Tag: Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Fierce Humility of Rain

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Praise to the Maker of the torrent
and the hurricane,
praise for the fierce humility of rain:

whose motion will not end, neither come to rest
nor ascend again until, like grace,
it finds the lowest empty place.
~Matthew Baker “Rainfall”

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See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build — but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.

Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Thou art indeed just, Lord”

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As I look out through a tear-streaked window at the beginning of this lightening day,
I fear inadequacy to the task before me:
Parched and struggling patients line my schedule.
Anxious and weary and barren too young,
seeking something, anything
to ease their distress in a hostile world,
preferably an easy pill to swallow.
Nothing that hurts going down.

While others thrive around them,
they wilt and wither,
wishing to cease breathing.

Lord of Life, equip me to find the words to say that might help.
May it be about more than genetics, neurotransmitters and physiology.

In this dry season for young lives,
send your penetrating rain
to fill with grace
the emptiest space.
Reach down and shake their roots
fiercely
and slake their thirst.

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Leaf and Leaf Parted

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I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night,
in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe
of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit…

A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him,
entangled him, not quit utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight,
unsought, presented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me,
eyelid and eyelid of slumber.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Moonrise”

 

I drowse too much through
the gifts offered up each day,
my eyelids closed
to the slightest seed release
or how the light plays
on the edge of shadow.

I sleep when
the curtain parts to
reveal the moment
when heaven visits earth.
My head nods
and I miss it.

 

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Heart, Round Me Right

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Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, ‘ vaulty, voluminous, . . . stupendous
Evening strains to be time’s vást, ‘ womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ‘ her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ‘ stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven.
Heart, you round me right
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night ‘ whélms, whélms, ánd will end us.
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, ‘ thóughts agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.
 ~Gerard Manley Hopkins — stanzas from “Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves”

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A descent into night is overwhelming relief from the stress of the day, an all-encompassing comfort as the fire of the sun warms and then extinguishes, leaving only moon, stars and the infinite heavens we bend backwards to see.

A descent into night is overwhelming loss, an emptying of all that is familiar, as we are overtaken by darkness that is not only outside us, but within us.

Heart, oh dear Heart, please round me right so my thoughts reflect Your thoughts, your Light to illuminate me from within.

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Between Midnight and Dawn: Broods with Bright Wings

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photo of a windy day at Manna Farm — Nate Lovegren

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.
Luke 13:34

 

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. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
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 “God’s Grandeur”
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photo of a windy day at Manna Farm — Danyale Tamminga

 

We are moving toward the crushing of Christ in the Garden of the Oil Press, Gethsemane.  Even there, the moment of betrayal became the moment He was glorified, and God was glorified.  Crushed, bleeding,  poured out over the world — in one moment He is the wings that brood and cover us, the next He becomes the sacrifice that anoints us.

“for him to see me mended,
I must see him torn…”
~Luci Shaw

 

 

Between Midnight and Dawn: The World Bereft

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All my longings lie open before you, Lord;
    my sighing is not hidden from you.
 My heart pounds, my strength fails me;
    even the light has gone from my eyes.

For I am about to fall,
    and my pain is ever with me.
 I confess my iniquity;
    I am troubled by my sin.
 Many have become my enemies without cause;
    those who hate me without reason are numerous.
 Those who repay my good with evil
    lodge accusations against me,
    though I seek only to do what is good.

 Lord, do not forsake me;
    do not be far from me, my God.
 Come quickly to help me,
    my Lord and my Savior.
from Psalm 38

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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” 

 

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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 ever deeper.
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.

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During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn

God Among Us: Drop Down Dew

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The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. I will give all these things as an inheritance to the remnant of this people.
Zechariah 8:12

Listen, you heavens, and I will speak;
    hear, you earth, the words of my mouth.
2 Let my teaching fall like rain
    and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
    like abundant rain on tender plants.
Deuteronomy 32:1-2

 

He hath abolished the old drouth,
And rivers run where all was dry,
The field is sopp’d with merciful dew.
The words are old, the purport new,
And taught my lips to quote this word
That I shall live, I shall not die…
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

We are God’s people, wandering homeless in the desert for years before being allowed to enter the Promised Land.  To us, there is great hope in the possibility of moisture coming from heaven as the bountiful gift Moses describes in an analogy for his words and teaching.   The dew of heaven becomes the representation of God’s all-encompassing Spirit and gift of grace in this and other Old Testament scripture passages.

Ultimately, God’s Word descended like dew from heaven in the form of a newborn baby in a manger come to dwell among us.   Like dew, He becomes flesh at no cost to us, to be among us freely, coming in the night, into the darkness, as a gentle covering of all things dry and dying, to refresh, to restore, to soften, to make what was withered fruitful once again.  We live again because of this Word of flesh quickening within us.  EPG

 

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Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.

Latin lyrics:

Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

I Greet Him

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I kiss my hand
To the stars, lovely-asunder
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and
Glow, glory in thunder;
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west;
Since, though he is under the world’s splendor and wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”

I greet Him when I meet Him
as the color of the evening sky
spills out as tipped paint
far fleeting across the horizon,
cleaned up and gone before grasped,
I kiss my hand
to the drama played out before sun is set.

I greet Him when I meet Him
as starlight speckles
the overhead ceiling,
each touching infinity
where it begins
and never ends.

I greet Him when I meet Him
in glowing cloud mountains
sparking lightning
and clapping thunder,
applause for His
resplendent magnificence.

I greet Him when
He is hidden
mysterious
unknown and unknowable,
waiting for the blessing
of understanding
wafting from Him
in color, in speckle,
in glow, in spark,
in appreciative applause
for His splendor
wrapped in wonder.

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Beauty Past Change

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Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”
There is no perfection outside of Him;
His reflected beauty has no uniformity.
We give Him glory in our imperfection,
the defects and blemishes which
only He can make whole.
Who knows why He does this?
Yet He does.
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You Will Weep and Know Why

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~to a young child~

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring and Fall”
This morning we weep and know why.
It is not simply the sorrowful loss
of the perfection of spring and childhood
giving way to the dying of the fall,
the last gasp coloring of leaves and skies.
It is the loss of innocence, of sense of reverence for life,
this blight man was born for,
this bleeding out for no reason.
What must drive one man’s selfish rage, loneliness and despair to compel him to deprive innocent others of their blood and life?
What unexplained evil overtakes one heart that he seeks to stop the beating hearts of others before his own stops?
When will there ever be safe havens again in society, if not within our schools, our churches and our medical facilities, then where?
This is a day for lament, for tears, and for prayers to God that we cry out and bleed out the spiritual sickness that is infecting us all.
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Let Them Be

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Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them…
~A.A.Milne from Winnie the Pooh (Eeyore)

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What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of 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 

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A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fortune of the Republic   

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I’ve always identified with weeds more than cultivated blooms.  I tend to be fluffy, spread out where I’m not necessarily wanted or needed, and seem to be resilient through drought or flood.  Their persistence helps me let them be.  EPG

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