97: The despair is broken, love’s dreams made true

Episode 97: Christopher shares how he decided to become a Christian and then a Catholic as a teenager. He is a published poet and explains how his work is inspired by his faith and by the beautiful North Devon countryside. We talk about the ‘awkward’ experience of belonging to a thinly-spread Catholic community in a rural area where the opportunity for daily Mass is absent. But, in tune with the season of Eastertide, Christopher says that in his poetry he intends to ‘always give a sense that we're not beyond hope. I do not despair.’  To illustrate this, he goes on to read one of his beautiful sonnets, ‘Earth in Easter.’ 

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro.  My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today.  Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good.  We are the times.  I hope you feel encouraged and affirmed and sometimes challenged as I am in these conversations.  Join our podcast community, get news and background information about the conversations and share your thoughts if you want to. You can get the newsletter and each episode straight to your inbox by going to allkindsofcatholic.substack.com and clicking on subscribe. It's free. That web address is in the episode notes too and I'd love you to draw closer to our community. Thank you.

Before we begin today listeners, I’d just like to wish you all the blessings of Eastertide. Listeners, thanks so much for joining the episode this week. I'm joined by Christopher, who is down in the South West. Christopher is a poet and so let's see where this conversation takes us then. And keep listening to the end because we'll hear some of Christopher's poetry there too. So welcome Christopher. 

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be talking with you today. 

So let's start at the beginning, Christopher. Tell us a little bit about you then. Have you always been a Catholic? Were you born into a Catholic family?

No, funnily enough, my dad's lapsed Catholic. He was half Irish. I was not baptised as a child. I wasn't raised as anything. My mother's a lapsed Protestant. I went to a Church of England primary school as a child. I think that's when I realised I wasn't a Christian, I was slightly frightened. I sort of went to Sunday school briefly as a child. I was interested in religious matters from an early age, but I was not a practicing Christian as a child, and I certainly was not a Catholic. When I was 14, it's interesting because some sociologists often say, various social scientists, that conversion to Christianity is particularly common in the teenage years, I suppose as people get their bearings. So when I was 14, I decided I believed in God, I believed in Christianity for a variety of reasons. I remember reading C.S. Lewis, I remember reading the Screwtape Letters. It's interesting, like a series of letters from a senior devil to an apprentice devil on how to tempt people. Anyway, I came to a point in my life where I thought I had to start making decisions for myself. My parents had always said, Well, we didn't have you baptised because we thought you should make your own mind up whether you want to belong to a church. And I did make my own mind up. So I was baptised in my village Church of England church when I was 14 for the Easter Vigil service in 2004. They were very nice to me actually, because I was the only teenager in that congregation. Very sweet though. I just remember this one time, this woman just stared at me. I'd only just started going to church. I was worried that I'd done something wrong or something bad. I'd said, Was everything all right? It's fine, we just don't get many young people here. Which is all quite odd. I was a practising Christian from my teenage years. I was a very clumsy altar server. The less said about that, the better. God has mercy on us, you know. Unlike in the arts, in religious, moral matters, good intentions are the main thing. Physical arts is a bit different. Writing a lousy poem, painting a lousy picture, good intentions don't make up for that lack of talent. Perhaps God will take a bit more pity on my altar serving. I had a strong sense of vocation at that age and I studied theology at Durham University. I chose to study that originally thinking I might become an Anglican vicar. I became a Catholic in my first year, which out paid to that particular idea. I remember going to a Mass just before I turned 18 around that time. A Catholic Mass. It was Saturday morning in Barnstaple, a town near my village. And it was an ugly church and it wasn't a pretty service, but it felt real. There was a certain reality to it. Then I felt a vocation to the Catholic Church as the one holy Catholic and apostolic church. That's not to deny there is much holiness, Catholicity, apostolicity in other Christian communities. I met some very lovely, holy people in the Church of England who were I dare say probably a lot holier than I'll ever be. But the point is, you know, I sensed the Catholic Church was where God wanted me to be, where God had founded it. There's obviously a lot of deeply flawed people in the Catholic Church. Hospitals should be expected to attract sick people. I myself have many faults as a Catholic, but I've always tried to follow what I believe to be the will of God. I sensed strongly that God was calling me to be in the Catholic Church and to serve him there.

