Percy Smith Memorial  Pilsdon May 14th 2011

These are the eulogies delivered at Percy’s memorial service.

 

John Drury, All Souls College, Oxford

I have been asked to speak about Percy in his Pilsdon years.   So what sort of a man was it who founded and fostered this community?

When I last saw Percy he was horizontal.   The room at Seaton was filled with sunlight from the sea and Gillian was there.   There was a peace such as he had lacked at times before.    But the old vitality too.   Beneath his magnificent head of hair his eyes darted and sparkled as brightly as ever.   Since his death I have learned from Gaynor and Gillian, who ought to know, that he had little or no sense of humour.   Jokes puzzled him.   I have found it hard to absorb this.   But difficulty is often the threshold of truth (a Percian and Pilsdonian thought) and I now realise that what shone from Percy, ‘a man with some kind of indefinable personal magnetism’ in Gaynor’s words, was something deeper than humour.   His extraordinary physical and mental energy – all that yomping with searching dialogue -   sprang from a zest for life, an eagerness and alacrity in which intellect and feeling combined as spirit.   It was the more intensely bright, I think, for having been severely tried by dark contradiction and disappointment: not only in the apparently hopelessly broken lives which came to Pilsdon, but also (as he would insist) within his own.   So here’s a text from his fellow radical, William Blake:   

          Man was made for joy and woe
          And when this we rightly know,
          Thro’ the world we safely go,
          Joy and woe are woven fine,
          A clothing for the soul divine.

Percy knew that alright and got through surprisingly safely, if, as he was aware, sometimes by the seat of his pants.   Searching for a category for him, the kind of man he was, I find the moral ones, and particularly the worldly model of the comfortably nice man and the ecclesiastical model of the saint, quite inadequate.   He was a sort of genius: not in some department of life like art or science or business, but in the fundamental and very ambiguous aspect of human life and being itself.

Let me try to explain, or at least itemise, this sweeping assertion.

Percy was, as his brother Ivor impressed on me, a man unusually subject to fear.   He could be thrown into panic by a parking ticket.   More than that, he had a deeply pessimistic view of the world and its future.   ‘Some of you know’ he said in a sermon, ‘that ever since Hiroshima, I have only been able to speak the language of apocalypse.’   Well, not exactly ‘only’: for he shared Mr. Micawber’s belief that ‘something will turn up.’   ‘It is a miracle’ he told a sympathetic reporter, ‘that we [that is, Pilsdon] get by financially.   At the end of the month we always seem to have £300 in the bank.’   Moreover, he believed, as apocalyptic minds do not, that lives could be changed for the better.   In the face of all the varieties of human brokenness that came to Pilsdon he declared that ‘the reason [for these disasters] is that often there is little wrong with the person.   It is the environment that is wrong.’   So he changed the environment (when Percy was convinced that something was the right thing to do, it happened).   At Pilsdon you did not get psychotherapy, of which he thought little although psychiatrists were fascinated by the set-up.   You got space and time, both of a quality which you had lacked and which amounted to respect – which you had lacked too.   ‘We just let people get on with it’ he told the same reporter, ‘we don’t want to force them.’   Trevor, once a drug addict but at Pilsdon a good cowman, got the point.   ‘Here’ he said, ‘you feel you belong.’  

People with an apocalyptic view argue themselves into believing that our lives are ineluctably determined, even predestined.   They deny free will.   They may even think that there is something in astrology.  Percy did.   But this doesn’t actually work, least of all in community.   If someone does you a good turn, you thank them for it as a freely given benefit.   You don’t think ‘Oh, they were bound to do that.   It has no particular value.’   Or, if you do something wrong, you say ‘sorry’ and take responsibility for it.   You don’t say ‘I was bound to do that, you fool.   That’s what you get from someone like me.’   Percy believed firmly in ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry.’   He knew them both well.   He told Becky, daughter of his beloved daughter Ruth, and Matt at their wedding that ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ were the essential glue of being together.   They sustain community.

