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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels September 18, 2004 Wisdom from a Welsh wordsmith Scott Dalgarno This last June I took my family to Great Britain. We did much of what you would expect. We ate fish and chips. We walked in Hyde Park, stopping to snack on that stuff the Brits call ice cream that tastes like it must be half cool whip, and, of course, there was full English breakfast (very full, indeed). We marveled over the Tower of London. We were groundlings (twice) at the new Globe Theatre, and caught the most wonderful exhibit of Edward Hopper's amazing paintings at the Tate. But we also got out into the country; a week of wandering in the cathedral cities in the southwest, and the crown of our trip, a week in Wales. Cymru is what the locals call it. That country should win the award for the world's most interesting spelling. A grant for ministers from the Louisville Institute got us there. I did some research on the life of a Nobel nominated poet few people know of, R.S. Thomas. Not to be confused with Dylan Thomas, R.S. (his wife even called him R.S.) was an Anglican priest and poet who served three parishes in Wales from 1942-1986. He died in 2000. Thomas's Wales was not the southern industrial Wales most people think of first. Though born in Cardiff, Thomas's passion was for the Wales of Arthurian legend located around the mountains in the north. He was drawn to the ancient people there who work the craft of sheep raising. He was fascinated by the fact that the Welsh are a disinherited people; a people who have been pushed to the Western edge of England - a place, starkly beautiful, forsaken, and wind beaten. He loved and despised her people, loving them for their strength of character, and their unwillingness to complain -- despising what he calls their small mindedness. In one revealing poem he says. "You cannot live in the present/At least not in Wales � There is no present in Wales/And no future/There is only the past/Brittle with relics, Wind-bitten towers, and castles � And an impotent people/Sick with inbreeding,/Worrying the carcass of an old song." I've lived in Oregon for nearly 30 years, and I had been convinced all that time that this state was the most beautiful spot on the planet, that is, until I went to Wales. It's those green, green hills divided by the wonderful hedgerows and rock walls, yes, and then there are the hills around Snowdonia National Park, purple and green. And castles: real honest to goodness turreted wonder-ruins popping up all-over. More sheep than people, too, and the people are wonderful - so open hearted, running to your car in order to say a proper hello or goodbye, amazing. We were charmed. In his noted poem, "The Small Window," Thomas says: In Wales there are jewels To gather, but with the eye Only. A hill lights up Suddenly; a field trembles With colour and goes out In its turn; in one day You can witness the extent Of the spectrum and grow rich With looking. Have a care; This wealth is for the few And chosen. Those who crowd A small window dirty it With their breathing, though sublime And inexhaustible the view. These people have eked out a living in these hills for millennia and get recognized, always, as scrappy . . . and then they give you Catherine Zeta Jones. Go Figure. Thomas has a word of advice for the Welsh, but it could easily be a word for the rest of us, as well (we miss so much bustling as we do now that September has arrived with its habitual abruptness). "Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses . . . to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you ("The Bright Field"). Scott Dalgarno is pastor of Ashland's First Presbyterian Church. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams