Joseph Pearce - Merrie England: A Journey Through the Shire

T he journey on which you are about to accompany me is a voyage into the mysterious presence of an England that is more real than the one that you are probably accustomed to seeing. It is not the England that presents itself to the unenchanted eye, the England that seems to be in terminal decline, its death throes made manifest in the all too obvious signs of decay and ultimate disintegration. It is, in stark contrast to this mutable England, an enchanted and unchanging place, full of ghosts who are as alive as the saints. It is an England that is rural, sacramental, liturgical, local, beautiful an England that is charged with the grandeur of God.

This England, partaking of the divine essence from which it receives its being, shines forth the mysterious paradox that a thing both is and was at the same time. We can take almost any example to illustrate this paradoxical mystery, but lets take the case of Shakespeare. Like the England that gave him birth, Shakespeare both is and was. He was a great playwright and poet, but it is also true to say that he is a great playwright and poet. Shakespeare is a fact. He lived and did things. In this sense, he not only was but is. You cannot look at the history of England or of great literature without looking at Shakespeare. He is staring you in the face because his presence is realand his presence is present. He is as well as was.

In order to understand this more fully, we need to understand the relationship of time to eternity. With our finite perception, we can perceive only the past. Even the present, by the time that we perceive it, has become the immediate past. The future, on the other hand, can only be a figment of our imagination. It is what might happen. The nearer the future is to us, the more predictable it might be. I might intend to go to a caf for a coffee this morning, and in all probability I shall do so. The further the future is from us, the less predictable it becomes. I cant even be sure of the place in which Ill be living five years from now. Indeed I cant even be sure that Ill be living.

For God, however, there is no past and there is no future. For God, everything is present. This is the deeper meaning of divine omnipresencenot that God is present everywhere, though He is, but that everything is present to God. For God, therefore, we cannot say that Shakespeare was, but only that he is.

Where is all this leading? Well, in the case of England, we must insist that England is eternally greater than those who happen to be wandering around today on the geographical stage on which the drama of England is being performed. Most people walking around on the stage today have no idea what England is or who they themselves are. Thankfully, however, England is not dependent on them. Like the souls in C. S. Lewiss The Great Divorce, they are pathetic shadows of who they are meant to be. They are relatively insubstantial. They are certainly less real as Englishmen than Alfred the Great, Bede the Venerable, St. Edward the Confessor, Chaucer, St. Thomas More, the hundreds of English martyrs, Shakespeare, Austen, Newman, or Tolkien. All of these people are England. Please note: They are England.

Seeing the true England through the perspective of the Triune splendour of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, we know that such an England can never dienot because it lingers like a fading coal in the memory of mortal men, but because it exists as a beautiful flower in the gardens of eternity. This is the England to which, under God, I owe my allegiance. Deo gratias! And this is the England through which I wander in the following pages, and to which you are invited to join me.