But the greatest contradiction of fear and determinism of all was when Percy and Gaynor put all their money together, persuaded Ruth that they were doing the right thing, got a loan when their local bank persuaded London that it was ‘a venture of faith’, and bought Pilsdon to make it a community for one and all.    This was surely an act of free will such as very few people have ever achieved.   So there is a human conundrum here which is at the heart of what Percy makes me think about.   I cannot solve it.   I can only say that wise men have often reached the point of saying that contraries, opposites, co-exist in the ground of our being.   Whether in balance or in conflict, they are the source of our characters and creativity.   I leave it to your meditation: a conundrum set and exemplified by Percy, the free determinist, the autocratic egalitarian, the down-to-earth mystic.

Then, still caught between opposites as we think about Percy, we have to move from the ground and bottom of human being to what transcends or tops it.   The word for this is ‘vision’ – unfortunately, because it is rather jaded now.  For Percy it was a summons to action: in Blake’s words to ‘build Jerusalem in England’s green and peasant land’.  Percy and Gaynor were a couple of romantics who had a vision of community as exemplified by the seventeenth century community of the Ferrar family at Little Gidding.   Once again, the opposite pops up.   Pilsdon is an earthy, practical place and Percy delighted in the new experience of milking with Gillian – she who was there from the start and always the earthing of his creative but dangerous electricity - digging and delving, hedging and ditching, and getting his hands dirty along with his guests.  

Percy’s vision of community grew.   There was precious little of it in Leigh-on-Sea where Percy grew up.   Nor was it satisfied when he joined the commuters and worked, surprisingly, in the Bank of England.   He felt a call to be a priest, went up to Oxford where he fell in love with Gaynor, then ran a youth club in London.   There he met the Bishop of Hong Kong, temporarily in hospital, and eventually became a vicar in Kowloon, building up an empty church into a full and warm one.   He and Gaynor read about Little Gidding on leave and that, really, was it.
The poet TS Eliot had been there before and written that

                             what you thought you came for
          Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
          From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
          If at all.

 

The poet had pondered.   The priest acted.  Back in England as Vicar of Hawkchurch in 1954 the purpose broke out of its shell, the seed from its ‘husk of meaning’, and was fulfilled.   They bought Pilsdon Manor.   It became a magnet to all sorts and conditions of people and the rest, as they say, is history – or rather, hundreds of personal histories.

I am near the end of my talk.   David Barlow will talk about Percy in Scotland.   The transition between these two times was acutely agonising for all concerned.   Percy, who helped so many of us out of our muddles, was in one of his own.  I will end, as he so often did, by reverting to Little Gidding.

When the poet George Herbert lay dying, he sent the poems which he had previously kept to himself to Little Gidding, asking his friend Nicholas Ferrar to publish them if he thought that their record of his ‘many spiritual conflicts … might turn  to the advantage of any dejected poor soul.’   So Ferrar did.   At the end of the collection, with Finis, ‘the end’, written under it, was a poem Percy loved.     The title of the poem is ‘Love’.   I have not said much about Percy’s Christian faith, but I think it is all here in a masterpiece which matches Percy’s own life and achievement.   It is a dialogue set in a dining room, like the one here.   At the same time it is set in a place of prayer, like the little chapel in the corner of this house.   We can well see him in both the partners in its conversation: the insistently generous host and the ashamed and fearful guest – both of them.  It resolves, step by step and finally in its last line, the contradictions which have puzzled us.                                 

 

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

 

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

_______________________________________________________

 

This was from David Barlow (with some notes added later)

 

“When great trees fall
in forests
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses
small things recoil into silence.

when great souls die
our eyes, briefly
see with a hurtful clarity,
our minds, formed
and informed by their radiance,
fall away.
When great souls die.” 

