Tag: Gerard Manley Hopkins

A Bright Sadness: Away Grief’s Gasping

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Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows
flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash,
wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long
ashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous
ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest’s creases;
in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed
dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks
treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd,
nature’s bonfire burns on.

But quench her bonniest, dearest
to her, her clearest-selvèd spark

But vastness blurs and time
beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping,
joyless days, dejection.
                      Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam.
Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm;
world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
                      In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is,
since he was what I am…
~Gerard Manley Hopkins, from “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection”

A day of wandering through peerless beauty vanquishes the darkness of our times. When surrounded by the hope that comes with emerging spring, it is possible to push aside grief and discouragement to welcome a promised resurrection.

I am all at once what Christ is,
since he was what I am…

He came and saw how desperate we were and His mercy was abundant. He turned night into day, dark into light, dust into living flesh, flesh into bread and wine in remembrance.

We will remember he sent grief away. Oh, we will remember.

A Bright Sadness: Merciful Dew

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He hath abolished the old drought
and rivers run where all was dry,
The field is sopp’d with merciful dew
He hath put a new song in my mouth
the words are old, the purport new,
And taught my lips to quote this word
That I shall live, I shall not die,
But I shall when the shocks are stored
See the salvation of the Lord.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins




When I have no voice left,
He gives me a song I can still sing.
When I run dry, He replenishes.
When I wither, His merciful dew
restores and readies me for a new day.

I am stopped astonished,
sopped and mopping up,
spilling over in His grace.

Are you thirsty
Are you empty
Come and drink these Living Waters
Time unbroken
Peace unspoken
Rest beside these Living Waters
Christ is calling
Find refreshing
At the cross of Living Waters
Lay your life down
On Thee, all come
Rise up in these Living Waters

There’s a river that flows
With mercy and love
Bringing joy to the city of our God
There our hope is secure
Do not fear anymore
Praise the Lord of Living Waters

Spirit moving
Mercy washing
Healing in these living waters
Lead your children to the shore line
Life is in these Living Waters

There’s a river that flows
With mercy and love
Bringing joy to the city of our God
There our hope is secure
Do not fear anymore
Praise the Lord of Living Waters

A Bright Sadness: Let Him Easter in Us

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Let Him easter in us,
be a dayspring to the dimness of us,
be a crimson-cresseted east.
~Gerard Manley Hopkin

There is a fragrance in the air, 
a certain passage of a song, 
an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, 
the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall 
that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. 
Who can say when or how it will be 
that something easters up out of the dimness 
to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?
God himself does not give answers. He gives himself.
~Frederick Buechner from Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale

Traditionally, Lent does not include the five Sundays before Easter as every Sabbath is a celebration of Christ’s resurrection. We should let Him Easter in us every week!

So this is my first of six Easter reflections on Barnstorming during the next few weeks. We wait for the glorious day when we can meet as Christ’s body on April 21, first on our farm’s hill at dawn, and then later inside our church’s sanctuary to feel the full impact of “He is Risen!”

It is a slow coming of spring this year, seeming in no hurry whatsoever.  Snow remains in residual drifts around the farm from the storms of a month ago, the foothills are still white and the greening of the fields has yet to begin. The flowering plum and cherry trees remain dormant in the continued chill. 

Like Narnia, winter still has its terrible grip on us.

We wait, frozen in a darkened world, for a sun that shines and actually warms us from our dormancy.

This is exactly what eastering is.  It is awakening out of a restless sleep, opening a door to let in fresh air, and the stone that locked us in the dark rolled back.

Overnight all will be changed, changed utterly.

He is not only risen.  He is given indeed.


Let Them Be Left

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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 fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
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 the wilderness of untamed hearts.
Such wildness lies just beneath the surface;
it rounds and rounds, almost out of reach. 
How are we spared drowning in its pitchblack pool?
How can we thrill to the beauty rather than be sucked into the darkness?

He came not to destroy the world’s wildness,
but to pull us, gasping,
from its unforgiving clutches as we sink in deep.

As weeds surviving in the wilderness,
we must grow, flourish, and witness to a wild world bereft.

O let us be left.
Let us be left.

An Advent Paradox: Glory in the Darkest Place

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O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by thine advent here;
dispel the shadows of the night,
and turn our darkness into light.
~from O Come O Come Emmanuel

 

 

 

Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, O Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem star may lead me
To the sight of Him who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin, on Christmas day.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

 

 

 

I leave home in darkness to go to work and come home in darkness in the late afternoon.  It seems for days on end the sun never shines as I’m tucked away with patients in clinic consult rooms hearing their own struggle against the darkness.

Where is the light that I promise to each of them if I can’t feel it myself?

Yet Glory is present in the darkest place and the Light has come.

I will remember His promise.
Even in the darkness I know His face.
He knows I know.

 

 

 

[Verse 1]
Out of the depths of silent night
Immanuel, come hear our cry
Our grief is strong, our burdens great
The night is long and hope is faint

[Verse 2]
You came to set the captives free
A Morning Star of joy and peace
Why does this darkness feel so deep?
Why can’t our weary spirits see?

