wordsout by godfrey rust
The
sailing of the ark < 39
of 45 >
39
I'm
no raving charismatic (as you know!)
but what dogma brings you—David Watson's curate—
to
say
some gifts are not
for us here and today? What then
are
these
signs? Wishful thinking?
Something worse? Would you confine
his
supernatural utterances to one time and place,
say that the God of Job is bound
to
speak
now only after proper exegesis? Andrew,
in God's supreme untidiness I only see
he
will do what he wants to when he wants to,
and speak in whatever tongue or form of silence
best
suits his purpose to confound
our stolid pharisaic study of divine behaviour.
David Watson (1933-84) was a leading charismatic evangelical pastor and preacher in the 1970s and 1980s, and an advocate the exercise of the spiritual gifts of tongues and prophecy. Andrew Cornes (to whom this sonnet sequence was addressed) was his curate at St Michael-le-Befry in York
.