Andrew Motion, who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1999, wrote a very moving article in The Times some years ago. He described himself as being in the middle between religion and atheism “where faith flickers off-on like a badly wired lamp”. A wonderful metaphor, which only a poet could think up. He suggests that millions of people live in the middle ground, and he is probably right.
After various life events Andrew described his position as faith, not in a God who gives orders and people scurry around trying to obey them, but “a Universe in which the primitive hunger to imagine beyond ourselves is manifested in a number of overlapping stories that give us the possibility and permission to do so. They shape our ambition to think bigger and to live better, and they help define our place in the scheme of things.” He admits that he does not keep a strong grip on this faith every day, but each time he returns to faith, his sense of what it means grows deeper. The headline that The Times gave to this article was “I’ve seen the light, and it flickers on and off.”
In that, Andrew Motion is like St Thomas who clutched his doubts to himself and refused to believe the other apostles who had been in the Upper Room when they saw the risen Christ. A week later, he grudgingly joined them, and saw Jesus himself. Then doubting Thomas changed to ‘believing Thomas’, becoming the first to hail him as “my Lord and my God.”
After that, did Thomas’s faith flicker on and off like a badly wired lamp? We don’t really know, but doubt is the friend of faith, because times of uncertainty lead us to a more well thought out faith.
Blessed are you if you have been given a firm, unwavering faith. Millions pick our way doggedly through the dark night of the soul, Jesus stays with us, and sees us out of the other end of the tunnel, into the glorious light of heaven.
With blessings
Nigel