EARLIER this yr, I had a conversation with the Very Revd Dr Mark Oakley, the brand new Dean of Southwark, whose installation sermon had touched me deeply. He spoke of his wish for every thing within the cathedral to be founded on poetry — “a poetry which can deepen the mystery of God, not resolve it” — and present God “not as the article of our knowledge however the explanation for our wonder”.
If it could possibly be said that music is a foundation stone of most cathedrals, Dr Oakley appears to be promising that his cathedral is to be founded on poetry and music as collaborators. For those of us working — in Auden’s phrase — “on the coal face of poetry”, such an announcement by a senior churchman on the craft we practise is nearly shocking. It sounds a trumpet call. What must we do?
The challenge is obvious: poets and creators of the liturgy, we’re to provide words which stir the soul, as a lot music written for the Church does, whether the devotional intensity of Byrd’s Ave Verum or the crowd-rousing energy of Vaughan Williams’s Sine Nomine tune to “For all of the saints”.
For words, the Anglican Church has Cranmer, and we’d like Cranmer as we’d like Byrd. But we also need words native to our age of genome and space travel, fit colleagues for Vaughan Williams and Rutter. Our problem as wordsmiths is that the words must belong to now; words of an earlier age — even those written by Cranmer — may reference out-of-date science or social circumstances, and risk turning people off.
COULD help come from children? What about “Hymns, minus the ‘awkward’ bits?” featured within the Church Times article of that name (Feature, 5 April)? It jogged my memory of working with primary schools. One of my poetry books, Rhymoceros, is for youngsters; and I even have performed a whole bunch of poetry shows in primary schools — a performance within the morning, followed by workshops with the youngsters within the afternoon.
Most poets are overwhelmed by the creativity of ten-year-olds, and we definitely must be. I made up a soundbite for professionals confronted with children’s energy: “Half an hour, and also you’ve only written three acts of Hamlet? Shame!”
Rhymoceros comprises a sequence of riddles: mundane acts, like cleansing teeth or frying eggs, translated into fantasies of launching rockets, or executing ping-pong balls. One workshop exercise involves selecting a well-known, mundane activity and treating it as a movie script for a series of actions: washing-up, for instance, breaks down into lifting the plates, applying the detergent, whooshing within the water, taking out the dishes and drying them, etc. etc. Translating these boring actions into fantasy may be fun, and free the imagination.
Experience recommends “keeping the actions energetic”. The story will then translate more effectively into space travel, or fairytale. One day, a small, withdrawn girl selected for her theme “going to sleep”. I warned her that this may be difficult: going to sleep is passive — you might be awake, you then are asleep; it lacks actions which may change into fantasy.
She did, indeed, have trouble. The school had allotted the entire afternoon to the workshop. As the session was ending, I used to be reading the papers with the youngsters’s riddles — some good, some interesting, some rubbish. The girl had covered sheets of foolscap with tightly-written scribbles. I glanced through them. “All rubbish,” she said.
I used to be about to agree, and console her by explaining she had set herself a difficult task. But, some words stood out in the midst of the scribbles, like a flower amongst thorns: “Climb on to a cushion of cloud.” Marvellous. Exact description; perfect riddle; a stupendous, seven-word poem about going to sleep. Any skilled poet would have been proud to have pulled that phrase from their subconscious.
I even have not been on a “Hymns, minus the ‘awkward’ bits” visit. But I can well imagine playing a catchy tune and telling the participating children to hum or la-la it. When it has been repeated until it’s absorbed unconsciously, let everyone dream up words to sing with it. While they is probably not suitable words to be used in church, they may reveal beneficial insights into the childrens’ attitudes towards church. It is even possible that some child’s subconscious might yield a fraction of vision like that “cushion of cloud”.
DR OAKLEY challenges those of us who’re within the business of writing to create fragments of vision; challenges congregations to recognise them after they occur; and challenges priests to rearrange services so that they include the potential of “cushions of cloud”. Is that an excessive amount of to hope for, I ponder?
There is one moment in our otherwise dull liturgy which is, for me, on the technique to being a “cushion of cloud” moment: one in all the post-communion prayers, which a priest once told me she is going to ask to be read at her funeral:
Father of all,
we provide you with thanks and praise,
that after we were still far off
you met us in your Son and brought us home.
Dying and living, he declared your love,
gave us grace, and opened the gate of glory.
May we who share Christ’s body live his risen life;
we who drink his cup bring life to others;
we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world.
Keep us firm within the hope you will have set before us,
so we and all your kids shall be free,
and the entire earth live to praise your name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
We are asked to soak up the image of the gate being opened — a picture with meaning for any and all of us: glory, glimpsed through the open gate. Glory. Perhaps the Zulus will help us to grasp. The ceremonial of a Zulu eucharist is formal (“ritual to outdo the Vatican” is the soundbite). But there are two moments of improvisation: interludes of dance — on the Peace, and the Thanksgiving after Communion. Both are nearly at all times began by a gogo (one in all the grandmothers) thump-stamping her feet on the earth floor like a drum, leading into 20 minutes or so of glory.
Every Zulu sings and dances spontaneously. We Europeans can follow only clumsily. But no less than we now have some words for it; and maybe they supply a “cushion of cloud” moment. Let all of us — poets, priests, congregations — cherish it.
Leo Aylen is a poet, writer, actor, director, broadcaster, and screenwriter. He was born in Zululand, where his father was bishop.
