Surprised as Betjeman

During the pandemic, poet, priest, and academic Dr. Malcolm Guite began his YouTube channel, Spells in the Library. These 10 minute videos were a way he could continue to offer “office hours” so to speak. As chaplain of Cambridge University’s Girton College, Dr. Guite kept office hours when students would stop for a visit. His Spells in the Library were a way Dr. Guite labored to keep something of the ordinary of ministry and hospitality during those unprecedented times.

Since 2020, Dr. Guite has continued to offer his spells these incantations of moments in story and words. You’ll recall that the word “spell” is also the work of making words with letters. Many of the words Dr. Guite shares are poetic, and so this fits nicely with the enchantment of words put skillfully together. In this way, I think Dr. Guite is very much like the magician in C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Whether I am one of the children or one of Coriakin’s duffers remains to be seen, but I am happy to be either, and these spells over the last five years have been a continued source of encouragement and inspiration.

Early on, in one of this spells, Dr. Guite shares a poem by John Betjeman who was poet laureate of England from 1972-1984. As Guite welcomes his us into his library, he gives a rambling introduction to the ‘chaos that has come again’ to his library and its book shelves. Welcoming us, he speaks with a poet’s rhythmic meter, and the language itself is poetic. I’ve embedded the video in the notes. Have a listen, and you’ll hear and see what I mean.

Later in the episode, Dr. Guite introduces his viewers to a poem by John Betjeman titled, “St Saviours, Aberdeen Park, Highbury, London.” (The poem is also posted in the notes). “St Saviours, Aberdeen Park” is a significant encounter which Betjemen tells about a time he visited the church of his youth, a church which has since closed, and is up for sale. Betjeman’s experience, Malcolm’s introduction, together with a little inspiration all worked to stir a response in me. My response begins with a paraphrase of Guite’s bardic greeting and continues with my response to arrive together with Betjeman seated before the altar at St Saviours.

Surprised as Betjeman

“Chaos has come again,” as Othello says.
I’ve got this Betjeman, (Don’t you see?)
Where it’s perched precariously,
Where it really shouldn’t be;
This book, Betjeman’s Britain,
Because I took it out of the shelf,
And can’t actually…
I can’t remember…
I can’t find the gap for it myself.
So you can see, 
All the other books 
That are on their sides,
Books that, 
They have a home to go to,
But I can’t…
They can’t
Find their way home
At the moment.

We all, like volumes
Lie on our sides 
Where we shouldn’t be.
We cannot find
The gap where we fit—
Where we slide
In perfectly
That place
Snug up against another’s side—
Cozy, upright, ready to be read,
Where we sit.
And we wait for the Reader
Who gives life to the dead
Who has gone before us 
Who has made for us the best
Place where we might abide and rest.

But chaos has come again.
We can’t…I can’t…they can’t 
Find their way home 
Though they have a home to go to.
Here we sit or lie;
Here we wait until we do
Find our way back and into
That gap, the place our Reader choose.

One day, in a moment,
He will take us up and read,
And by His voice blow the leaves
Of these open pages, and with life breathe
And speak us with words into being.
We shall rise. We shall find our place
Straight-spined, standing tall, awash
In the grace of the Spoken Word
Surprised as Betjeman
Transfigured.

"St. Saviour's, Aberdeen Park, Highbury, London, N"
by Sir John Betjeman
Highbury, London, N.

With oh such peculiar branching and overreaching of wire
Trolley-bus standards pick their threads from the London sky
Diminishing up the perspective, Highbury-bound retire
Threads and buses and standards with plane trees volleying by
And, more peculiar still, that ever-increasing spire
Bulges over the housetops, polychromatic and high.

Stop the trolley-bus, stop! And here, where the roads unite
Of weariest worn-out London — no cigarettes, no beer,
No repairs undertaken, nothing in stock — alight;
For over the waste of willow-herb, look at her, sailing clear,
A great Victorian church, tall, unbroken and bright
In a sun that's setting in Willesden and saturating us here.
These were the streets my parents knew when they loved and won —
The brougham that crunched the gravel, the laurel-girt paths that wind,
Geranium-beds for the lawn, Venetian blinds for the sun,
A separate tradesman's entrance, straw in the mews behind,
Just in the four-mile radius where hackney carriages run,
Solid Italianate houses for the solid commercial mind.

These were the streets they knew; and I, by descent, belong
To these tall neglected houses divided into flats.
Only the church remains, where carriages used to throng
And my mother stepped out in flounces and my father stepped out in spats
To shadowy stained-glass matins or gas-lit evensong
And back in a country quiet with doffing of chimney hats.

Great red church of my parents, cruciform crossing they knew —
Over these same encaustics they and their parents trod
Bound through a red-brick transept for a once familiar pew
Where the organ set them singing and the sermon let them nod
And up this coloured brickwork the same long shadows grew
As these in the stencilled chancel where I kneel in the presence of God.
Wonder beyond Time's wonders, that Bread so white and small
Veiled in golden curtains, too mighty for men to see,
Is the Power that sends the shadows up this polychrome wall,
Is God who created the present, the chain-smoking millions and me;
Beyond the throb of the engines is the throbbing heart of all —
Christ, at this Highbury altar, I offer myself to Thee.