On St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

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On St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

In honour of

St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

Laybrother of the Society of Jesus

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

We crave glory in action, to be seen as victors, crowned with the laurel or the oak and hailed in the streets (or on the Internet).  If we die for a cause, we hope to be immortalized in song and story.  It’s human nature, to want to do brave deeds and to be rewarded for our doing, and we are diligent to reward our heroes.

Gerard Manley Hopkins recognizes this in the first five lines of his sonnet in honor of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez: it’s the warrior’s exploits that we say give off the fire of glory; his “scarred flesh” and “scored shield” should record his deeds as worthy and keep them in memory.  However, he seems to be not completely confident, the phrase “so we say” suggesting that perhaps the assertion is at least open to question:  we say that glory “flames off exploit,” but is this always the case?  Yes, he asserts with confidence, the scars of Christ do indeed bring Him glory, but the scars of the martyrs only “may” do so; it is not a certainty.  

Why his hesitancy to assign this glory to the martyrs? Because there is a kind of battle men engage in that no one sees.  Some martyrs die very public deaths for Christ, their “gashed flesh” a testament to their faith, but “the war within” is unseen and unsung, however intense it may be.  This warrior of the heart carries no tangible sword, wears no steel armor, makes no resounding battle-cry, even  in the “fiercest fray.”  Certainly the world neither sees his scars nor rewards his victories.

But God sees.  The God who created the earth itself with its most immense features – mountains, continents; the God who created the most delicate details of nature – the incremental growth of a tree, the veins of a violet . . . this God sees the inner conflict.  And He cares: He “crowds career with conquest”; He gives victory in these battles, even when they last a lifetime, “years and years” while little else goes on in the world and the warrior merely watches a door which is never challenged.

It was said, Hopkins told his friend Robert Bridges, that Alphonsus Rodriguez was often "bedeviled by evil spirits," but also "much favored by God" with visions of heavenly light.   By all accounts, Alphonsus (1533-1617) had a difficult life.  Recalled from school to take over the family’s thriving textile business in his early 20s, he lost his mother, wife, and daughter in the space of three years, had to sell the business and move into his sister’s home, and then lost his son.  He desired to join the Jesuits but was rejected because of his poor education; at last he was taken in as a lay brother (a lay brother cannot study for the priesthood).  For some 45 years he “watched the door” at the Jesuit college in Majorca, his duties simple and seemingly mundane:  open the door to visitors, take messages, run errands, and distribute alms.

Throughout this time, he was continually beset with inner temptations – the nature of which I have not found described – which drove him to continual prayer.  Perhaps these were temptations to despair and discouragement (look at the losses he endured and his lowly status), perhaps a critical spirit, perhaps far worse.  But they were temptations known only to himself and the few priests in whom he would have confided, as his spiritual director and confessors.

Yet he became a beloved inspiration to the students of the college, who often sought him out for advice and consolation, and who spoke of him with loving admiration throughout their lives; and he became the patron saint of Majorca, where he was known for his love for all – rich, poor, black, white, slave, free.  And those to whom he confessed his temptations chose him to preach sermons to the priests at their meals on feast days because of his good works, done in the faith and prayer that led to his holiness.

He pursued holiness in the midst of temptations by, as he described it, “taking the sweet for the bitter and the bitter for the sweet.”  He would imagine himself before the crucified Lord and consider how much he was loved, how much Christ suffered for him, and that his love for the Lord should lead him to accept his own suffering as a sharing in Christ’s – thus leading the bitterness of suffering to become sweet for Christ’s sake.  At the same time, the world’s sweets – its esteem and pleasures – became bitter in the light of Christ’s love.  This meditation, he wrote, would help his “whole heart [to be] centered solely on God.”  And when the bell rang at the door, he would envision God awaiting entrance and call out, “I’m coming, Lord!” 

Alphonsus’ struggles only became widely known among the Jesuits after his death.  And so Hopkins celebrates, gives honor to, the one whose battle was not seen and honored by the world or even by most of those close to him, and does so in a way to encourage all of us who endure such private struggles.  God, he says, “could crowd career with conquest” – give victories enough to “crowd” one’s entire life – no matter who else sees, gives victories as great as any in literal battles to those who suffer in heart and soul.  Nothing happened while Alphonsus watched the door – no wars, no plagues, no suppressions – just endless errands run and messages delivered . . . but the battle raged and God gave victory throughout the years.