Let’s pause for a moment there, Christopher, I just want to respond to that. That's really interesting. Listeners will find a lot there that resonates with things we've heard from other guests too. There's just something about, for some people, going to a Catholic Church and being at Mass, as someone who's not a Catholic at that time, there's something very real about that community that just speaks to people. Even if as you say, it doesn't have to be a beautiful building or amazing people necessarily that are all inspirational immediately. There's just real people meeting together for Mass and it does speak to people. So that's really interesting to hear that from you. 

I'd also been reading some of the writings of St John, being now being canonised, St John Henry Newman. Of course, he writes the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. The Church of England was developed in a very particular country for a very particular historical period. Out of certain contexts, it looks rather strange. And I think going to Durham University, meeting people from different Christian traditions, even within the Anglican Church, meeting very strong evangelical Anglicans and looking at various things and thinking that the Anglicanism I'd been introduced to in my village was in some ways quite Catholic-oriented in theology and liturgy. I'm meeting these various, I remember thinking to some extent, it was like squaring a circle. But anyway, I became a Catholic.  I was treasurer and secretary of the Durham University Catholic Society. And by the grace of God, the society survived that. I studied theology. I did a Bachelor's degree. And because I thought I hadn't done enough penance, I did a Master's degree. I did actually spend a trial month - I considered a vocation to the Catholic priesthood, Catholic religious life. I thought about it quite seriously. I did spend a trial month in a monastery in Scotland, Pluscarden Abbey. It was wonderful but was very odd. The then abbot was being made bishop, so there were leaving parties. It was quite an odd experience.  I took part in a comedy skit for the leaving do for the abbot. I was the wasp who wants to be a solitary wasp hermit. It was about as funny as it sounded. My fellow novices did the best of it. It was all quite surreal and I broke my glasses walking into a fence post while I was wielding a wheelbarrow and I kept banging my head on the... I finally decided God didn't want me there.  I think in the nicest possible way, the novice master was relieved as I was when I said at the end, I don't think I should be coming back. 

God communicates with us in all sorts of ways. So that's great. Okay. On finishing your Masters and finding that that vocation wasn't for you, you've returned – is it a straight road back to Devon?

I hadn't organised for various things. My university was a bit turbulent and there's a wonderful poem, the Death of the Hired Man by Robert Frost. And there's the line, Home is where if you have to go, they have to take you in. So I had to go and God bless my family, they had to take me in. So I went back. I've done editing, proofreading. I've been a shop assistant. I've done various bits and pieces, whatever honest toil I can find. So I've been doing various things. In the loveliest possible way, North Devon, it's very beautiful and peaceful. It can feel sometimes like a backwater, but often sometimes the most productive times in your life are where things actually seem quite stationary. It's almost like sometimes you have to let things ferment. You have to let things rest and develop. I remember it was 2015, that was the year when poems started happening for me. Now I had attempted to write poetry as a teenager and it was about as bad as acne. I wrote very bad poems about unrequited love and all those terrible things that teenagers sadly do. But in 2015 words started forming patterns in my head. It was a bit like tinnitus. I had been trying to do some creative exercises beforehand. There was this book, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. There's some very interesting ideas about releasing creativity just by keeping a morning journal. Some of the ideas are a bit new age-y, but some of it's actually very interesting because she talks a lot about a sense of the spark of the divine. She stresses that this needs not be interpreted along the lines of orthodox/traditional Christianity, but it can be if you want. It's a very interesting book. I tried doing these exercises. I'd also had this slightly scary author who I'd met the year before. I'd reviewed a book of his, kindly. So he invited me to lunch. It was wonderful. He was a...He is actually a very devout Catholic, I won't name him, but he's a very good writer and very erudite. He's also quite terrifying. If he wasn't a good man, he'd have made an excellent Mafia don. But anyway, I was quite scared of him, but he said at the end, Well, you know, I think Christopher, you could be a writer; I'm not one given to idle compliments. And he smiled like this sort of velociraptor smile and I thought, Well, maybe he has a point, you know, he wouldn't say that if he didn't mean it. So anyway, I started writing poetry. I do mainly sonnets. I also write like short tanka poems, which is a bit like a haiku, but a bit longer. Perhaps because I'm actually in some ways a chaotic person. I need discipline and order. That may be one of the reasons I'm a Roman Catholic. So I was starting writing these poems and I decided to post them on Facebook. So I posted on various social media and after a while, lo and behold, this wonderful woman, my first publisher, Marcella Biela, God bless her, contacted me. She'd seen some of my poems and she said, Would you like me to publish them? You know, people tend not to want to publish poetry. Unless you're brilliant and already have a very good reputation, it's actually very difficult to get published as a poet. So I got my first book published at the end of 2015. It was quite surreal actually seeing my own work in print, but it was lovely. It's not made my fortune. Perhaps money would have ruined me, but it felt like quite a serious step. I wasn't just some odd hobbyist or eccentric. The thing is that when you're doing creative arts that you can sometimes feel - You're asking yourself, you know, is this a waste of time? Is this self-indulgent?  I mean, I know there's many people who do self-publish and I respect that, but the idea that someone else thought my work worth publishing was very important to me. 

