The Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust

Address by The Rt Hon. Lord Runcie, M.C., D.D.,

at the Eighteenth Annual General Meeting, 5 June 1999

in the church of St.Peter and St. Paul, Dymchurch


I am frequently asked 'Do you miss being Archbishop of Canterbury?' I unhesitatingly say that I do not - so far as responsibilities and privileges are concerned; but there are two exceptions. I miss living in Canterbury and being able to go in and out of that numinous cathedral. I miss being easily able to walk beside the sea and not least on the long flat stretch of sand at Dymchurch.

So it is a special delight to join you in this ancient church, hard by the historic old Ship Inn with its memories of Dr Syn and his smugglers and feel that, even amidst the seaside resort, church and inn still belong to the Marsh and its Mysteries.

You must forgive some preliminary rambling to express my deep affection for this corner of England and my pride to have been a co-founder of this admirable trust. There will be a second part of this address which is a good deal more serious. I should also warn you that your Chairman, John Green, and Tony Towse, senior member of Council, once referred to by me as a 'gentle Cardinal Wolsey of the Marsh' since he was acquiring so many parishes, were at college with me. Hence any facts in this address which are inaccurate must be attributed to their advice. Any recollections which hit the target are entirely my own.

I think I have visited all the historic churches but have only had formal engagements in those recorded in my journal. In 1980, shortly after my enthronement as Archbishop, I came here for a confirmation. It was to prove a place of many friendships. In the summer it was my favourite place for anonymous bathing. I am told by Tony Towse that his mother remembers bathing here in the days when there was a man with a red flag who blew a trumpet if you advanced near the Quicksand. I was more anxious to avoid predatory journalists than the quicksand. Changing at the vicarage and advancing onto the beach with dark glasses and a straw hat, abandoned at the water's edge, was a regular ploy. I preferred Sandwich for depth of bathing until I was told that despite the aristocratic residents of Sandwich Bay it was heavily polluted.

On that first visit here I stole the Rector, David Maple, who became my domestic chaplain within the diocese and never allowed me to neglect news form the Marsh. The following year, 1981, on a glorious July evening I came to Brookland. Could so much treasure ever be compressed into so small a place? It is dedicated to my first predecessor, St Augustine. A wall painting of the martyrdom of St Thomas is of historic interest since we see the armour worn by the Knights. It is rather alarming to preach there and look across and see one of your predecessors being polished off. I love the lead font with its signs of the zodiac and occupations of the year. It is illustrated in this year's splendid Annual Report. Then, of course, there is the famous detached wooden belfry.

It was on that evening, as I remember, that I met Anne Roper - for me the archivist and historian of the Marsh, to whom I gave a Lambeth Degree - one of my few privileges that didn't have to be approved by anybody. In that regard I am glad to say the Archbishop is still the smallest university in the world. She is herself part of what she recorded - that from generation to generation the Marsh never fails to yield interesting and worthwhile characters - some of fame and some little known except to a circle of grateful friends - people like Noel Coward writing his plays in a bit of quiet at St Mary in the Marsh. Now there's a surprise for you. And the painters like John Doyle to whom we owe so much.

The next year I went to New Romney on a glorious summer evening. I can remember the sun slanting in as with much celebration we inaugurated the Romney Marsh group of parishes and New Romney claimed a kind of cathedral-like character.

Indeed by this time I had installed one of my Lambeth staff, Bishop Ross Hook, at Newchurch round the corner from here. He loved to be known as Bishop of the Marsh for he was a true man of Kent emanating form Woodchurch where I still keep my herd of Berkshire pigs. (Another story for another time.) Bishop Hook was much loved in these parts and just content to be here. When I asked him what he had done on his holiday in the Marsh he replied 'What I like most - damn all'. New Romney has a dedication to St Nicholas - one of my favourite subjects among the saints. He is the most frequent dedication used of any saint after the Virgin Mary in the Eastern and Western Church - thought of as the saint of children, origin of Santa Claus but always strong as guardian of sailors and coastal folk. I have been to his diocese of Myra - a sandy place beside the sea in Turkey - rather like Romney Marsh.