What remarkable encouragement, to be reminded that the world’s honor is not what we need to seek, or our own honor at all.  We should seek the honor of the Lord we serve; after all, the honor we give to Christ and His martyrs is for His sake, not theirs.  But if there are no outward deeds of heroism to be done that may earn outward honor for Him, there are heroic deeds aplenty to accomplish in the depths of our own hearts as we pursue holiness.  And if only our very closest counselors ever know of the struggle, yet God knows and He is pleased with us when we turn to Him in our need and in our gratefulness, so that He may give the victory.

Hope should spring from this realization.  Few of us, in the end, will do great deeds to be memorialized in song; few of us will become well-known martyrs for the faith.  But all of us will battle inner demons: sinful thoughts and desires, discouragement and despair.  While Satan himself may well torment us, even without his harassment there will be plenty to battle.  I find myself so easily leaping to anger, unjustified criticism, guilt true or false, loss of hope.  It is all too easy to give in to these enemies, to dwell on them.

But this is not who I am.  It is who I was, and the patterns reassert themselves when I lose sight of my real identity: a daughter of the King, a servant of the Lord God.  In Him, I am the one who can repent of my sin and seek reconciliation with God and man; I am the one who can offer patient love to one who irritates me; I am the one who sees beauty everywhere, who finds joy in the darkest hours.  I am the one who wakes in the middle of the night with the words “I love you, Father” inexplicably echoing in my mind and heart, and who understands that Christ in me speaks those words – and because I am hidden in Him, cloaked in His love, they are my honest words as well.  

And although too often I am fearfully ensconced in my worldly comfort, I desire to pray with Alphonsus, “Through Your most holy passion and death, I beg of You, Lord, to grant me a most holy life, and a most complete death to all my vices and passions and self-love, and to grant me sight of Your holy faith, hope, and charity."

Certainly, until He returns or I am removed to His presence through death, I will struggle with the sinful and dispiriting patterns of the old man.  But I will struggle:  I will fight the battle and know that victory is already mine – I am made new in Christ who lives in me, and however fiercely the battle rages at times, He is my Champion, and even in this life I may at least begin to see the fruit of refusing to lay down my arms in despair.  No matter what others see or know, I can know that He sees it all, and upholds and strengthens me, and will give me whatever due reward He Himself has earned for me. 

Hopkins Again

A couple of quotes from Gerard Manley Hopkins, and an early poem that I'd not seen before.  Enjoy!

(I capitalize pronouns referring to God though GMH does not, simply to avoid any confusion.)

"It is sad to think what disappointment must many times over have filled your heart for the darling children of your mind.  Nevertheless fame whether won or lost is a thing which lies in the award of a random, reckless, incompetent, and unjust judge, the public, the multitude.  The only just judge, the only just literary critic, is Christ, who prizes, is proud of, and admires, more than any man, more than the receiver himself can, the gifts of His own making . . . ."  (letter to R. W. Dixon, 15 June 1878)

"Also in some meditation today I earnestly asked our Lord to watch over my compositions, not to preserve them from being lost or coming to nothing, for that I am very willing they should be, but that they might not do me harm through the enmity or imprudence of any man or my own; that He should have them as His own and employ or not employ them as He would see fit.  And this I believe is heard." (Retreat, 8 September 1883)

"The Habit of Perfection"
(sometime during 1864-1868)

Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.

Be shelled, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide 
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

"World without Event"

It was said, Gerard Manley Hopkins told his friend Robert Bridges, that Alphonsus Rodriguez, porter in a Majorcan monastery, was "bedeviled by evil spirits" throughout his life, but also "much favored by God" with visions of heavenly light.  For the saint's feast day, Hopkins wrote the following sonnet.

In Honour of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

Glory is a flame off exploit, so we say,

And those fell strokes that once scarred flesh, scored shield,

Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,

Record, and on the fighter forge the day.