Yes. 

And I did sort of get a following. I published three books with her. I think that various things happened and her interest changed to making films. So my current publisher is now Arouca Press, a fine publisher based in Canada. I'm quite international in a funny way because my previous publisher was a Maltese woman who lived for a while in America and I've got a Canadian fellow of Greek ancestry. Very lovely man.

Let's just take a moment to appreciate that because as you say it is hard to get published in poetry but there you've kept going and even moved publishers and you’re managing to get stuff out there and be recognised. That's wonderful. Congratulations. 

God has been good to me. Perseverance like with the virtues, cultivation of virtues, writing, it does require something to be of habit. Just as in life, you may not feel like trying to be a decent person every day, but you have to. You have to resist the urge to punch your next door neighbour or not to go to Mass. You just do it.  Same a bit with writing and eventually you get in there. Virtues are habits  - and also creativity, there's a habitual element to that. So by the grace of God, I kept going and I've met some wonderful people. It's fascinating the people I've encountered because I write for an online Indian poetry magazine. So it's like I get people from India reading my books and Americans reading my books. It's quite lovely actually. It's wonderful to sense, you know, the fact that I know people have read my poetry and they've actually felt better afterwards. You know, perhaps they felt they can enjoy or endure life a bit better. Was it Dr. Johnson, the writer and the dictionary man famously said, The purpose of literature is to help a man better enjoy life or endure it. I think there's something in that. I also feel, as a Catholic, unworthy as I am, I feel that in my creative work, I am participating to a certain extent in the creative work of God. God has called us into being. He has created the world. But we, in a sense, we have stewardship of his creation. We're supposed to, as we'd say in nature, you know, the farmer takes God's creation nature and husbands it. He or she uses it for God's glory to actually grow food and to help others, feed others or themselves. The word poetry comes from the word poesis in Greek, which means making, which I think is lovely because there's a sense that as a writer, I'm trying to make things with words.  There was a Catholic writer who said poetry is language taken up to the level of song. You know, it's when it sings. Or another way of saying it was poetry is like dancing with words.  And sometimes I feel like I'm only doing an arthritic waltz. But I try and do it to the greater glory of God. 

That's lovely. 

It's funny because sometimes you spend months agonising. You think you've got a poem. You've got an idea. I have to write this poem. I have to write this poem. And it's like lodged in your head, but you can't get it out. And then suddenly you wake up at 3 a.m. and suddenly everything's clear. It's like there's a moment of inspiration. You pray for it, you work for it. It's like a moment of grace suddenly when you least expect it. There's a bit like that with life, I think, when God comes into your life, you may wait for things. And it's like a still small voice. You feel his presence. I think it's a bit like that with poetry sometimes. There's a moment of revelation. Of course, the term revelation, the term apocalypse in Greek, it means to uncover and things suddenly become unveiled. And it's a bit like that sometimes with poetry, I think. There's these moments where things become clear. It's like an epiphany. 

