A Letter from Bewcastle – August 2025

Dear Friends,

Sometimes, when I’m reading poetry, I come across an unexpected line that brings me to a crashing halt, like I’ve just fallen off a cliff, or slammed into a wall. I have to stop, pause, go back, re-read, and let it do its work in my spirit. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it splits my world open, and I see something I’ve always felt deep down but never been quite able to articulate, or perhaps never even knew it was there until the words revealed it, and I say ‘yes, that’s right’. I find such moments completely transformative. That is, they permanently change the way I see the world, and particularly my relationship with God, which grows through them. Perhaps they put voice to a deep sense of yearning, or frustration, or excruciating wonder, or a pain or loss that hurts so much I’ve buried it away. And as the words do their work and send down their roots, some kind of healing takes place deep within.

I’ve shared previously about one such occasion when I was reading an RS Thomas poem in church on my own. Another moment happened when I was reading a poem by Edward Thomas several years ago, called ‘The Glory’, that has stayed with me ever since. He is sometimes referred to as a war poet, and he was killed within a week or so of signing up and being sent to the front line in 1917. But few of his poems are about war; mostly they are about nature and creation, to which he felt an extraordinary attachment. Perhaps his most famous poem is ‘Adlestrop’, which simply, but profoundly, describes a momentary view of the countryside from the window of his train when it made an unscheduled stop at the tiny station in Gloucestershire on 24 June 1914.

‘The Glory’ also describes a momentary view of the Hampshire countryside, but this time it is so achingly beautiful he wants, needs, to become part of this ‘Glory’, for it to become part of him. Yet as he looks and allows the scene to soak into his soul, he is aware that he is inadequate for it, something in him is missing. The poem finishes with the desperate cry ‘I cannot bite the day to the core’, like the taunting but explosive crispness of (the first?) apple. Creation has become the vehicle of utterly transcendent Beauty for which his being burns. The frustration of this intimate separation is so overwhelmingly intense, yet so tantalizingly close, that he creates this astonishing line that still takes away my breath every time I read it: ‘Or must I be content with discontent, as larks and swallows are perhaps with wings.’ There it is. That’s it. Those are the words that pull me apart. Skylarks, of course, are renowned for their impossible hovering high in the sky, distant specks pouring out their song over all creation. And swallows, which fly thousands of miles each year, are the most agile and acrobatic of birds that sweep and twist and turn and tumble and dive and switch and rise and race on those wings. How could anyone come up with such an oxymoronic, and therefore unbearable, depiction of longing and frustration? And yet in so doing I find myself saying ‘yes’, for I, too, long to stretch for the elusive skies and be part of this Glory, but also find myself stunted and earthbound, lacking and unholy. He has spliced the words together that crack open this deep ache for The Word in my soul. As St Augustine put it, ‘Our hearts, O God, are restless till they find their rest in you.’

Words. It is no coincidence that Jesus is described as ‘The Word’ of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, in the prologue of John’s Gospel that we read every Christmas, or that Genesis, the first book of the bible, tells of God speaking this Word in order to bring Creation into being, ‘And God said “Let there be…”, and it was so.’ Words have, and have always had, the power to call things into existence, to vocalise, and thus concretise, thoughts, pictures, and attitudes that lead to actions and consequences, that affect our lives and the life of creation around us. Sometimes they are creative, uplifting, positive, full of wonder, joy and laughter, a force for good and kindness. Others can be divisive, destructive, hurtful, spiteful, vindictive, a force for greed, fear, and oppression. Out of the same mouth both can come, which says something about the state of our own hearts and hints at the self-awareness and inadequacy that Edward Thomas was honest enough to recognise in himself.

Moments like the encounter in this poem, that pull us up short and ask us to open ourselves to the Glory that is beyond us, that erupt the yearning and longing in each of us, prove the invitation that draws us towards Beauty, Himself. They have the potential to be life-changing if we let them. Sometimes they startle us, sometimes they dawn quietly on us. Always they are deeply personal and intimate – they are the movement of God’s Spirit in our souls, bidding us welcome to Life, to gentle forgiveness and freedom and flourishing, to peace and rest and refreshment, to come Home. It is what we seek Sunday by Sunday in the Eternal Hour in church.

Its August and soon the swallows will be leaving us for their long and dangerous journey to sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps we, too, could learn to recognise our discontent as they with their wings.

Your friend and priest,

Robert.