On Christ they do, they on the martyr may;

But where war is within, what sword we wield

Not seen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,

Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet, he that hews out mountain, continent,

Earth, all, at last; who with fine increment

Trickling, veins violets and tall trees makes more

Could crowd career with conquest while there went

Those years and years by of world without event

That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

We crave glory in action – to be seen as victors, awarded the laurel or the oak and hailed in the streets (or on the Internet).  If we die for a cause, we hope to be immortalized in song and story. It’s human nature, to want to do brave deeds and to be rewarded for our doing.

Hopkins recognizes this in the first five lines of the sonnet: it’s the warrior’s exploits that we say give off the fire of glory; his “scarred flesh” and “scored shield” should record his deeds and keep them in memory.  However, he seems to be not completely confident, the phrase “so we say” suggesting that perhaps the assertion is at least open to question:  we say that glory “flames off exploit,” but is this always the case?  Yes, he asserts with confidence, the scars of Christ do indeed bring Him glory, but the scars of the martyrs only “may” do so – and glory from literal war is perhaps even less sure.  

Why his hesitancy to assign glory to the exploits of literal battle? Because there is another kind of battle men engage in that no one sees but that is no less important – and perhaps more so.  “The war within” is unseen and unsung by other men, no matter how intense it may be.  This warrior of the heart carries no tangible sword, wears no steel armor, makes no resounding battle-cry, even  in the “fiercest fray.”  Certainly the world neither sees his scars nor rewards his victories.

But God sees.  The God who created the earth itself with its most magnificent features – mountains, continents; the God who created the most delicate details of nature – the growth of trees, the veins of a violet . . . this God sees the inner conflict.  And He cares: He “crowds career with conquest”; He gives victory in these battles, even when they last a lifetime, “years and years” while little else goes on in the world and the warrior merely watches a door which is never challenged.

Hope should spring from this realization.  Few of us, in the end, will do great deeds to be memorialized in song; few of us will become well-known martyrs for the faith.  But all of us will battle inner demons: sinful thoughts and desires, discouragement and despair.  While Satan himself may well torment us, even without his harassment there will be plenty to battle.  I find myself so easily leaping to anger, unjustified criticism, guilt true or false, loss of hope.  It is all too easy to give in to these enemies, to dwell on them.

But this is not who I am.  It is who I was, and the patterns reassert themselves when I lose sight of my real identity: a daughter of the King, a servant of the Lord God.  In Him, I am the one who can repent of my sin and seek reconciliation with God and man; I am the one who can offer patient love to one who irritates me; I am the one who sees beauty everywhere, who finds joy in the darkest hours.  I am the one who wakes in the middle of the night with the words “I love you, Father,” inexplicably echoing in my mind and heart, and who understands that Christ in me speaks those words – and because I am hidden in Him, cloaked in His love, they are my honest words as well.  

Certainly, until He returns or I am removed to His presence through death, I will struggle with the sinful and dispiriting patterns of the old man.  But I will struggle:  I will fight the battle and know that victory is already mine – I am made new in Christ who lives in me, and however fiercely the battle rages at times, He is my Champion, and even in this life I may at least begin to see the fruit of refusing to lay down my arms in despair.  No matter what others see or know, I can know that He sees it all, and upholds and strengthens me, and will give me whatever due reward He Himself has earned for me. 

Matt 6:6 But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

"Let joy size"

I have been either too early or too late for sunrises lately, or they have been obscured by stormy clouds and rain.  This morning, as I approached the turn onto the old ferry road from home, I was greeted by a riot of purples and pinks between the peaks of the hills, announcing the sun's coming, and my heart, inclined at times to despair for no given reason, lifted in the joy of God's beauty.  A Hopkins phrase came to mind -- "between pie mountains" -- and I looked it up when I arrived at the office.  The poem, one of the Sonnets of  Desolation, is more than apropos:

My own heart let me have more 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
Between pie mountains--lights a lovely mile.

Oh, I haven't been in that utter of despair for quite some time, but I feel it coming on here and there, and more here than not lately.  These past few days have threatened more than rain, and I've been in a constant coping mode, hoping to hold it off, trying to quiet the brain from its churning, mindless repetitions and noise.  There's no cause; it just is.  But this beauty of the skies this morning, heralding the light of dawn, being the smile of God, "let joy size" in an "unforeseen time" -- "as skies / Between pie mountains -- [lit] a lovely mile." 