[Chorus]
Glory, glory
Glory in the darkest place
Glory, glory
Glory, let Your mercy reign

[Verse 3]
Out of the depths of silent night
A Savior born, a mother’s sigh
The darkness trembled at this Star
A beam of hope for troubled hearts

[Verse 4]
You came to make Your blessings known
And bear our curse of death alone
You came to share our suffering
So in our sorrow, we could sing

[Chorus]
Glory, glory
Glory in the darkest place
Glory, glory
Glory, let Your mercy reign
Glory, glory
Glory in the darkest place
Glory, glory
Glory, let Your mercy reign
Brittany Hope

Heaven-Handling Flung

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sunrise109151
raincoming7
Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
   Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Carrion Comfort”

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These mounting deaths by one’s own hand
make grim headlines and solemn statistics.

In my clinic, patient after patient says the same thing:

this struggle with life
makes one frantic to avoid the fight and flee
to feel no more bruising and bleed no more,
to become nothing but chaff and ashes.

they contemplate suicide as
they can not recognize the love of
a God who cares enough to
wrestle them relentlessly–
who heaven-handling flung them here by
breathing life into their nostrils

Perhaps they can’t imagine
a God
(who He Himself created
doubters
sore afraid
of His caring
enough to die for us)

so no one
is ever now,
nor ever will be

~nothing~

such darkness
now done
forever.

 

 

raincoming4

 

sunrise109159

Brooding Over the Bent World

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clouds519184

 

 I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
    blood and fire and billows of smoke.
The sun will be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood
    before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls
    on the name of the Lord will be saved.
~Acts 2:19-21 The Holy Spirit Comes At Pentecost

 

clouds51918

 

Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow
covers crippled firs…
~Czeslaw Milosz from “Veni Creator” in Selected and Last Poems

 

rowsofmay

 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”

 

sunriseonfire

 

The cows
munched or stirred or were still. I
was at home and lonely,
both in good measure. Until
the sudden angel affrighted me––light effacing
my feeble beam,
a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
but the cows as before
were calm, and nothing was burning,
nothing but I, as that hand of fire
touched my lips and scorched by tongue
and pulled by voice
into the ring of the dance.
~Denise Levertov from “Caedmon” in Breathing the Water

 

 

cowmorning

 

Today, when we feel we are without hope,
as mute and dumb as cattle chewing our cud,
when the bent world reels in blood and violence,
as we remain in hiding:

when faith feels frail,
when love seems distant:

We wait too stilled
for the moment we are lit afire ~
when the Living God is
seen, heard, named, loved, known
forever burning in our hearts deep down,
brooded over by His bright wings

We are His dearest, freshest
in this moment
and for eternity.

 

puffsunset5

 

sunset5514

Let Us Be Left

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galena

 

 

tony55182

 

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 fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
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”

 

dewdropdandy2

 

 

pastureponies

 

dewdropdandy

 

There is despair in the wilderness of untamed hearts.
Such wildness lies just beneath the surface;
it rounds and rounds, almost out of reach.
How are we spared drowning in its pitchblack pool?
How can we thrill to the beauty rather than be sucked into the darkness?
He came not to destroy the world’s wildness,
but to pull us, gasping,
from its unforgiving clutches as we sink in deep.As weeds surviving in the wilderness,
we must grow, flourish, and witness to a wild world bereft.
O let us be left.
Let us be left.

 

 

waterfalls

 

ferndaisies

 

 

tony5518

Earth’s Sweet Being

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brackenunfurl2
roseleafrain
landscape57185
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         
What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.        
~Gerard Manley Hopkins  “Spring”
brokenegg
landscape57183
Once, we were innocent,
now, no longer.
Cloyed and clouded by sin.
Given a choice, we chose sour over the sweetness we were born to,
giving up walks together in the cool of the day
to feed an appetite that  could never be sated.
God made a choice to win us back with His own blood
as if we are worthy of Him.
He says we are.
He dies to prove it.
Every day I try to believe
earth can be sweet and beautiful again.
futurepears
pinkdogwood20188
tiredtrillium

Preparing Through Parable: Let Them Grow Together

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snowyweed

24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
Matthew 12:24-30

 

snowyqal

 

januaryweeds

 

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”

 

snowyparrotia

 

There is despair in the wilderness of untamed hearts,
sown and growing weedy together with the good seed.
Such wildness lies just beneath the surface of good fertile soil;
ready to sprout,  nearly unnoticed and out of reach.

He came not to destroy this world’s wildness,
but to pull us away from it, gasping for breath,
liberated from the unforgiving clutches of weed roots.

As weeds survive well in the wilderness,
so we too must grow, flourish, and witness
to a wild world bereft.

O let us be left to be gathered.
Let us be left.

 

May my eyes see, my ears hear, my heart understand.  He prepares me with parable.

snowyoldrosebud