‘Humpty,’ I said. ‘What do you know about the green man?’
‘What everybody knows,’ he replied. ‘Pagan, lives in churches, mouthful of leaves.’
I was flabbergasted. Sometimes Humpty amazes me. I pondered.
If we ever go so green as to find our daily electrical needs met by offshore wind farms and trains running on hydrogen, we shall be looking for a green religion. And the good news for those wishing for such a thing is that such a religion already exists – and indeed has existed for centuries. It has found a lodging place in pubs and in some of our Christian church buildings. Evidence of this can be found in Cyprus, where the church of St Nicholas in Nicosia has seven green men. Nearer at home in Lincolnshire the parish church of Burgh-le-Marsh has the remnants of 11 green men. The cathedrals of Canterbury, Winchester and St Davids have their green men, as do churches in Widecombe, Garway and Oakham.
Where then does the green man come from? He is part of European culture and appears in Anton Wessels book ‘Europe: was it ever really Christian?’ (The cover picture is as good as it gets of the green man all of a piece with vegetation; it is manifestly coming out of his mouth.) If we ever forget that we owe our days of the week, our months, the names of our Christian festivals, to sources other than prescribed ones we shall find that poets have reminded us of this from ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ to Charles Causley’s ‘The Green man in the Garden’. Being authentically green goes back BCE, way before the Christian era. It has illuminated – or contaminated, depending on one’s point of view – the Christian faith and it may attain its due prominence in the green movement.
Of course, the green man is primitive. It, or he, lacks the subtlety and sophistication of a faith that has attracted the sharpest minds over two thousand years. But he does embody the same enticing character as the polytheistic panoply of classical Greece and Rome. He enlists the imagination. We can make of the green man what we will – fertility, nature, eco-harmony, international coherence. His adaptability is endless. He is just what secular man is looking for. He is one of the strongest competitors in the philosophical beauty contest of a generation seeking a meaning in our brief time on our planet.
We should not underestimate the green man. He has survived for centuries. He has it in him to be the heroic figure of the world to come. He is King Arthur, Robin Hood, El Cid, Aeneas and Beowulf wrapped into one. The future of worldwide religion could be green. We Christians must look to our Gospel title deeds. I rather think Humpty knows something about that.
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