"Dearest freshness deep down things . . ."

It’s one of those mornings.  Gloomy, rainy, cold for the second week in a row, exacerbating the fibromyalgia and arthritis.  Too little sleep.  Many people I love dearly facing deep, life-challenging problems and nothing one can do to help but cry with, pray for, let the heart ache. 

Then, coming up the drive to campus, movement in front of the chapel.  Odd, at first, coming out of shadow and fog, but resolving into the graceful form of a doe leading her yearling fawn, stretching to full speed to make it across the road and into the grassy field before the beast with the too-bright eyes could cause them harm. 

Beauty, beauty, beauty.

In all our brokenness and despair, He keeps giving us beauty to remind us of His presence and His care for this world He created.  Hopkins says it best, as always:

God's Grandeur

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.

Lord, may we always cling to Your Truth and be open to Your beauty in this world, broken though it is, allowing You to remind us of Your great love for us, whatever appearances may be at any given time. 

Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever will be, world without end.  Amen.

SuperMoon

This is the closest the moon has been to the earth in 18 years, and the closest it ever gets -- called a supermoon. We stood on the porch and watched it rising behind the clouds, astounding beauty in the night sky. The world seems to be going up in flames, but we can't destroy God's creation, no matter how hard we seem to try . . . I am reminded again of Gerard Manley Hopkins:

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.

Choosing His Light

I’ve been dragging myself about all the summer thus far, weary and wearier, longing for sleep (except even good sleep doesn’t help), just wanting to feel half-way normal and genuinely rested. I spend a lot of time tired even at my best; I have never had much energy, even when I was young. But this has been extraordinarily severe.

So I took stock the other day and decided I should be grateful that I’m on my feet at all. (My partial stock-taking list is below if you’re really interested. I’m selfish enough to post it, but you needn’t be so masochistic as to pay it any heed.)

I know that everyone is busy, and to many I’m sure my list would look small enough and I seem quite sluggish to find it too much. But combine it all with chronic pain and difficulty sleeping (and exhausted, burning eyes), and for me and the level of energy I am endowed with . . . . well, it is too much and I begin to feel hopelessly overwhelmed.

I’ve just finished Paul Mariani’s biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poor man was responsible for grading thousands of exams every year in classical languages for university entrance, on top of his teaching. He was always exhausted; of course, he may have been ill with Crohn’s disease, unknown in his day – that, combined with typhoid, probably caused his death at 44. But what struck me in the biography (so much of which makes remarkable use of Hopkins’ own words) was this sense of never-ending exhaustion. A holiday – a genuine holiday of no work at his schoolmaster’s tasks – would revive him remarkably, but within a week or two of return to exams and classes he would be worn down again.

And this weariness and overwhelming work kept him from the writing he loved; he seems to have had far more unfinished projects and ideas for projects in his 44 years than the hundreds that languish in my own drawers and the corners of my mind with over a decade more to concoct them. Of course, he was a genius, and his genius seemed to be slowly wasted away in grading schoolboys’ Latin translations.

He complained of this at times to dear friends. But they and all others who knew him spoke of him invariably as a man who loved life, who laughed, who gave generously and kindly of his time and his mind, who lifted the spirits of those around him. His poetry, of course, explains why: even in the very darkest of the Terrible Sonnets, he cannot waver in his knowledge of God’s love for him; he cannot waver from his obedience no matter how onerous and purposeless it might seem. And he keeps coming back, in his yearly meditations and in his sermons and in his poetry, to this: it is not I who name myself and choose my work, it is God.

Some say of Hopkins – certainly his friend Bridges did, and I’ve read contemporary critics who agree – that he was indeed wasted by the Jesuits, his genius destroyed in make-work, his life itself cut short by their not understanding who and what he was. How much more he could have given us, they say, had he lived in honored ease and into old age. Perhaps. But the poems that mean the most to us were wrought of great weariness of body and soul, out of despair that arose directly from his circumstances. Would some larger body of work created in an easier life carry as much value for us today, would he speak to us as he does if he had never known despair and weariness and yet clung to his Lord in faith and hope?

