R.S. Thomas: Quotes about God

“Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet.”

R.S. Thomas

Neb [No-one] (1985)
Context: On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."
But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet."

Life , God , Dreams

“Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language”

R.S. Thomas

"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Context: Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.

God

“They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes: rather they wrote
On men's hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.”

R.S. Thomas

"The Country Clergy"
Poetry For Supper (1958)

God , Time

“The nearest we approach God…is as creative beings. The poet, by echoing the primary imagination, recreates. Through his work he forces those who read him to do the same, thus bringing them... nearer to the actual being of God as displayed in action.”

R.S. Thomas

The Penguin Book of Religious Verse (1963), p. 8

God

“It is alive. It is you,
God. Looking out I can see
no death.”

R.S. Thomas

"Alive", p. 51
Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)
Context: It is alive. It is you,
God. Looking out I can see
no death. The earth moves, the
sea moves, the wind goes
on its exuberant
journeys. Many creatures
reflect you, the flowers
your color, the tides the precision
of your calculations. There
is nothing too ample
for you to overflow, nothing
so small that your workmanship
is not revealed.

Death , God

“I wouldn't say that I'm an orthodox Christian at all and the longer we live in the twentieth century the more fantastic discoveries are made, the more we hear what the universe is like I find it very difficult to be a kind of orthodox believer in Jesus as my saviour and that sort of thing. I'm more interested in the extraordinary nature of God. If there is God, if there is deity, then He, even as the old hymn says, He moves in a mysterious way and I'm fascinated by that mystery and I've tried to write out of that experience of God, the fantastic side of God, the quarrel between the conception of God as a person, as having a human side, and the conception of God as being so extraordinary. … So these are still things that occupy me, and every now and again, if you're lucky, you're able to make a poem out of this conception of God … so I suppose I'm trying to appeal to people to open their eyes and their minds to the extraordinary nature of God.”

R.S. Thomas

"R. S. Thomas in conversation with Molly Price-Owen" in The David Jones Journal R. S. Thomas Special Issue (Summer/Autumn 2001)

God , People , Way , Nature

“Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being … ultimate reality is what we call God.”

R.S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet, BBC TV (2 April 1972)

God , Truth , Way , Imagination

“Why are my hands this way
That they will not do as i say?
Does no God hear when I pray?”

R.S. Thomas

"Here"
Tares (1961)

God , Way