About 35 years ago a colleague at Cranleigh school  suggested a brilliant preacher - so brilliant that we invited him to spend three or four days there, give three addresses, and then be available  for anyone to come and talk to him.
You can imagine how many came to talk to Percy.  He said he would like to address the Common Room too, and I remember the consternation he caused by telling  us teachers to love each other.  And to love our students!
We had a house near Bridport in those days, and we used to visit Pilsdon with our three daughters then, and there Percy would be - in  his woolly hat, pipe in mouth, milking the cow, and on Sunday evenings after another brilliant sermon we’d join everyone for soup and koinonia and talk. That’s the church I remember thinking.
Then we sold that house and much missed our trips to Pilsdon. Percy kept in touch with a series of almost legible, pithy, caring letters – and one year he wrote, “Why don’t you come up here to Scotland - it’s absolutely glorious!”  and  one day we did and indeed it was – and we’ve been every year since to the cottage with its gigantic bath and its brown Highland water and its Raeburn  (“Be careful when you riddle it”, Percy used to say, “it could fall to pieces” I’m proud to say it only went out once on my watch.)
I’ve been thinking how to summarise the life of a man like Percy – there’s far too much to say.
For one thing he was a man of enormous energy – when I am tempted to use my great age as an excuse I just think of Percy in his sixties, seventies and eighties  (and it would have been in his nineties had he been allowed) mowing, digging, sawing, fetching seaweed, toiling up the steep path in the vegetable patch, though sometimes latterly when he was about 87 the wheelbarrow sometimes won.
But in the end I decided on three words:
First of  course: magnetism
The poem I started with was by Maya Angelou the black American poet.
I once queued up for her to sign her book for my granddaughter Maya.  It took a time – and when I got to it, the dressing room door swung open  and I saw she was not only signing, someone was opening their heart to her and Maya was listening to her and blessing.
That’s a rare gift – but it’s one Percy had as perhaps everyone here knows at first hand.
As we’ve heard, Percy moved to Scotland; he’d loved it ever since joining Ruth and Mike in their family house Old Glasnock.
Quite a change from the gentle Dorset hills - to the rugged mountains of Wester Ross.
From the bustle of a busy community for a place where all you can hear is the sheep and the curlew.
From the adrenalin-filled leadership of a Community for the perfectly balanced team of two that was Percy and Gillian - vision needs grounding otherwise it’s only a dream.
There were though at least two similarities:
One was that once again there was a building and grounds which were just what they needed and which they could just about afford - and you want to ask Gillian to tell you the dilapidated state it was in!  This was 1980 when he was 58 and Gillian was - whatever age she was then. 
So for the second time in their lives they took on a mammoth task, of turning this chaotic wilderness into a beautiful home and a spectacular garden thanks to Gillian’s horticultural genius – and Percy’s never stinting hard work.
But also -
You didn’t need to worry that Percy would lose contact with people up there.
I can’t remember ever visiting them when there wasn’t someone either staying or calling or ringing. 
It was like a Pilsdon of the North -they came from all over. All sorts. Old and young. Old friends and very often their friends too. On one occasion a group of Belgians arrived and asked where the nearest campsite was and Percy said why don’t you camp here and from then on they came every year. They are I know here today.  Once a prison chaplain there told us something which Percy and I always agreed was a perfect image of the atonement:
An inmate charged at him with a knife - and he was not a big man (the chaplain not the prisoner!) “I didn’t know what to do so I opened my arms wide and a moment he was in them sobbing his heart out.”
Magnetism. Charisma.
And with some charismatic leaders that’s all you’ve got   - you don’t want to get too close.
Not so Percy.
And my second word is mysticism.
Percy did not have faith – he was his faith and his faith was him.
He owed much to the Church and the Church certainly owed much to him – but the powers that were in the Church sometimes found Percy’s way of doing things not quite to their liking – and there were times when that feeling was mutual.
It was not that he didn’t believe in the church but what is the church?
I found one of Percy’s letters the other day – in which he says ubi Christus ibi ecclesia where Christ is there is the church.
What was his faith? Well we can‘t  look into a man’s soul, but we can look at his bookcase, - and it was clear he read widely and voraciously on many ideas and many people and many religions   always thinking always refreshing his thoughts
Three things I believe to be true:
He never lost his love of the Lord Jesus as a blazing light in a dark dark world – he believed in both – there were no half measures with Percy.
He read his bible every day.
And - right to the end - he was using for his daily meditation a book by a radical Coptic monk Matthew the Poor who said “ meditation and prayer is  my food and drink, my clothing and my armour.”  Every paragraph has a pencilled tick of approval from Percy
But - unlike Matthew the Poor - Percy lived life to the full in this world too.
Living among the wildlife of the Highlands he was interested when we said we saw three otters today –the one he really loved was the human animal.
Above all he knew and lived that verse in I John:
“Love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.”
Or the words Jesus used of Mary Magdalene:
“Her sins are forgiven for she loved much; to whom little is forgiven the same loveth little.”
Percy loved much and was much loved
And - do I need to say this - it wasn’t only religious people he loved and who loved him.
Love isn’t emotion or passion – it isn’t even just friendship – though Percy had all three in excess one might say.
Percy just cared for people - he looked for the good in everyone.
Bishops, bankers, fundamentalists, atheists just people it was all the same to him.
Gillian told me that if ever you started criticising someone - even someone who had done something quite appalling Percy would say, ‘We don’t know the full picture Gill.”
Maybe he does now.
Another thing: it’s not all English immigrants who get accepted by the Scots.
But they were.
Partly because they provided vegetables for everyone - sold them along with plants and herbs at the gate for Medecins Sans Frontieres, or they would send them to Judy at the Applecross Inn.
Or because Percy took over mowing the greens at the little golf course - he loved his golf and how sad Percy would have been at the death of Seve Ballesteros.
But mostly they were accepted up there because they were true friends.
They’re all missing him up there - they miss you both, Gillian.
Ian Livingstone the Postie misses seeing Percy at the gate with a pile of those letters to post – “He was a gentleman” he said to me.
And when there was a tragedy in my family I rang Percy. “Can we come up straight after the funeral?”  And he said, “Yes of course.”
It was January and we drove through a massive snowstorm – we could see nothing - on the road from Inverness and we arrived at the house to be greeted by a light in the doorway, two lovely people, a warm wood-burning stove and a hot meal and love and a glass of whisky.
And I’ve not mentioned something which was with him I think to the end:
In him the most contrary things combined;
Simplicity emerging from a complicated mind;
Awareness of misery yet - when he smiled -
That smile became his face as though he were a child.

