'A Church' by R.S. Thomas

Often I try
To analyze the quality
Of its silences. Is this where God hides
From my searching? I have stopped to listen,
After the few people have gone,
To the air recomposing itself
For vigil. It has waited like this
Since the stones grouped themselves about it.
These are the hard ribs
Of a body that our prayers have failed
To animate. Shadows advance
From their corners to take possession
Of places the light held
For an hour. The bats resume
Their business. The uneasiness of the pews
Ceases. There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.

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Varieties of Irreligious Experience

https://newhumanist.org.uk/2657/varieties-of-irreligious-experience

'The Coming' by R.S. Thomas

And God held in his hand A small globe. Look, he said. The son looked. Far off, As through water, he saw A scorched land of fierce Colour. The light burned There; crusted buildings Cast their shadows: a bright Serpent, a river Uncoiled itself, radiant With slime. On a bare Hill a bare tree saddened The sky. Many people Held out their thin arms To it, as though waiting For a vanished April To return to its crossed Boughs. The son watched Them. Let me go there, he said.

'Here hangs a man discarded' by Brian Wren

A Hymn by Brian Wren to the tune 'Kocher' Here hangs a man discarded, a scarecrow hoisted high, a nonsense pointing nowhere to all who hurry by. Can such a clown of sorrows still bring a useful word when faith and hope seem phantoms and every hope absurd? Yet here is help and comfort for lives by comfort bound, when drums of dazzling progress give strangely hollow sound: Life, emptied of all meaning, drained out in bleak distress, can share in broken silence our deepest emptiness; And love that freely entered the pit of life's despair, can name our hidden darkness and suffer with us there. Christ, in our darkness risen, help all who long for light to hold the hand of promise, till faith receives its sight.

Fides Quaerens Albus

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