Needless to say, the Diocesan idea of acting together as an official group petered out. It was rather too official for the kind of amateur co-operation which fits the Marsh.

Next year it was time to go to Lydd for the celebration of the 700th anniversary of their church. A very splendid morning and a most convivial lunch party led by the popular rector, Peter Chidgery. Like those of us stationed at Eastwell Park in June 1944 it suffered from the flying bombs but its noble isolation - like a sentinel - gives it again a character all of its own. I love Lydd.

In the mid 1980s I seem to have neglected the Marsh. They were days of pressures from other quarters. I was sorry I couldn't bring the Pope to see you but in 1986 I was at Wittersham to introduce Seymour Harris and I particularly remember my first encounter with Dick Dengate, then farmer, churchwarden, to grow into priest and servant of so many of your parishes.

In 1988 I was confirming at St Mary's Bay since Mark Roberts, bearing the name of one of Trollope's heroes, was an eager companion to convert me to the seaside resort quality of the Marsh, but we paid a visit to St Mary in the Marsh which I was interested to see because of its many associations with writers - not only Noel Coward but particularly Edith Nesbit who was a pre-Raphaelite poet; but because her poetry wasn't good turned to writing children's books, and The Railway Children or The Enchanted Castle will be familiar to you all. I am delighted to hear that a Nesbit society has come into existence and will not doubt, like all such societies, quickly gather some enthusiasts in its membership.

There were final visits to New Romney and to Lydd before I departed from you in 1991 and I have not been back since. Nevertheless, I remain enchanted by the Marsh and loved sending out quite a lot of your Christmas cards last year. I thought it was so good that some of them didn't fit the envelopes and one was printed upside down. It seemed to say something about the resistance of some very intelligent and artistic people to the efficient managerial church that is growing up in suburbia. (I gather they are beautiful for next Christmas and also all the right way up and a good fit for the envelopes.)

You will notice that I was directed to the larger places but some of the happiest moments were walking across the fields to Snave or examining the ruins of Hope - good subject for meditation of an Archbishop.

Now from rumination to my main subject. I suppose the overall title would be 'Mystery and the Marsh'. But I am afraid it is not going to be about smugglers, witches and fantasy - though I did contemplate taking a narrow and specialist subject like the career of Richard Barham - that contemporary of Jane Austen and Sydney Smith who was educated at my own college of Brasenose, became the Vicar of Snargate but preferred to live at Warehorne. After a series of accidents in 1819 he was confined to bed and began his writing career which was to lead him to compose the Ingoldsby Legends, some of which were obviously inspired by his time at Snargate - The Lay of St Dunstan, The Lay of St Nicholas and The Lay of St Thomas Becket - reflecting the dedications of his churches. Perhaps they were his patronal festival sermons. Like the Reverend Sydney Smith he was a great wit, indeed the Ingoldsby Legends are subtitled 'Mirth and Marvels'. Because of his general frivolity he is often underestimated. You may remember that Sydney Smith suffered in the same way. He was locked in a dispute with an Archdeacon who referred to him as 'my facetious friend' - to which Sydney replied 'the fact that I am facetious and you are grave does not mean that you are wise and I am foolish'. Like all sensible men Barham thought that humour on the outskirts of religion was the best safeguard against fantastic nonsense, but at the heart of the faith, in the high points and tragedies of life there, he was a sensitive clergyman and there was no laughter. In fact he had what I think is essential for a wholesome life - a sense of humour and a sense of the sacred. People without a sense of humour lack a sense of proportion and ought never to be put in charge of anything. People without a sense of the sacred are in danger of trivialising precious moments and places in life.

It is this sense of the sacred, the sense of mystery, kept alive by the churches of Romney Marsh that I wish to explore a little with you today. I dare to do so because I think it is of critical importance at the present time.

God has always appointed special places where we may find him - stones in the desert, burning bush, Jordan River, stable at Bethlehem, sacrament of the altar, much loved local church. God is not contained in this way but he is found as we draw near to him and he draws near to us.