Well, he is my hero, all the more so now that I know yet more of his life. I pray to struggle on with the burning eyes and the weariness and the chronic pain and, yes, the all-too-often despair, to struggle on, as Mother Teresa prayed, with “a hearty Yes to God and a big smile for all.” If life seems hard to me, how much harder for such as these and for so many, many others – and surely I can find the strength in His strength for the simple yes and the heartfelt smile in the midst of my own such lesser trials. I fall so short: I am part of a broken humanity in a broken world and I demand to name myself. Yet His name for me, the story He has written for me, is enough, if I find the faith to live that truth and not merely know it. "Come be My light," Mother Teresa heard Jesus call to her; I long to desire that call, to desire to be His reflected light in the darkness of this world, no matter what of light or dark may be mine.

_____________________

(for those who might care: what taking stock reminded me of)

* I haven’t had a break from work since last August: Fall Break and Christmas break I spent developing the online course of the second semester of freshman composition; Spring Break I spent developing the online course of Intro to Lit.

* I taught the online comp course in the spring, as an overload above my four regular courses – the first time I’d ever taught online. The learning curve and the time investment in discussions and feedback was far more time- and energy-intensive than just a normal overload, even though the class number was small. And I was involved in intense committee work and department changes which took both time and emotional energy. (Same committee work in the fall; I don’t remember much else from that semester except that it was harried, very harried.)

* Spring semester I became very ill from an infected tooth; lost two weeks of teaching that had to be made up for and didn’t feel physically recovered for a month or more.

* My daddy went into hospice care in March. I reworked all my classes to complete them before finals week so we could leave as early as possible to visit with him.

* We drove to Texas and back, gone for only a little over a week – exhausting physically and emotionally. I worked every day during that time on finishing up the development of the Intro to Lit, and got home the day before the course actually began. I’ve been working on it hours a day every day since, with two more weeks to go.

* I’m also reading new texts for preparation of one completely new course, one nearly completely new course, and one old course with almost completely new books, all of which spin in the mind constantly. I’ve created the tentative schedule for one of these (the two sections of our new freshman comp I’ll be teaching in my 5-course load). I’ve exchanged innumerable emails over departmental business because of the changes made last spring.

* I ought to be hemming our curtains and doing some legal research and editing a colleague’s dissertation. Because I’m not, these weigh on the mind and create the weariness of guilt. And I’m obligated to revise the online comp course for the fall semester and I wonder if I will get so much as one full week of not working before the new round – 5 classes! – begins again in August. After all, July is almost here.

Another New Love

I love finding new poets whose works I think I shall love.

My Paul Mariani biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins arrived today. I have read the acknowledgments, the first paragraph of the first chapter, and a poem of Mariani's dedicated to Hopkins . . . and I've fallen in love with Mariani, who will, I have no doubt, make me fall in love with Hopkins all over again.

Kendall sent me a picture of a kingfisher ("As kingfishers catch fire") from the November 2009 National Geographic. Here a couple of links to the article and its photos. This is, of course, the "fisher" to which Mariani's poem below refers.

Here's the dedication poem by Mariani that opens the book (those who are familiar with Hopkins will especially appreciate it):

Hopkins in Ireland
for the Jesuit community at Boston College

Above the bluebleak priest the brightblue fisher hovers.
The priest notes the book upon the table, the lamp beside the book.
A towering Babel of papers still to grade, and that faraway look
as once more the mind begins to wander. Ah, to creep beneath the covers

of the belled bed beckoning across the room. He stops, recovers,
takes another sip of bitter tea, then winces as he takes another look
at the questions he has posed his students and the twists they took
to cover up their benighted sense of Latin. The fisher hovers

like a lit match closer to him. The windows have all been shut against
the damp black Dublin night. After all these years, his collar chokes
him still, in spite of which he wears it like some outmoded mark
of honor, remembering how his dear Ignatius must have sensed
the same landlocked frustrations. Again he lifts his pen. His strokes
lash out against the dragon din of error. The fisher incandesces in the dark.

