I’ve recently been reading Walter Wagnerin’s The Book of God, his imaginative re-shaping of the Bible into one central narrative. The exercise is of course controversial if you take the route of the critics and attempt to substitute the book for its’ source. In reality, Wagnerin’s consistent refusal to tell his own story and descend to ideology or ignore brutal realities creates a remarkable success. Ibis throws some welcome oblique light on the original — a role no different from a bible commentary, Ignation exercise or praise song. The achievement of The Book of God is, as the title suggests, the sense of continuity and community that a central unfettered narrative gives to the story of God’s people. Compared with years of fractured reading from separate ‘books’ and emphases placed on conflict rather than continuity, the effect is to discover the links in our story. This is possibly important — particularly if, in the words of John Goldingay, “Christian faith wishes to be seen as the fulfilment of a longstanding purpose and promise rather than as an irrational interruption”.

I remember several invocations of the Old Testament narrative so vividly dealt with by Wagnerin at student services in York (AbeSoc, spies returning from Canaan etc). In some ways I thought that Christian life and expression on campus was not altogether unlike the phase in the history of God’s people after Abraham stared at starry skies, when more people meant that matters got bigger, longer, and more complicated. Just as Israel had different tribes with a different character and heritage, so did campus life. You could be born into one, the product of a mixed marriage, or an incomer like Ruth, and you would have the love/hate relationships that humans have with their close family. Some tribes would make mistakes in some places and others elsewhere, some tribes would nearly disappear and then return. If we follow Wagnerin from the first to the second testament, then maybe we can start to understand genealogy as being about identity rather than status.

The MethAng tribe will be holding a reunion of sorts in York on the 27–28 November. Anyone who wants to come is most welcome — contact me for details (c/o The Vicarage, Vicarage Road Morriston, Swansea SA6 6DR). Just like medieval artists painted their patrons into the middle of biblical scenes, this weekend will be an opportunity to read a little of our lives into the Old Testament and move on from the promised land of Joshua to the story of David and Goliath. I’m going to include a little bit about that here, as seen through an RS Thomas poem in the hope that it will be relevant in a wider context.

When RS Thomas starts his poem That Place;

I served on a dozen committees;
talked hard, said little, shared the applause
at the end.

it becomes apparent that the poem is partly a reflection on the time he spent on a committee for the protection of his cherished bird sanctuary Bardsey Island. The anonymity of the title stands though, for “that place” comes to be as much about a spiritual place as about Bardsey and the birds that comprise Thomas’s most frequent motif never appear. The ‘hard’ work of talking in order to achieve even so little leads the poet into a human reaction as basic as the ability to share any available applause;

Picking over
the remains later, we agreed power
was not ours, launched our invective
against others, the anonymous wielders
of such.

The ‘hard’ work and sense of futility that comes from power being held elsewhere might be understood by anyone who has struggled with continually bridging the gap between ideals and reality in the company of others. Saul, hardened veteran of many battles — “a very old man” — might recognise the fatigue and petulant reaction against the anonymous “others” who probably have no more “power”. Goliath seemingly wields so much power that he stops an entire army in its’ tracks and paralyses it. The Israelites neither run away nor fight, but stay in a state of abeyance, allowing Goliath to wield more power every time he comes out and challenges Israel. For poet and nation, this leads to a reduction in the terms of reference, the boundaries restrict to human ones;

Life became small, grey,
the smell of interiors. Occasions
on which clean air entered our nostrils
off swept seas were instances
we sought to recapture.

For Saul, the kingdom of Israel has shrunk from its’ original possibilities to a quarrelsome, difficult, wearying problem constantly nagging at him. For Thomas, the present has become so small, so insoluble, that he cannot look into the future and a look backwards is all that is possible. The answer does not so much come in the cleanliness of places swept clean, but begin there;

One particular
time after a harsh morning of rain,
the clouds lifted, the wind
fell; there was a resurrection
of nature, and we there to emerge
with it into the anointed
air.

It could be said that the identification of parallels in Thomas’s poem is highly subjective, that there is nothing explicitly Christian about “That Place!”. This @d, it is difficult to see someone with Thomas’s formidable and elusive intellect placing “resurrection” and “anointed” as key phrases without being aware of their biblical flavouring. This is an accusation which gathers credibility when one takes into account the use of an explicitly Christian twelfth century welsh deathbed poem as source material. Saul, and then David were both anointed as Kings of Israel, symbolising God’s choice and plan. David was the ancestor of another “anointed,” or to give the Hebrew, “Messiah”. Can we make a case for a Messianic “resurrection” paving the way for personal renewal in Thomas’s poem? Whatever, there is in some sense an element of God and his covenant operating for the future of both poet and shepherd. That Place is more than another anti-urban poem about the transcendence of nature, just as David and Goliath is more than another little beats big story to prove that he who dares might win.

I wanted to say to you “We
will remember this”. But tenses
were out of place on that green
island, ringed with the rain’s
bow, that we had found and would spend
the rest of our lives looking for.

The answer comes not in moments “recaptured” but in a moment that stays, lives on and becomes part of the person and the community, a moment not recapturable because it is eternally present. Tenses are out of place, the event is not confined to past, present or future. The collective struggle has found collective release — “we will,” “we had found”. For Saul, who is not big enough to see the new vision, restricted as he is by jealousy and fright, things have ended. David (the nobody) breathes the “clean air off swept seas” and is set free to escape the smell of interiors, refuses a human attempt at insurance and sets off without armour to embrace new wide skies of possibility.

“Ringed with the rain’s bow” is in part a notably skilful translation of a line in the source poem describing Bardsey as “with a bosom of brine about it”. This is not all though, for the “rain’s bow” is also possibly one and the same as Noah saw, also looking at an island after the smell of humankind gone wrong had been swept away. It is in the light of this “rain’s bow” that the poet finds resolution and renewal, in the light of God’s covenant that David and Jonathon find resolution and renewal, and in the light of such examples that we can look to for resolution and renewal for ourselves, our tribes and our nations.

Matt Knight