Episode 13: Peter Owen Jones
Interview Date: 5 January 2021. Interviewer: Dr Jason Clark. Research and questions by Dr Simon Machin.
The Reverend Peter Owen Jones is an Anglican priest, author, environmentalist and television presenter. Peter has had an extraordinarily varied and adventurous life as a jackaroo in Australia, a farm labourer in southern England, and then running a mobile disco, before working his way up from messenger boy to creative director in an advertising agency. But then, a bit like Saint Anthony the Great or Saint Francis of Assisi, he abandoned a metropolitan lifestyle to become an Anglican priest, firstly in rural Cambridgeshire and now in the delightful East Sussex countryside at Firle, near Lewes. In fact, like St Anthony the Great, Peter - in his Extreme Pilgrim television series - lived in a cave for 21 days in the Egyptian desert. He is currently working on a television series exploring the less glamorous but fascinating areas of the United Kingdom.
Peter Owen Jones - Timed Interview Summary
0:00 - 21:20
Unusually Peter is not sure exactly where he was born in London, because he was adopted. His birth mother came from a staunch Scottish family in St Andrew’s, but his mother was “sent down” to London when pregnant in 1957 to avoid the shame of being an unmarried mother. At eight weeks he was handed over to his adoptive parents. It was only later, when he was a vicar, that Peter traced his birth mother. A woman knocked on the door of the vicarage, explained that she had given up a child for adoption and said that not an hour of her waking life passed without thinking of her child. Peter and his children are now close to his birth mother. Every adoption is a very human story. He was fortunate in still having a childhood rich in feeling.
21:21 – 31:29
Adoptive family. Peter’s mother was from a colonial family and born in China. Peter’s father was a doctor from a Quaker family. His father’s mother is the gentlest person Peter has ever met. Both sides colourful and fascinating: dancing, Rothman’s smoking and gin-drinking on mother’s side, intensely practical yet serene on father’s side. Adoptive parents met in a shared flat. Very different in temperament. Father gave his mother tenderness and mother gave his father colour. A “massive earthquake” when his adoptive father dies suddenly when Peter is only four. Immense respect for how his mother managed. Now sixty years ago.
31:30 - 40:06
Rural aspects to his childhood. Fields are close to his home, and Peter becomes immersed in nature and learns to “move away from the paths” and explore. His experience of church is “C of E, Christmas and Easter” (apart from singing in the school choir). Never found this religious formula helpful; it lacked the imaginative richness of his experiences in nature.
40:07 - 1:05:42
Experience at single sex public-school. Found it formulaic, unenlightened, dark and brutal, even though there were some good men there. There were other pupils there who were equally traumatized. There has been a culture change in private education since the 1980s, but he got the end of the old version which operated as an almost separate state from what was going on outside. Endures it until the sixth form, but one evening Peter “comes to” and realizes that he cannot do it any more, changes out of his uniform and starts walking the twenty odd miles home. In the morning the school phones to say that it will not be taking him back. Walking away he feels like a bird escaping from a cage. He was “held” by a wonderful peer group of refugees from similar institutions, many of whom are still friends. Although many of his mother’s circle were appalled at Peter’s decision, there were three older men, a farmer and retired naval officer and a priest who were not judgmental. They mentored Peter in a different aspect of masculinity, which was about being true to oneself, honest and courageous. Looking back and without having regrets Peter would love to have studied English at university, but the decision he took was a fork in the road. However, observing young men and women today, he is intrigued in “the ones at the back of the class” who will have a bumpy ride, but may prove to have the more adventurous lives.
1:05:43 – 1:17:45
Australia. His mother is advised that it would be good for Peter to get away, so it is arranged that he will go to Australia, which he still loves. Lives briefly at his uncle’s house in a suburb of Sydney, before going to work on a cattle station. Straightened out by some young Australians and taught to work twelve-hour days. They were rough and hardened and taught him to value the good stuff. He loved the physicality of manual labour and still does now, working as a shepherd at lambing time. He feels free, and just as England is very cramped, Australia is vast and full of possibilities. Peter isn’t moved to prayer at this point but he is aware of the prayer of the sea, the red earth and the butterfly.
1:17:46 – 1:22:55
Return to England. Comes back because he is in love with a young woman. Every place has its own resonance. The climate crisis is essentially a crisis in the ability to love.
1:22:56 – 1:26:52
A career in advertising. Goes for a job in advertising, working on the creative side in an agency in the West End, London. Attends interview in a pullover with holes in it. The glamorous receptionist tells him that he will never get a job dressed like that, but he is taken on. The atmosphere is pretty immoral as advertising is about chasing money and renown. But as Peter has missed out on a university education, working here deepens his thought processes of inquiry and observation. Four years later the receptionist becomes his wife.