This sense is a mystery. I use that word in its original Greek character. It is very important to distinguish between a problem and a mystery. The world is obsessed with problems and determined to allow no room for mystery. Problems can be solved and are all in the end soluble once one has found through research the right technique. But a mystery cannot be solved in this way because we ourselves are part of it. I do not comprehend it. It comprehends me.

I have a theory that most clergy and lay people fall into two basic camps. First there are those who want to resolve the mystery of God, teach it, preach clearly, spell out the facts. And there are those who instead of wanting to resolve the mystery, seek to deepen it. They prefer collage to newsprint. They are not ashamed to get tongue-tied, to be silent and say 'I don't know'.

Most people view the church as more of a group of resolvers than deepeners. It is easier for the media to understand resolvers. People expect the church to have a message and to know what they stand for, everyone is meant to have a mission statement, able to lay out beliefs and priorities and to check delivery of the product. Of course the church does have a gospel to proclaim but the church for me enables you to live with the mysteries rather than solve all the problems; my fear as I look at the church today, is that it will soon resemble a swimming pool - with lots of noise coming from the shallow end but not able to accommodate the seekers, the people who half believe and half don't believe.

We always need to acknowledge our longing for God. We will stop desiring him if we ever think we possess him. 'Yearning' said St Augustine, ' makes the heart deep.' And as well as being aware of our longing for God we need to find a poetry and imagination equipped for the spiritual quest. I say a poetry because there is a great curse of literalism prowling around at the moment; but Christian people above all should know that truth is not the same as erasing ambiguity.

In many of the Marsh churches the decoration and sculpture are crude and primitive. Some tend to dismiss this as quaint, pre-scientific; but the influence of primitive art (one thinks of Picasso, Epstein, Henry Moore) ought to make us cautious about dismissing the power of the primitive. Our ancestors were not scientists but they were not stupid. They knew about myth and saga, image and symbolism. The Ascension is sometimes illustrated as a divine handshake pulling the Lord up into Heaven - or feet sticking out of a cloud. Very primitive; but they are making the vital point that Christ's humanity was taken into God. Henceforth we can only understand the Divine through using Christ as a gateway. In the words of Michael Ramsey, 'God is Christ-like and in Him is nothing unChrist-like at all'. A deep truth they could only illustrate in pictures and stories.

This means a sense of history such as you get in our churches earths our piety and grounds our divinity. Those who live with the churches of Romney Marsh are in no danger of losing that perspective that links the historical with the eternal. A religion that interprets life only from our own little experience of space and time will fail our imagination as soon as we look into the vastness of space, face the mystery of creation or encounter the intractable tragedies of our day - a malformed child or the victims of a catastrophic earthquake.

W.H. Auden, in one of his plays, devises a prayer for the worshippers of such a diminished, comfortable, cosy god.

'O God, put away justice and truth for we cannot understand them and do not want them. Eternity would bore us dreadfully. Leave Thy heavens and come down to our earth of garden gnomes and hedges. Become our uncle. Look after baby. Escort Madame to the opera. Help Willy with his homework. Introduce Muriel to a handsome naval officer. Be interesting and weak like us and we will love you as we love ourselves.'

Historical places like historical worship elevate our spirits but cut our pre-occupations down to size.

Another important way in which our churches encapsulate the mystery is their limited dependence on a language of words. So many verbal languages have now become so specialised that they are only intelligible to others in the same group - with the result that not only those of different nations but also those of different professions, different backgrounds and different generations cannot understand each other and, without any evil intent or malice, scientists and politicians, lawyers and literary critics, computer buffs and animal welfare campaigners are not on speaking terms with each other. They do not understand each other's language. Words are not enough. Language has its limitations.

Fortunately there are other languages available - less precise than a language of words but for that very reason able to take us further than words can do. An obvious example is the way in which music, which does not need to pack its message into the capsules of ideas, can sometimes express the inexpressible. It can catch us like a net and put us down in the presence of God.

