Mark Oakley on Greenbelt Festival and the Poet George Herbert

I’m delighted to be asked to speak at Greenbelt again. This year the theme of the Festival is ‘Wit and Wisdom’, the two things our world needs a lot more of at the moment. There is a great line up of speakers and performers and I was especially thrilled to see my friend Wendy Cope is going - standing room only when she’s on, I have no doubt.

Because I have a collection of sermons being published this Summer, I’ve been asked to talk about preaching. It seems to me that in the current environment, where if you aren’t at the table you are probably on the menu, anyone preaching the homeland of the Kingdom of God will need to be either a poet, a prophet or a protestor. We need to find a language that resonates and stops us snoring through life. We also need to be able to see into the future and report back quickly so that amendments can quickly take place. When indifference or worse set in, we need to protest in the name of God and the common good of God’s people, imprinted as everyone is with God’s image and dignity. The preachers of this generation are going to need courage, and the will power, to help men and women reimagine the world, offering a new compass by which to set the world’s journey.

I’m also involved with a late night liturgy there centred around the poetry of the priest-poet R.S.Thomas. Thomas has been called the ‘Clint Eastwood of the spirit’ and his ability to swing open the doors of our soul, creating a poised silence that is expectant for some disarming move, is legendary. Thomas knows that silence is God’s last resort against our idolatry. He knows that darkness and difficulty are where God changes the full-stops of our lives into commas. To immerse ourselves in his words, invoking the holiness of God in the depth of night, is too important to miss.

Another poet who is remarkable for what has been called his ‘heart work and heaven work’ is George Herbert. I have been exploring his poems over the Summer and SPCK publishes my short reflections on forty of them at the end of this year. The book is called My Sour Sweet Days: George Herbert and the Journey of the Soul. It has been a real joy to befriend Herbert again. Even though four hundred years separate us, his honesty and freshness bring him very close. Herbert has a contagious faith in God as friend. He has helped me do some stocktaking on my own soul. The book might be helpful for some readers during Lent. I tried to keep each reflection quite short so that busy lives might just about get round to reading one a day. He is certainly a poet full of ‘wit and wisdom’ and reminds us endlessly that laughter is a promise of redemption and that faith is the belief that the promise is being kept.

My Sour-Sweet Days contains forty well-chosen poems by George Herbert (widely considered the greatest devotional poet in the English language), each of which is followed by a short but profound reflection by Mark Oakley. The combination is excellent: richly expressive poems and accessible personal meditations. This book powerfully demonstrates how poetry can bring comfort, refreshment and renewed energy to our spiritual lives.'

Professor Helen Wilcox, editor of the critically acclaimed edition of The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

MARK OAKLEY Photo by Graham Lacdao