S10 #02 - “God is a muck-heap or a cow, and no irreverence meant”—Free-religion and ordinary language - A thought for the day

The full text of this podcast can be found in the transcript of this edition or at the following link:

https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2025/06/god-is-muck-heap-or-cow-and-no.html

Please feel free to post any comments you have about this episode there.

The Cambridge Unitarian Church's Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation can be found at this link:

https://www.cambridgeunitarian.org/morning-service/
 
Music, "New Heaven", written by Andrew J. Brown and played by Chris Ingham (piano), Paul Higgs (trumpet), Russ Morgan (drums) and Andrew J. Brown (double bass) 

Thanks for listening. Just to note that the texts of all these podcasts are available on my blog. You'll also find there a brief biography, info about my career as a musician, & some photography. Feel free to drop by & say hello. Email: caute.brown[at]gmail.com

Transcript

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation

—o0o—

Although during the first half of my sabbatical in April and May I spent a great deal of time thinking through the implications of free-religion whilst working through my translations of the Japanese Yuniterian and advocate of free-religion, Imaoka Shin’ichirō-sensei, and the Czech Unitarian, Norbert Fabián Čapek — some of this work being done in Budapest — I actually spent at least as much time thinking about these implications in the British, and specifically, East Anglian, context. A lot of this was done, not at my desk, but whilst out on my bicycle in the Cambridgeshire Fens (see HERE and HERE) which, when linked to Imaoka-sensei’s belief — which I share — that “the quintessence of religion (宗教の神髄) lies in grasping the meaning of (把握する) the great life of free and selfless creative evolution (自由で無得な創造的進化の大生命)”, and that the central task of free-religion was to help “. . . ossified, formalised established religions (固定化・形式化した既成宗教) [to return] to their original sources (その源泉に立ち帰らせて) and revive them with free and creative life (自由で創造的な生命に復活せしめる)”, led to this short talk this morning.

As usual, before any ride, I spend some time reading the relevant entries in the many local guide books that sit on my bookshelves. One of the authors to whose words I pleasantly and fruitfully return to again and again before a ride into the Fens is Edward Storey (1930–2018). But in addition to his numerous books about the people and history of fens — many of which were autobiographical in nature — he was also a dramatist and poet. However, during April, I shamefully realised I had not read any of his poetry, and so I decided it was about time I did — I mean what’s a sabbatical for if not for catching-up on important things undone like this. Anyway, I managed to track down secondhand copies of this first two collections, “North Bank Night”, from 1969, and “A Man in Winter”, from 1972, and I’m glad I did. Indeed, I find myself fully concurring with the reviewer in “The Poetry Quarterly Review” who wrote that Storey was, “A deeply meditative poet who sees in nature a mirror for the human condition and sensibility … these are beautifully crafted poems that exist because they have to.”

In a moment, I’ll read to you one of his poems called “Cart-horse preacher” from the 1969 volume, but first, let’s get firmly in mind the character of the East Anglian fens, the large, low-lying region that was once dominated by wetlands and marshes. Stretching across parts of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire, the Fens are characterised by flat, open landscapes, dark peat soils, and an intricate network of drainage dykes and rivers. Always prone to flooding, the area was extensively drained from the 17th century onwards, transforming it into some of the most fertile agricultural land in the UK. The single thing that dominates this landscape is, not surprisingly, its vast skies and distant horizons. Given this, it should come as no surprise that the well-known archeologist and farmer, Francis Pryor says that, although “it has become something of a local cliché”, nevertheless, “fen people do live their lives in the sky. If you live and work in the Fens, you can’t keep your eyes to the ground: as soon as you glance up, there's the horizon and above it the infinite dome of the sky.” And he adds that, for those who spend any time in the fens, they, too, “become attuned to nature. As you live so close to the clouds you soon grow to learn the habits of the weather: how showers and storms tend to follow rivers, and when sea mists, or frets, are likely to creep their insidious way overland from the Wash. And nothing has quite the power to chill like a cold fret in March, which can penetrate to the warmest nooks of our barn, where we protect the smallest and weakest of our new-season lambs” (The Fens: Discovering England’s Ancient Depths).

Just imagine what it was, and still is like to work in this landscape. Given this, one might be tempted, as I often have, to imagine that the people working on this land would, on a Sunday, be drawn irresistibly to worship in one of the many fine churches built on the higher ground of old islands or the fen-edge. But to think like this is to forget the sheer power of the single most unmissable thing about this landscape, the sky. For a true fenlander of every age — from the prehistoric to the modern — ask yourself where is the divine and the sacred most viscerally to be found and experienced? Where have they grasped the meaning of the great life of free and selfless creative evolution? Or, to use the Christian language of Storey’s 19th- or perhaps early 20th-century, cart-horse preacher, where is God to be found? Where is God’s voice to be heard? Well, as you will now hear, it was not in the steeple-houses perched-up on the higher ground, or even in the small, non-conformist meeting houses that dotted the region . . .

