the vast ocean and the fruit of the earth and of human hands are each and all enfolded in love.

This is Thomas at his most devotional, when love is allowed to be perfected as the radiated blessing of the Redeemer Creator. The chalice is "that crystal in which love questioning is love blinded by excess of light."

So few words, such theological intelligence, an apophatic theology of illumination, an experience of love asking for proof of truth, and being blinded by what it cannot truly or fully ever see or comprehend.

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not comprehended it", said John in a Prologue whose depth theology caused Thomas's heart to vibrate with sympathy, and with questions. And of that hardest question of all? About whether God's love is believable?

The answer is broken bread, a seagull's cry, and a crystal clear chalice radiating the light of Creation and Redemption. The beatific vision may well be described in such terms, when "love questioning is love blinded with excess of light." Or in the words of another Apostle, when seeing through a glass darkly gives way to seeing face to face, because "faith hope and love abide, but the greatest of these is love."

1. The Echoes Return Slow, MacMillan, 1988, page 69.

(The photo was taken on the Aberdeen beach, the seagull obligingly posing on the horizon)

 

There is no surprise that the eucharist is an important theme in the poetry of R S Thomas. Well of course it is, he is a priest, and when all else fails him there is substance and reality in the bread and the chalice. Again and again he alludes to the broken bread and body, the blood of Christ, the Cross and the chalice.  Likewise the sea and in particular its movement and noise, the waves and the wind, the tides ebbing and flowing, the unseen depths of an ocean filled with mystery and dark with secrets.

The two images of restless sea and celebrated eucharist are brought together in a brief poem

The breaking of the wave
outside echoed the breaking
of the bread in his hands.

The crying of the seagulls
was the cry from the Cross;
Lama Sabachthani. He lifted

the chalice, that crystal in
which love questioning is love
blinded with excess of light.¹

Here, in an ascetic economy of words, Thomas tells the double drama - breaking waves and breaking bread; seagull's cry and Jesus cry of dereliction; sun reflecting on the sea and light radiating from the silver chalice, and the vast ocean and the fruit of the earth and of human hands are each and all enfolded in love.

This is Thomas at his most devotional, when love is allowed to be perfected as the radiated blessing of the Redeemer Creator. The chalice is "that crystal in which love questioning is love blinded by excess of light."

So few words, such theological intelligence, an apophatic theology of illumination, an experience of love asking for proof of truth, and being blinded by what it cannot truly or fully ever see or comprehend.

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not comprehended it", said John in a Prologue whose depth theology caused Thomas's heart to vibrate with sympathy, and with questions. And of that hardest question of all? About whether God's love is believable?

The answer is broken bread, a seagull's cry, and a crystal clear chalice radiating the light of Creation and Redemption. The beatific vision may well be described in such terms, when "love questioning is love blinded with excess of light." Or in the words of another Apostle, when seeing through a glass darkly gives way to seeing face to face, because "faith hope and love abide, but the greatest of these is love."

1. The Echoes Return Slow, MacMillan, 1988, page 69.

(The photo was taken on the Aberdeen beach, the seagull obligingly posing on the horizon)