Well of course he wasn’t perfect.
His life was not without pain, both caused and suffered.
Once he told me of his depression.
And he certainly held no very high view of himself.
He quite possibly drove too fast…..
And he used to really annoy me because any discussion ended with Percy saying but you see I believe in predestination! 
Percy you just didn’t!
But the greatest of souls are great not because they avoid sin or suffering or pain or even heresy - whatever that is - but because they come through it in their own way.

Percy - you have left us and we’re not happy, but you are blest.
Percy - you were my friend, my guru, my window into God.
We are all better for knowing you - you dear man.
We thank the Good for you.
That’s all I’ve got but let me add three quotations:

First –you didn’t need to spend long with him to know that his daughter meant everything to him - - and how proud he was of her and Becky and Justin – and Ruth put this in an email which says rather better all that I have tried to say
“It was his inner being which was the great magnet and all that radiated from him and his reaching out to others in total acceptance of whoever they were”
magnetism – mysticism - humanity

Secondly   Percy
Here are the last words of his sermon to you here in 1985
“in a sense I have never left Pilsdon
I belong to the community of the broken and feel the fellowship of the forgiven.
I long to be vulnerable and defenceless and inwardly open to myself and others, and to live creatively in the present moment, one day at a time.
What is true of me can be true of you all.”

And Maya Angelou (slightly adapted)
“And when great souls die
after a period peace blooms,
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us,
He existed. He loved.
We can be. Be and be
Better. And love
For he loves.”