1:26:53 – 1:42:47
Theological college. Has written that God led him to the college gates through the father he didn’t know. After growing up with an absent father, he becomes reconciled to the Divine male. Had never thought that he could become interested in eschatology and doctrine. Learns importance of developing the mind as well as the soul. Writes a book about the experience called Bed of Nails. No anticipation of it being published, but he had been keeping a diary to balance the essay writing, but he meets the publishing editor of what was Lion Publishing and he asks Peter to send extracts, and it is then published. Finds theologically, the C of E is still tied into a form of education which emphasizes PhDs and academic railroading. The graphs on church attendance confirm that it has failed to engage the imagination of the people that the C of E is designed to serve. Peter is still grateful for the education but now draws upon Thomas Merton and Rumi as his influences.
1:42:48 – 1:52:29
A priest in Cambridgeshire. Discovers that two years at theological college is no real preparation for parish ministry. His parish is in the ‘flatlands of England”: the fen country which in its open spaces reminds Peter of Australia. Has to function in a completely different way, wearing a dog collar, when people treat you in a different manner from ordinary people. Nothing in training prepares a new vicar for taking a funeral. Gets to know the travelling community. His being a vicar does not faze them, and it helps him accept the role. Early on, he conducts a service for the Newbury Bypass protestors (he had made contacts with Friends of the Earth when working in advertising in London). Peter’s view is that every part of the countryside and its flora and fauna are consecrated.
1:52:30 - 1:55:11
Psalm. Publishes a small book of poetry in 2005 which retells twelve Biblical psalms in contemporary idiom. It is a response to people telling him that they cannot get through the language of the Old Testament and the Book of Common Prayer. It is the book that he is most proud of, the best that he has written as it gets at the communion between the human beings, nature and the Divine.
1:55:12 - 2:05:41
Firle. In the same year, 2005 Peter becomes Vicar of Firle, near Lewes and feels an immediate connection to the downland hills. He is now the longest-serving vicar at one place in the whole of Sussex. It takes fifteen years to become integrated into and intimate with a community. It happens when you cease to be introduced as “the Vicar” and become “our Vicar”, accepted by the community with all your shortcomings.
2:05:42 - 2:24:09
BBC television series, Extreme Pilgrim. Peter is invited to spend some time with some Shaolin monks in China and some wandering Sadhu holy men in India and then spends time in a cave in the Sinai desert in the tradition of the Desert Fathers. The Sadhus in India teach Peter how to laugh. The Shaolin monks teach Peter the beauty of rigorous discipline and how important it is to a spiritual existence. The cave teaches him that he is no more important than a sparrow. It is completely levelling. The episode he goes back to is the “Ascetic Christian” episode, in which he copies the life of St Anthony the Great, a third century desert monk. The cave is about confronting everything that we bury and do not want to address. There can be no spiritual growth without looking at the stuff that we really do not want to confront internally. Not about sin but the road to wholeness. To “swerve” that by taking two weeks off in Majorca to lie on a sun lounger is not “doing the work”. During the cave vigil he is guided by Father Lazarus, a former economics lecturer who became a desert hermit. To live out a connection with the Divine is extraordinary in view of our daily rational overload.
2:24:10 - 2:27:33
Letters from an Extreme Pilgrim. While in the cave he writes a series of letters to his ex-wife, children, friends, St Anthony, Father Lazarus, God, Jesus, Satan and even the Prime Minister. The writing comes out of a sense of communion with the people that he has known and his interdependence with them.
2:27:34 - 2:31:12
BBC documentary, How to Live a Simple Life. After the financial crash, following St Francis, Peter undertakes an exercise to abandon consumerism and rely on the generosity of his parishioners, even using a barter system. When a priest becomes literally dependent on his parishioners the dynamic completely changes.
2:31:13 – 2:37:34
Spiritual practices to combat consumerism. Peter has a sense that the best is yet to come for society in entering a place of humility, accepting interdependence and communion with the Divine. Not to do so is laziness and a lack of courage. “The higher the wealth, the higher the walls”.
2:37:35 – 2:43:20
Television programmes celebrating the countryside of Sussex. You have to find Eden and honour where you live. Luton is as beautiful in its own way as the Sussex Downs. Too often Christianity places paradise elsewhere and beyond us. If we continue to do that, how can we fall in love with where we are? It is terribly disempowering to our imagination.
2:43:21 - 2:47:42
Current preoccupations. Looking at the idea of filming a programme, the land less travelled, going to the unfashionable places rather than beautiful ones. As he is in his sixties, wants to just sit and pray and enjoy his family. Time for real communion.