And Christopher, when you write your poetry, is it about faith? Does your theology come in there or is it about life for everyone? 

Both. I try and write, sometimes I write explicitly about faith. My first book was a book of 52 sonnets on various episodes of scripture from Genesis, the creation of Eve, to the book of Revelation. So, you know, I do write biblical meditations. I've written dramatic monologues from the perspective of Jezebel and Herod. I've done various poems. I have written poems about the saints like St. Patrick or St. Anthony of Egypt. But I've also written poems about nature. I don't deserve to, but I live in one of the most beautiful parts of God's earth. So, you know, I do write quite a few poems inspired by nature and God's creation. I think all of my poetry, I hope, is infused by a Catholic sense that existence is a gift. It's not an easy gift. And I don't try and sugar coat things. I do write poems about suffering, of loss, of unhappiness, of evil, because that's part of life and Catholicism has never pretended that human nature is all good. You know, we're made in God's image. We're not beyond hope of redemption, but we are fallen. You know, the world is not perfect. It's not all hearts and rainbows. And I hope I always give a sense of, you know, that we're not beyond hope. I do not despair. So my poetry does refer to the various facets of anxiety, of depression that I've known people to have, the horrible things happening in the world. But I only say that's part of a much bigger picture, that it's not the last word, so to speak, of existence. It's right because you were saying about, you don't necessarily have to be explicitly religious to actually be informed by a religious worldview, I think. Because as a Catholic, everything you encounter should in a sense be seen -  not trying to be sickly sweet pious, not being full of platitudes or seeming holier than thou -  you should in a sense have your faith inform your whole of your life. 

Yeah, and how you are seeing the world around you as created by God. So I think you mentioned before we began recording the writings of now Saint John Paul II about Catholicism and the arts. Maybe this is a good moment to just share with us how that has influenced you. 

It's a lovely letter. You can read it online for free. It's one of the things I've read. It's very interesting because he talks in a sense, there's a sense that the artist… There's an analogy between God the creator and human beings as the artist. Human beings do not create out of nothing like God. And even if you're, you know, Michelangelo, your creations are not quite on a par with God's. I mean, that would be blasphemy to pretend otherwise. But just as all human beings are called to sort of participate in God's creation. When God created Adam and Eve, they were also supposed to tend the Garden of Eden. I mean, obviously after the fall that became a miserable labour but toil was always, some constructive, productive activity, was always meant to part of human life. We were supposed to be, as co-heirs with God, we were supposed to work with him for his creation. And as a poet, as St. John Paul II talks about various forms of art, artists are supposed to participate in God, to see God, not in a narrow propagandist way. God is much bigger than that. You don't sugarcoat things. The American Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor wrote The Catholic Novelist and she said the thing is about Catholic novelists, first of all you have to be a good novelist, you need to know your craft. But you're not there to sort of propagandise things. Your faith should come out naturally and it shouldn't be artificial and it shouldn’t deny the complexity of existence.  To get back to Saint John Paul II he does say that artists do have a spiritual vocation, to see the glories of God in the world and to actually help human beings get a sense of eternity and sense of -  churches always needed art, even the early Christians had to use artistic symbols like the Ichthus, the fish symbol for Christ. Human beings are visual creatures. St. Thomas Aquinas observed, humans are sensual. We get our knowledge of things, even divine things through our senses, because we are physical creatures. Part of that is through the visual arts. God became a human being. In Judaism, God couldn't be artistically represented because he was invisible, beyond creation, but God has entered creation. He has become visible. He's also spoken. Our Lord would have known the Psalms. He'd have recited the Psalms and the Psalms from the great poetry of world literature. As a writer, as a poet, I have a particular calling, and St. John Paul II writes quite well about this, to actually articulate the mystery of the world, of the universe, the glory of it. He didn't quote Gerard Manley Hopkins, St. John Paul II, I will right now. As Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, The world is charged with the grandeur of God. And it's a beautiful poem that that sense of the world, the beauty and the tragedy of the world is something that a poet should write about and should create, in participating in God's creation. You show the glories and the tragedies of life. 