Cart-horse Preacher by Edward Storey

It would have been no use
using the smooth liturgical words
of a cosy religion.
His congregation left their work
in the wet fields of the fen-country,
their cracked hands swollen
with beet-chopping.

To have asked them into the stiff pews
of a cold church would have meant
shouting at air; he knew
the hollow stillness of that place
left them more frozen than the fields,
and holy whining more than winter
lined their face.

So he gathered them round him
on the market square, saying
“I’ll speak a language you can understand,
who cares about the lovely use of words
when half the words are nothing more than sound”.
Their frost-blue ears were tingled
by his fire.

They met him every Sunday-night and knew
God would be called a muck-heap
or a cow, and no irreverence meant.
“Crops thrive” he’d say, “where muck is spread,
and milk pumps life in every sucker’s mouth”.
He solved the mystery of their fields,
healed their backs.

But now he’s dead, and God’s
locked in His church, stiff and alone.
Men work their days out on the land
wondering why the old cart-horse preacher
bothered them at all. Sometimes they feel
without him frost stays longer in their hands
and limbs more often ache.

Storey reminds me, and I hope helps remind you, too, about something fundamental connected to free-religion, the kind of dynamic, creative, free and liberative spirituality the ancient sparks of which we are trying to fan back into life here in this small fen-edge community that gathers under the same astonishing skies.

Free-religion — in Japanese it’s known as “jiyū shūkyō”, and in Sanskrit it’s known as “sanatana dharma” — recognises that a person’s true spirituality must always be something that emerges from out of a person’s own life experiences and context, exactly where they find themselves, and doing exactly what they are doing. It recognises that to talk meaningfully about this simply doesn’t require the use of “the smooth liturgical words of a cosy religion.” This is especially important in times like our own, as it was in the time of the cart-horse preacher, when fewer and fewer people care any longer about the “the lovely use of words” found in the established religions because half the words they use “are nothing more than sound”.

The cart-horse preacher’s genius was to find a way of talking about the divine and sacred, that was able to make his hearers’ “frost-blue ears” tingle with the fire burning in the heart of his words, words that were designed to allow people better to connect directly, without mediator or veil, with the deep, eternal source of religion, the great life of free and selfless creative evolution, that was always-already to be found about them in their own lives on the fen, and under those vast skies.

To remain with the language of the cart-horse preacher, God was not as to be described by the complex, abstract, lovely, refined words of the philosophers, the schoolmen or the Book of Common Prayer, but as a “muck-heap or a cow”, and with “no irreverence meant.” I find it ear-tingling myself to hear the cart-horse preacher explain this by reminding his hearers on the market square that “crops thrive where muck is spread, and milk pumps life in every sucker’s mouth”. By using this kind of direct language in the true centre of their lives as farm workers — i.e. in the market square and not in the refined steeple-houses of the land-owner — the cart-horse preacher helped them solve “the mystery of their fields” and “heal their backs.” That is to say, despite the hard and often cruel conditions they were made to work in, he helped them find deep spiritual meaning in their own work and, through this, bring them some measure of genuine understanding of life, and a sense of wholeness and healing.

Which point brings me to my basic thought for today and the challenges facing our own small, free-religious community . . .

Storey published his poem in 1969 when the decline of Christianity, the United Kingdom’s own ossified, formalised established religion, was clearly well underway. Not only is the cart-horse preacher and his ilk dead, but so, too, is the traditional theistic understanding of God who, in that form at least, is now “locked in His church, stiff and alone.” So, today, most inhabitants of these isles, that is if they remember anything at all about religion, also “work their days out . . . wondering why the old cart-horse preacher bothered them at all.”

But it is my experience as a free-religious minister that many of the people I meet feel that, without someone like the cart-horse preacher in their own lives, “the frost stays longer in their hands, and limbs more often ache.” The truth is that so many people still desire, albeit often unconsciously, to hear about and experience a way of being in and understanding the world that can make their own “frost-blue ears” tingle with warming fire once again. I truly believe that free-religion — “jiyū shūkyō” or “sanatana dharma” — is just such a warming fire. And so I ask you this morning, how might we, individually and together as a free-religious community, begin to play the part of the cart-horse preacher in our own time and place, bringing that warming fire to those whom we meet?