Similarly our interest in architecture. No one who is connected with Romney Marsh churches can be in any doubt that the stones can speak more powerfully than most of the words uttered from the pulpits. Through their age, their dimensions, their proportions, their contrast of light and shadow, their texture and tone of glass and wood and stone, and through the faithful and loving craftsmanship which went into their making, these churches say things to the spirits of the increasing multitudes who visit them, inclining them to be more sensitive to the spirit. There are of course some whom all churches will repel - and we can recognise what James Joyce meant when he wrote of the cold smell of sacred stone; but when they are well kept, finely furnished, lovingly decorated - and reasonably heated - these churches speak the things of the spirit more powerfully than most of the words that are uttered in them.

A Bible-based Christianity is important; but the Bible as a text has to submit itself to historical criticism. We now know too much about ancient literature to think that Bibles dropped from Heaven are the last word on everything.

For all these reasons what the Trust is cherishing is not just a minority interest or part of English Heritage or affection for the stories of the Marsh and its stunning landscape; but we are nourishing some things that are quite vital for those who believe that a sense of the sacred is more important for the future of faith than any number of schemes and plans to educate a minority in the fundamentals of biblical religion (important though this certainly is).

In the new Britain, which a leading politician recently described as 'urban, sporty, ambitious, fashion-conscious, multi-ethnic, brassy, self-confident and international', the little local church can feel like the community of the 'left behind'. I believe they are guardians of what a recent author has called 'the good mysteries'.

Science and mass communication have brought remarkable achievements. To the ordinary person the advance has been awesome. But they all draw our attention to this world - to the way the world around us actually is and the way in which it has come about and the way in which it works. But there is another question in which politics and science cannot deal. It is identified in a sentence which was coined by the greatest philosopher of this century, Wittgenstein, 'The question is not how the world is but that it is'.

This mystery that cannot be expressed in words can be felt, and felt not only by people like philosophers and playwrights. Most of us have occasional experiences of wonder - to wonder at the mystery of existence, to wonder that anything at all exists, and then to receive a welcome assurance, a sense of security brings with it gladness and joy.

A second mystery is the fact of individuality. We somehow cannot accept that as individuals we are simply a bundle of parts or a mixture of chemicals. The word 'soul' has gone out of circulation because people mistakenly thought it referred to a part of the body like the liver; but the soul is what gives identity. We need to bring that word back into circulation.

The third depth of mystery has to do with meaning. For many people existence is simply one damn thing after another. And it breeds a sense of not caring or valuing other people or property. Our sense that this particular part of the landscape or the churches that have carried the faith through the centuries actually do matter, springs from a mystery that has meaning.

It is impossible to be a thoughtful person in the present day without being assailed by intellectual doubts. When these assail me I turn my mind to these mysteries. They are inexplicable, inconceivable, unimaginable and yet undeniable - the mystery of existence, the mystery of my soul, the mystery of meaning. Our churches speak this language of the sacred. That's why this Trust can be an antiquarian or a romantic interest but in fact it is concerned with something much more. It is preserving and keeping alive a sense of the sacred and doing so with the good humour that I spoke about earlier and the good company which we experience on a day like this.

So do not let the more fervent and aggressive Christians put you down as of fringe or eccentric interest. If they say that the real concerns are mission, ministry, evangelism you may care to remind them that this may be true but those words tend to mean little outside their ecclesiastical context. It is much more fundamental for us to keep alive the mysteries that I have been talking about. If I may adapt very slightly some words of John Betjeman I would recommend these lines to silence your critics who may complain about the amount of time and money you spend on the churches of the Marsh.

Bishop, Archdeacon, Rector, Wardens, Mayor,

Guardians of these noble homes of prayer.

You who your churches vastness deplore

'Should we not sell and give it to the poor?'

Recall, despite your practical suggestion,

which the disciple was who asked that question.

It was of course Judas, when Mary broke the box of alabaster ointment over the feet of her Lord. 'Should not this have been sold and given to the poor?' Judas is the figure of betrayal. We have been given a sacred trust in the glorious churches of the Marsh. Betrayal of that trust is out of the question.
 
 

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This page published for Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust by Dr.Nick Hudd 19th July 1999