That's fantastic. I think it's reminded me sometimes I'm very moved by poetry, people like Gerard Manley Hopkins. And then other times I forget to even look for it.  So I'm glad to have it brought to our attention today. Thank you, Christopher. For listeners who are enjoying this part of the conversation. I'll put some links to your work and to Pope John Paul's letter in the episode notes. But I wonder if we might move on a little bit and get more localised to North Devon then. Tell us a little bit about parish life for you now as a Catholic. Just for listeners, I found to my surprise that you belong to a parish that my parents belonged to many years ago in Ilfracombe. So I feel some kind of little link there, even though it was a long time ago that my parents were there. But tell us about parish life then in the rural area. What's that like these days? How are you experiencing that? 

It's awkward in a way, because the Diocese of Plymouth, I think it's been around since 1850, but you know, was never, we never had many people. It was never Liverpool, you know, there weren't huge numbers of Irish immigrants. It's quite a Protestant, insofar as there's a religious element to this area, it's generally quite Protestant. There are Catholics, but they're thinly spread. You know, it's a big diocese geographically from like Land's End to Dorset. It's massive. There's only so many lay people, let alone so many priests. We're very blessed. We don't have a parish priest at the moment. We have a very good deacon who's doing his best to keep things ticking over, but we have a priest who comes from the nearby Lynton convent. He comes and says Mass for us on Sundays and Wednesdays. We are blessed to have Mass. Thank God. It's not always easy. I have to get the bus from my village.  When I think about Christians across the world who are persecuted, cannot go to church. Who would actually, if they were found in an act of communal worship, would be risking their lives.  I realise I don't have things that badly. We're not a big parish, quite close knit. It's friendly. We get along very well. I did sing in the choir for a while. That was not a happy experience for everyone, but we all have to try various ministries. I've done readings, on the reader's rota. We all do various bits and pieces. I tend to sell bric-a-brac or wine bottles, you know, various raffles. We sort of keep going. It's not necessarily a glamorous place, but then life isn't glamorous. Reality isn't always glamorous, but there is a holiness there. One thing about a parish system is the people, all the Christians of a locality, you all mix together. We have, you know, people from the Philippines, Polish people. We all come together and we're all one in Christ. There's different generations, different national backgrounds. We have different temperaments. I'm sure there's plenty of people in my parish who wouldn't want to read poetry if their life depended on it. I respectfully disagree with them, but I understand everyone has different experiences. We have different talents, different abilities. It's like what St. Paul wrote about the church as a body. You have different members, fulfilling different functions. There are different ministries and we manage reasonably well. We've got people preparing candidates for reception to church. We've got a First Communion class. We're getting on with things. Sometimes it's just a case of putting one foot in front of the other. You just have to have faith and hope and keep going. 

I think people will recognise your description of parish life there, especially other people in rural areas where numbers may be quite low but everybody has to just try and help. There is something, I think you may have said this, there is an expression of holiness, isn't there?  For people to just work together as best they can, bringing what they have and getting along, being there for Mass, even when it doesn't seem like anything dramatic is happening. You definitely said that near the beginning - and it made me think of a sort of contemplative life. You were mentioning in these times when things can seem quite static, nevertheless, there can be great consolidation going on, perhaps preparation for some sort of springboard for something. It's a good description and I sometimes get feedback from listeners that this podcast is helpful for people who are more isolated. Living in a place where there aren't many Catholics around them for whatever reason, that they like listening to other people talking about their faith. They feel part of the Catholic community, the wider Catholic community, by listening to the podcast. And now what about before we get on to your sonnet, which is coming soon, I wonder about prayers and practices that mean something for you as someone who made a decision to come into the Church, you know, made your own choice all those years ago. What prayers and practices support you in your faith these days? 

