Gerard Manley Hopkins

And I Was Alive (With a Shard of Glass in the Gut): A Week with Christian Wiman

by David Zahl on May 21, 2013 • 1 Comment

What a rare and inspiring privilege it was to be with poet and author Christian Wiman last week. I for one am still reeling–don’t know how it could have possibly been any richer. Thankfully, like his poetry in Every Riven Thing and his prose in My Bright Abyss, the talks he gave here in Charlottesville defy distillation. They require real attention–and while one might expect as much from an artist of his caliber and quality, still, the anticipation of poetic brilliance doesn’t make it any less arresting when you actually experience it.

Which is not to imply that a portion of…

Poetry / Theology

Hope Holds to Christ – Gerard Manley Hopkins

by WB on Oct 4, 2012 • No Comments

Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out
To take His lovely likeness more and more.
It will not well, so she would bring about
An ever brighter burnish than before
And turns to wash it from her welling eyes
And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs.
Her glass is blest but she as good as blind
Holds till hand aches and wonders what is there;
Her glass drinks light, she darkles down behind,
All of her glorious gainings unaware.

I told you that she turned her mirror dim
Betweenwhiles, but she sees herself not Him.

Though the ins and outs of this poem’s meaning are elusive, we’ll…

Poetry / Suffering

A Sonnet from Gerard Manley Hopkins

by Ethan Richardson on Sep 5, 2012 • 2 Comments

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
‘s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather–as skies
Betweenpie mountains–lights a lovely mile.

Poetry

A Monday Word From Gerard Manley Hopkins

by Ethan Richardson on Jul 2, 2012 • No Comments

From his masterpiece, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” Part One.

Be adored among men,
God, three-numbered form;
Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,
Man’s malice, with wrecking and storm.
Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,
Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm;
Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:
Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.

Poetry / Suffering

A Wednesday Sonnet from Gerard Manley Hopkins

by Ethan Richardson on Feb 15, 2012 • No Comments

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist–slack they may be–these last strands of man
In me or, 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 bruised 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…

Poetry

A Monday Sonnet from Gerard Manley Hopkins

by Ethan Richardson on Nov 7, 2011 • 1 Comment

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
‘s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather–as skies
Betweenpie mountains–lights a lovely mile.

Grace in Practice / News / Politics

Mark Souder and The Case For Grace

by David Zahl on Jun 7, 2010 • 6 Comments

A compelling editorial by Michael Gerson of The Washington Post, using the recent Mark Souder scandal as a jumping off point for a sympathetic look at the human condition and our need for mercy (ht JS).

The failure of human beings to meet their own ideals does not disprove or discredit those ideals. The fact that some are cowards does not make courage a myth. The fact that some are faithless does not make fidelity a joke. All moral standards create the possibility of hypocrisy. But I would rather live among those who recognize standards and…

Books / Religion / Reviews

Roose’s Ruse

by DPotter on Apr 23, 2009 • 2 Comments

An article by Eric Tucker on today’s AP wire discusses Kevin Roose, a young man who transferred from Brown University to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in order to write a book about his experience. In his recently released, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, Roose describes how his stereotypes about the university as a hothouse of “hostile ideologues who spent all their time plotting abortion clinic protests and sewing Hillary Clinton voodoo dolls” eventually gave way to an amazing shift in his opinion of Christians.

Apart from the fact that the Liberty rulebook was unable to change…