praising heroism, referring to Germans as monsters. Philip rose from his pew, walked quietly up to the pulpit, and asked the minister, in the slow, deliberate way that farmers have, whether he could give him a few minutes to address the congregation. The minister agreed, and Philip spoke: “Jesus said we should love our enemies.”
And then, one day in the fall of 1939, Philip and Joan read a newspaper article about a pacifist group in England whose members tried to live by the Sermon on the Mount, following the example of the early church. At this community, the Bruderhof, which had been recently expelled by the Nazis, Britons and Germans were living and working together as brothers and sisters. Was this what they had been looking for? Philip and Joan had to find out for themselves. That October, they cycled twenty-seven miles to the Cotswold Bruderhof. They stayed for a week and decided to return. Here was a way forward, an answer to their search.
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matt. 13:44). Sells all that he has – nothing less is sufficient, all is nothing compared with the treasure. Let the field be the divine counsel of God. Hidden within it the treasure – the kingdom – the precious secret of the field.
In November 1939 Philip and Joan sold their house, left family and friends, and moved to the Cotswold community. Giving away all his possessions and launching into an uncertain future, Philip jotted these lines: “How rich is a man who is free from security. / How rich is a man who is free from wealth.”
CAROL OF THE SEEKERS
We have not come like Eastern kings,
With gifts upon the pommel lying.
Our hands are empty, and we came
Because we heard a Baby crying.
We have not come like questing knights,
With fiery swords and banners flying.
We heard a call and hurried here –
The call was like a Baby crying.
But we have come with open hearts
From places where the torch is dying.
We seek a manger and a cross
Because we heard a Baby crying.
CHRISTMAS 1939
“THE OLD ROAD TIRES ME”
The old road tires me
And the old stale sights,
And I must wander new ways
In search of sharp delights
With new streams and new hills
And smoke of other fires;
For a new road tempts me –
And the old road tires.
1940
This little poem opposes the patriotic nostalgia that ran through both Britain’s war propaganda and the popular poetry of Philip’s youth. Unlike Housman’s Shropshire lad, he did not long for home, and, much as he loved the earth, he would never be wedded to one particular patch of ground. He had heard a call, and was ready to “wander new ways.” But he could not have known how very far from his native Devon these ways would take him.
Bruderhof members farming in Shropshire, England
PLOUGHING
——CHAPTER 2——
It’s time the soil was turned
So this new life began, with its new work. Philip laboured with the men in the fields and vegetable gardens. In spring the tractors ran day and night, ploughing, harrowing, and seeding the spring wheat. Often, the whole community would be called out before breakfast to help harvest vegetables, which had to be picked early to remain fresh for the farmers’ market. In autumn, pitching the sheaves into wagons and stacking them in a giant shock was a communal event, as was the day the threshing machine arrived on its round of all the local farms.
Philip loved it all – the seedtime and the harvest – and his poems from this time reflect this newfound joy.
BREAKFAST SONG
Come let us to the fields away,
For who would eat must toil,
And there’s no finer work for man,
Than tilling of the soil.
So let us take a merry plough,
And turn the mellow soil,
The land awaits and calls us now,
And who would eat must toil.
1940
THE PLOUGH
Now let us take a shining plough
And hitch a steady team,
For I have seen the kingfishers
Go flirting down the stream.
And sure the Spring is coming in –
It’s time the soil was turned,
It’s time the soil was harrowed down,
And the couch grass burned.
For we have waited for the chance
To turn a furrow clean,
And we have waited for the cry
Of peewits come to glean.
Now there’s work from dawn ’til sunset,
For it’s time the plough awoke,
And it’s time the air was flavoured
With the couch fire smoke.
1940
FINGERPRINTS OF GOD
“Whenever I meet a man,” he said,
“I look him low, I look him high,
To see if a certain gleam is born,
An inner light, deep in the eye,
The light of eyes that see in growing corn
Not only grain, not only golden bread,
But sweet and plain, the fingerprints of God.
What