I try to pray. I try to have morning prayers, the Our Father, Glory to God, the Hail Mary. I try to set aside periods, particular periods in my day, in the morning and also the  evening, for examination of conscience.  I do try and read and meditate on the Mass readings every day. Through Lent I'm trying to read through a little bit of the New Testament. There's, in the Eastern Churches, there's a tradition of the Jesus prayer. Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. So I keep, sometimes I keep repeating that. I try to lift my heart and mind to God. I think it's 1Thessalonians, St. Paul writes how we should pray without ceasing. I think there's a sense that our whole lives should be lifted up to God. Prayer is lifting the heart and mind up to God. There's a lot of more I should be doing with prayer. I mean, I do try and say the rosary, but I probably should say it more often to be honest. I try to sort of remember God in my life if there's like a spare moment, I say a short prayer and thank God. I try and thank God every day that I'm still alive and that I have a chance to begin again. 

That's lovely, Christopher, and that resonates with - I often think that, that I'm trying to live my life feeling that I'm in the presence of God. Which is how, because the pray without ceasing, if you're thinking that you need to be saying prayers without ceasing, that you're not able to live your life. That's very thoughtful.

There's a brilliant book, The Way of the Pilgrim. It's an anonymous person. There's also a sequel, The Pilgrim Continues on His Way. And it's very interesting. It talks lot about the Jesus Prayer. 

And I suppose in a community where the priest needs to come from somewhere else to say Mass, you can't have too many opportunities during the week to be in church? 

Sadly, no. I used to be, when I was a student, for a time where I would have daily Mass, but now for simply a variety of reasons, work and logistics isn't capable.

I think it's good to capture the reality of that for people. We've had conversations on the podcast recently about, I remember, Jaimin and Neena were worried about where the Church is going. They've got a small child and whether he would have the opportunity to have daily Mass when he grows up. But of course, we must recognise that for some Catholics today, daily Mass is not something you have an opportunity for in person anyway. It's good to just recognise the breadth of the way in which people are practising their faith across England and Wales and the wider world. Thank you, Christopher. Just before we go then, I think it's very fitting in this Eastertide that we hear one of Christopher's sonnets read by the poet himself. Wonderful for us, thank you. And this is something that relates to the liturgical time that we're in.  

The sonnet is titled, 

Earth in Easter 

Kind sunlight kissing the leaves into fullness, 

Proclaiming Easter Gospel on the grass, 

Erasing old winter's Lenten dullness,

Choirs of daffodils sing floral Mass. 

The tree of life blossoms into flower,

The frosts of death defeated by the spring, 

Green shoots tremble with a newfound power, 

Unburied hopes recover and take wing. 

What slept beneath the soil rises to glory,

Dead bones of nature stirred back to life, 

Preaching a parable of God's story,

Creation smiling like a new wed wife. 

The despair is broken, love's dreams made true,

Resurrection shines in the morning dew. 

 Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Christopher. I often say to guests, you know, we’ll leave space for the Holy Spirit to work. I felt like I was getting a bit depressing just before you began that sonnet with, you know, not everyone can have daily Mass already, what's happening to the Church. And then you've just brought hope back in there with that beautiful sonnet, so thank you. That's the Lord speaking for us today through your work. So that's a lovely way to end this episode. I might just say it's been really lovely talking to you. It's lovely to have someone with the gifts of a poet to talk to us. I can't get out of my mind the image of someone with a velociraptor smile encouraging you to write. It's interesting to hear the different ways in which the Lord has spoken to you in your life, you know, sometimes a bit more light-hearted. I think God has a sense of humour - as well as deeper, thoughtful texts that have meant something to you and writers that have meant something to you. So thanks so much for sharing all of that with us today. 

Thanks for having me.

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you.  A new episode is released each Wednesday and you can follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms.  Rate and review to help others find it. You can also follow us on social media @KindsofCatholic. And remember if you connect with us on Substack, you can comment on episodes and share your thoughts and be part of the dialogue there.  Until the next time.