Why Jan Struther?

This website started life as "Jan Struther's Home Page" in 1997.

Jan Struther's children's hymn When a knight won his spurs appealed to me as a child. It's romantic of course- if we read Mallory's Morté de Arthur we see the knights were often less than honourable. I still like the hymn; modern western men have lost the fullness of King, Warrior, Magician and Lover**. We have become lesser men. The king never integrates beyond a corporate tyrant or a mother's boy weakling. The warrior is a sadist or masochist. The Magician ceases to be Shaman, and instead, the Australian Federal cabinet takes advice from Bill Gates. Valé Merlin! The Lover is ashamed and impotent, or a sexual performer, rather than a man of whole energy.

Jan Struther's hymn appealed to we little boys of the 50's and 60's because it touched our longing for wholeness. Jan's knights were full of spiritual energy. They were true Warriors serving the King. The knights of today are different- we perhaps need to be taking the armour off as Kipnis suggests, speaking of men's groups...

The new knights don't have any special chemistry or magic. We're not particularly brave, smart, cool, or lucky. We're essentially ordinary men who took the risk of reaching out to one another...... Fools and wise men all, stumbling along through the dark, being steadfast companions to one another in the quest of the masculine soul.

Aaron Kipnis Knights without armour: A practical guide for men in quest of the masculine soul (New York: Tarcher/Pedigree Books 1991) pp 20-21 quoted in David C James What are they saying about Masculine Spirituality (Paulist Press 1996) pp 105

Yet we are still knights. We need the fullness of Warrior; with courage and integrity, in a hard and unjust world. So I used Jan's hymn to focus this site when I first devised it.

I have not been able to get copyright permission for using the hymn, so I do not have it on the site. I had thought Jan Struther was a man of the Victorian era, who died in 1901. In fact, she was Joyce Anstruther, born in 1901, and well known in England for her story Mrs. Miniver! It's interesting that the hymn is much more modern than I had first realised. It still rates as one of the top twenty hymns used in schools in the UK. Knights... men of honour, are still a longing in modern men and women.

"Private opinion creates public opinion. That is why private opinion, and private behaviour, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important." ~ Jan Struther ~

There is another reason for being "Jan." The Uniting Church is no longer a safe place for those who tread the margins of theology. "Jan" was chosen for my own safety. "Jan" also protected those of my parish who would be offended by what is here. My name is Andrew Prior, but "Jan" is not always me. Sometimes Jan takes a position for others. Sometimes others contribute to this page and "Jan" allows them their safety.

If you are offended that you don't always know who Jan is, ask why. Are you afraid of words you cannot seek to invalidate by attacking the writer? Perhaps those same words have a truth you need to hear for yourself.

Andrew Prior 1998/2000/2001/2003

**King, Warrior, Magician (and) Lover are the four archetypes discerned by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette in their excellent book of the same name. (Harper:San Francisco 1990)