The darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Inversnaid”

There is despair in untamed hearts lost in the wilderness.
Wildness lies just beneath the surface;
it spills over, swirls round and round, spins out of reach. 

Our world feels that way right now.

How are we spared drowning in its pitch black pool?
Can we thrill to beauty surrounding us
without being tempted into darkness?

Christ came not to tame creation’s wildness,
but to pull us gasping people from its unforgiving clutches
before we sink ever deeper in despair.

We are mere weeds trying to survive this wild world,
to grow, to flourish, to witness to those who are bereft.
O Lord, let us be left to live long in your Light.

Let us be left.

Because of your great compassion
you did not abandon them in the wilderness.
By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path,
nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. 
You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. 
Nehemiah 9: 19-20

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”