Today (8 March) the Church celebrates the life and ministry of Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy ('Woodbine Willie').

Born in 1883, Studdert Kennedy was a young vicar in Worcester who became an army chaplain during the First World War.

His warm personality soon earned the respect of soldiers, who nicknamed him ‘Woodbine Willie’ after the brand of cigarettes he shared with them.

After the First World War, he became a writer and regular preacher, drawing large crowds, who were attracted by his combination of traditional sacramental theology with more unconventional theological views.

He worked tirelessly for the Christian Industrial Fellowship, but his frail health gave way and he died (still a young man) on this day in 1929.

WWI Poets - Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy

One of my heroes - and I think we all need heroes, for they, like Saints, encourage us to live, act and perhaps even die, well - is a priest who became famous by his praying with, and sending over the top, soldiers of the first world war with a New testament and a packet of Woodbines; giving him the nickname 'Woodbine Willie'.

Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy was a man who was many things and it is in his honesty and his poetry that perhaps we find the truth to the lie that war is glorious and denial of the oft vaunted claim that the Church supports war. We (the Church) don't support or promote war, but where conflict is to be found, we are always there (and have always been), the priests (and others) whose engagement in the conflict is that of offering support for (all) the combatants.

Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy is one of those and as the plaque (see April's blog entry on 'Woodbine Willie') in Worcester Cathedral so rightly states, this is a man who was:

A Poet:

A Prophet:

A Passionate Seeker After Truth:

An Ardent Advocate Of Christian Fellowship 

And it is to one of his poems that I turn here:

'COME UNTO ME' (A SHELL-HOLE MEDITATION)
Come unto Me
It sounds like mockery,
A voice that calls a wounded man
Across a weary space
He cannot travel o'er;
For we would come to Thee,
We long to see Thy face,
But we are wounded sore,
And evermore
Our weakness binds us,
Darkness blinds us,
We stretch our hands out vainly toward the shore,
Where Thou art waiting for Thine own.
We groan, and try, and fail again,
We cannot come--we are but men,
Come Thou to us, O Lord.
Come Thou and find us.

Shepherd of the sheep,
We cannot come to Thee.
It is so dark.
But hark,
I hear a voice that sounds across the sea.
"I come."

A man with whom I am proud to say I share both cap badge and calling.

dona eis requiem

A Good Read: Woodbine Willie

I found myself a new book this week: Woodbine Willie: an Unsung Hero of World War One (Bob Holman    ISBN 978-0-7459-5561-2)

In 1914 a simple, unknown parish priest enlisted as a Chaplain. This man became one of the most famous personalities of the 14-18 war and although few might have recognised the name, Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, as 'Woodbine Willie' he was a hero!

His habit of passing cigarettes around and being with the troops where the action was; braving shells and bullets to do what Chaplains did then (and continue to do today). He maintained morale and when war ended, took up another battle against poverty, unemployment, war itself and injustice.

A man who brought Christian and socialist thinking together and did rather than just talk about it. His money and his mouth were firmly to be found residing in the same place! The dean of Westminster Abbey refused him a funeral in that place because he was a 'socialist' (always good to see the days when we were perhaps the much vaunted 'Conservative Party at prayer'). But the man wasn't a political type, in fact he had a dislike and distrust of them (because he been to war and seen that politicians start them and soldiers either end them or are ended in them?).

This is one of the first practical theologians and looked to the Church to stand up against, poverty, poor living and  the condemnation of the class system. 'If we share we have enough,' was his mantra, and many ignored it; but some didn't and that's part of the man's appeal - he was ahead if his time!

This is man who knew long ago that Church is the 'Big Society' and that we have a new Commandment to live by that goes into no man's land with those who are about to die; and ministers to the wounded and dying too!

This is a hero of the 20th Century and I can but commend the man (and the book) to you as an exemplar of what it means to live the Christian message and take up your cross to follow Christ.

Enjoy

ps. I was privileged to see a painting of the man hanging in the vestry of Worcester Cathedral whilst preaching there recently. I have to admit that the thrill of seeing it and the memorial (below) was one of the (so many) high points of that day:

Woodbine Willie

We ask our men and women to go where no one should be asked to go
To see what no one should be asked to see
And to do what no one should be asked to do

And as we reflect on the loss of six of our soldiers on foreign soil the Church of England remembers another soldier, the Reverend Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy MC, affectionately known as 'Woodbine Willie'.

When war began, Kennedy volunteered to serve as a Chaplain and became one of the best known characters of the war thanks to his habit of handing our cigarettes (which gave him his nickname), his pastoral care of those under his car and his poetry and other writings. Here's one of them, 'War':

There's a soul in the Eternal,
Standing stiff before the King.
There's a little English maiden
Sorrowing.
There's a proud and tearless woman,
Seeing pictures in the fire.
There's a broken battered body
On the wire.

An encounter at the front at Arras (1917) sums up what it is to be a military Chaplain in a most explicit manner when Kennedy crawled out to join a working party putting up wire in front of the trenches and was challenged by a sentry, the tale of which goes like this:

"Who's there?

"The Church!"

"what is the Church doing out here?

"Its job!"

If you stop by and read this - please pray for the men and women who serve in the role of Chaplain to those men and women who march away into conflict in pursuit of peace and justice - the Church 'doing its job!' -  and give thanks for the lives of men like Studdert Kennedy.

"I bet my life on Christ - Christ crucified."

Pax