{"id":8570,"date":"2025-05-16T08:12:43","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T15:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/?p=8570"},"modified":"2025-05-16T08:23:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T15:23:16","slug":"r-s-thomas-via-negativa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/16\/r-s-thomas-via-negativa\/","title":{"rendered":"R. S. Thomas – Via Negativa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Negativa
\nby R. S. Thomas<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why no! I never thought other than
\nThat God is that great absence
\nIn our lives, the empty silence
\nWithin, the place where we go
\nSeeking, not in hope to
\nArrive or find. He keeps the interstices
\nIn our knowledge, the darkness
\nBetween stars. His are the echoes
\nWe follow, the footprints he has just
\nLeft. We put our hands in
\nHis side hoping to find
\nIt warm. We look at people
\nAnd places as though he had looked
\nAt them, too; but miss the reflection.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a> \u2014 from Through Corridors of Light: Poems of Consolation in Time of Illness<\/a>, Edited by John Andrew Denny<\/font><\/p>\n


\/ Image by tanakawho<\/a> \/<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

This is a haunting poem, yet lovely and uplifting at the same time. God is a kind of a ghost in this poem, a tangible absence.<\/p>\n

\u2026God is that great absence
\nIn our lives, the empty silence
\nWithin\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

And that is really the poet\u2019s point. So often we struggle to imagine what God is, the qualities and awareness associated with that immense\u2026 Something. But this poem is a meditation on the Via Negativa<\/i>, that is, the recognition that the Eternal is not a \u201cthing\u201d at all. Every definition or description or quality we attach to the Divine is necessarily a limitation on the Divine Nature and, therefore, incomplete. To turn God into an object that can be described is to make God a subset of Existence, when the Eternal is the Whole of Existence and beyond. The idea behind the Via Negativa is that God cannot be adequately conceptualized by the limited human intellect with attributes of a limited physical reality, and so God is best discovered through negation. In other words, God is all-encompassing, and therefore perceived as a sort of vibrant Absence, a sort of haunting Presence within the empty spaces of our perception\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026He keeps the interstices
\nIn our knowledge, the darkness
\nBetween stars. His are the echoes
\nWe follow\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

That ache we universally feel, that absence can feel to the soul like an existential betrayal inherent within reality. Most of us reflexively turn from that feeling and run from it, endlessly distracting our awareness so we don\u2019t feel it so painfully. But, ultimately, that\u2019s not very effective, and it is never satisfying.<\/p>\n

We put our hands in
\nHis side hoping to find
\nIt warm.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

This is, of course, a reference the story in the Gospels when \u201cdoubting\u201d Thomas would not believe that the risen Christ stood before him until he could touch the wounds in Christ\u2019s side. Here the poet sees that wound as another representation of that hauntingly empty space, which reveals itself to be both real and also divine. There is a void we all sense and mostly try to ignore. When we no longer recoil and instead reach out to touch that emptiness, we hope to feel warmth, life, presence within the apparent absence \u2014 and we do.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

Mystics encourage us to look deeper, to fully encounter that \u201cgreat absence,\u201d to sit with it. Eventually we discover to our surprise that that terrible void is, in truth, filled with immense life and an indescribable bliss. Our very being flows from that immense and spacious No-Thing-Ness. If we name It, if we describe or define It, that my help our understanding up to a point, but if we cling too tightly to those names and descriptions, we limit our full awareness and vision. This is the truth of the Via Negativa.<\/p>\n


\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a>Recommended Books: R. S. Thomas<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nSoul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nR. S. Thomas: Selected Poems<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nR. S. Thomas (Everyman Poetry)<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nR. S. Thomas: Collected Poems 1945-1990<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
More Books >><\/a><\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>
\n<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\"R.<\/a>\n<\/td>\n\nR. S. Thomas<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Wales (1913 \u2013 2000) Timeline<\/a>
\nChristian<\/a><\/a>
\n<\/a><\/a><\/em>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

The son of a sailor, Thomas led an unsettled life in early childhood, moving with his family from port town to port town.<\/p>\n

As an adult, R. S. Thomas became an Anglican priest, serving rural Welsh farming communities.<\/p>\n

Thomas dabbled in poetry in school, but it wasn\u2019t until he met the painter Mildred E. Eldridge, the woman who would become his wife, that be began to take poetry seriously.<\/p>\n

More poetry by R. S. Thomas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Negativa by R. S. Thomas Why no! I never thought other than That God is that great absence In our lives, the empty silence Within, the place where we go Seeking, not in hope to Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices In our knowledge, the darkness Between stars. His are the echoes We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[79,962,932,1844,1567],"class_list":["post-8570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-christian-poetry","tag-emptiness","tag-r-s-thomas","tag-via-negativa","tag-void"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8570"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8573,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8570\/revisions\/8573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}