Spring in the Air

I will be the first to admit that this has been one of the mildest winters in the Twin Cities since we moved here in 2007.  Still, the month of February was pretty brutal.

Yet, here we are in the second week of March with temperatures in the 50s-60s. As the UST shuttle I took back from the law school the other day afternoon approached the St. Paul campus stop, I saw a sight I have not seen in a very long time: throngs of students everywhere in the streets, jauntily walking around in long sleeves or light jackets.  I couldn’t help but smile.  Thank you, God.

My smile continued all the way home.  When it is horrendously cold, I travel the 1.25 miles between the shuttle stop and home by bus (or Dave picks me up).  But for the second day in a row, I walked home, jacket open, sun warming my face. Thank you, God.

I know we are likely to get some more cold days over the next month.  And, if past experience in the Twin Cities is any guide, we may even get another fall of snow.  But spring is in the air.  And, along with Gerard Manley Hopkins, I exclaim: Nothing is so beautiful as Spring!

Here is Hopkins’ poem, Spring:

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.

Advertisement

Glory Be to God

I love this time of year. We had the mildest winter since we’ve moved here this year, but still, spring is welcome. Dave has planted the herb and vegetables, flowers have been making their appearance, breezes no longer bring a chill. It is impossible not to smile on days like this.

I’ve mentioned before my love for the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. One of the poem of his that comes to mind on days like this, which I have hanging in my law school office, is Pied Beauty. I offer it as a sweet song of praise this morning.

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 all trades, 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.

Praise God! And blessings on your day!

Spring

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of winter. The short days and the cold weather are no friends of mine. But, ah, Spring.

My first sing of Spring was that the amaryllis that my friends Maria and Michael sent me after their November visit started blooming last week. For months I watched the hard bulbs do nothing. Slowly the green shoots started forming and growing. Then, suddenly, a week or so ago, beautiful red flowers appeared. I look at them and smile (and whisper words of thanks for this wonderful gift from my friends).

I love watching the buds forming on the trees, listening to the birds, feeling the warmth in the air (even amid some remaining cold days), and seeing the sunshine. I love that I can take long walks and bicycle rides rather than going to the gym. I look, I listen, I feel – and I smile, and give thanks to God for spring.

I’ve written before of my love of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Not being a poet myself, I share today his poem, Spring:

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.

God in Everything

One of the hallmarks of Ignatian spirituality is that God can be found in all things. God dwells in all of creation; there is nothing that is not dripping with God’s energy. For me one of the best expressions of that is the first line of Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, God’s Grandeur – “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

I posted this poem once before, shortly after I began writing this blog. But, I’m posting it again, because it conveys something the world so desperately needs in troubled times – hope. No matter how badly we fail to “reck his rod”… no matter how much we muck things up, no matter how dark things look, God is still there pouring out His love. The image of the Holy Spirit hovering over the world is one that never fails to lift me.

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.

Thou Mastering Me God!

I just finished reading a novel about Hopkins’ writing of the Wreck of the Deutschland and about the events prompting his writing of it (described on the Recently Read page).  Apart from my enjoyment of the book, it served as an occasion for me to reread the poem itself.  It is a long poem, so I share here only the first verse, which offers a beautiful stand-alone morning meditation.  Read it and just sit for a while with the last line.

Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almsot unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee. 

As an aside, Hopkins determined to give up writing poetry when he entered the Jesuits, believing it to be too individualistic for a Jesuit.  It was this poem that broke his literary silence. 

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

I’ve share before my love of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. I discovered yesterday that a good friend of mine shares my love for Hopkins. While what drew me to Hopkins was God’s Grandeur; for my friend Joe it was As Kingfishers Catch Fire. The last part of the poem, he told me, changed his whole understanding of life. It was reading that poem that helped him realize that we are meant to see Christ in the faces of others.

Here is the poem:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves–goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is–
Christ–for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.