Nineteenth-century Englishmen were happy to conclude with Wordsworth that ‘trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home.’ Twenty-first century English people are more likely to think in terms of trailing yards and yards of DNA do we come into this world. Any remnant of the numinous we happen to bring with us soon decays and fades. We are left to our own devices, as the ancient Greeks were. They set too and conjured marvellous stories to explain our position in the (Mediterranean) world that we still enjoy today.
Those stories gave us tools to think with. Long after Athens had yielded pride of place to Venice, the polytheistic narratives continued to play their part. Names like Poseidon, Hermes, Aphrodite meant we could understand and feel at home, if not exactly cosy, with the natural forces that shaped our background. Homer had his place alongside Moses in the great spaces thinly occupied by our ancestors and story-tellers.
Yet the more we come to know about our ancestors of the Bronze age and further back the more we feel our kinship with them. They were remarkably like us with their fears and aspirations. It does not seem at all incongruous that we are reminded of them in our calendars alongside Nordic gods and heroes. We welcome new discoveries by metal-detectorists and tractor-drivers who find themselves bringing one hoard after another to light and make us better informed about who we are and where we are from.
Amid the speculation and mix coming to notice from ancient epics, broken pottery and heaped-up middens we have the Scriptures of Judaism and the New Testament documents to make us aware of another stratum in our story. It may seem that our respect for such material has declined along with our respect for Wordsworth. But we should remember that Wordsworth’s great associate Coleridge gave us other modes of entry such as the ‘Ancient Mariner’ into an exploration of the human condition. Not only poetry but theology was his specialty. We do well to explore the NT documents with the help of new translations to avoid missing out on life-changing light on where those clouds of glory are to be found.
SUNNINGHILL STYLE
Mike Cross edits a stylish 56-page magazine for the parish of Sunninghill and South Ascot churches in Berkshire. The parish has a vacancy at present and is maintaining a packed programme of events with a strong ministry team.
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