"Beauty, Beauty, Beauty"

Something I wrote a few days ago:

We arrive on the college grounds before dawn, in mist that has required a slow but steady clicking of windshield wipers. Seen from my office suite's third-floor windows, the dark fog clinging to the trees and wavering over the lawn makes the quad appear submerged in a faerie sea. Later, as the sun rises, the fog thickens and whitens. On my way to class, I pause beneath an ancient pine between buildings: five feet away all is blurred, suffused into the mist, while the tree's rough trunk, its nearest branches with their baby cones, the cracks in the sidewalk, the browning of still-green December grass, all sharpen into relief and startle with a vividness lost in the past weeks' dull wintery grays. "Beauty, beauty, beauty." How can I so often find myself believing that God has abandoned this world He creates and loves, or the image-bearers with whom He has peopled it? "The dearest freshness deep down things" is always pressing its way up to prove me wrong.

Exiles

I got books this last week, and immediately devoured Exiles by Ron Hansen. It is a fictionalized account of Gerard Manley Hopkins' life paralleled with the lives of the five nuns who died in the shipwreck of the Deutschland, about which Hopkins wrote one of his most compelling poems.

The book's title reflects the fact that both Hopkins and the five nuns were in some sense exiles. The nuns were sailing from Germany to England and then to the U.S. at least in part because their religion and work was being suppressed by the Falk Laws against Roman Catholicism in Germany. Hopkins made himself an exile in one sense by converting to Roman Catholicism in an England which still despised and to some degree discriminated against Catholics (university degrees were not available to Catholics, for example, except from Catholic institutions); his conversion also cost him at least some fellowship with his family, although they did not disown him. His constant moving about by command of the Jesuit order which he entered was another form of exile, especially when his final move took him away from his beloved England to Ireland, where he died. In addition, Hansen suggests that he was in some sense exiled from his natural gift for poetry because of his vocational choice.

Hopkins was tremendously moved by the accounts he read of the wreck of the Deutschland, and especially by the deaths of the five nuns, one of whom was said to have cried out "O Christ, come quickly!" as passenger after passenger succumbed in various ways to the cold weather and the icy water. His poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, imagines both the terror of the wreck, with many details gleaned from his reading, and the faith and hope of the nuns lost in it, as well as containing the story of his own faith. It is a magnificent poem, and it is especially important because it is the first complete effort in his experimental sprung rhythm -- which is quite likely the reason it was refused publication.

The book works very well at some levels. Hansen uses many of Hopkins' own words, from his poetry, his journals, and his letters; he does this explicitly but often simply merges them into the text, creating a stab of unexpected delight when the reader recognizes some loved phrase. He tells the two stories alternately within each chapter. The first couple of times he switched I found startling, but grew used to it quickly. The part of Hopkins' story that he tells, he tells well. There is a good deal of information about Hopkins available, and he stays true to this, making the scenes he creates ring true to what we know of the man already.

Next to nothing is actually known about the five nuns besides their names, so Hansen has pretty much free play here, and he creates five intriguing characters with very different lifestories, personalities, and motivations. He doesn't sugarcoat them -- they have their flaws -- but at the same time he shows a realistic commitment to their vocation.

However, when I finished the book I was left with a sense of incompleteness. It is true that Hopkins was a melancholic man who suffered from severe depression much of his adult life. The "terrible sonnets" reveal this to us as well as his journal, his letters, and second-party sources. Yet this was not the whole of the man, and Hansen only alludes to the hope and joy that his work also shows us. Yes, he gives some scenes and descriptions of Hopkins the genial colleague and friend, and Hopkins' dying words -- "I am so happy!" But the emphasis in the second half of the book is so much on the darkness that one could easily believe that Hopkins was simply a miserable person who had missed his true calling -- a suggestion at least hinted at in a long paragraph interlude speculating on how his life might have been so much better (and longer) had he not become a priest.

I do not believe that the body of Hopkins' work supports this idea, nor do I think it is our place to suggest that he should have led an easier life and given us more poetry. Perhaps, in fact, he could not have given us the remarkable work that he did had he lived an easier life. In any case, it seems to have been Hopkins' own very clear sense that he was living as he had been called to live, that God -- though at times He seemed far away and even uncaring -- was at all times his Friend and Father and Lord, and that disappointments and adversities were simply part of the refining process required of all of us. I wish that Hansen had shown this; I wish that he had emphasized the Hopkins that we see in the "sonnets of consolation" which Hansen barely mentions as having been written after the "terrible sonnets."

This same sense of darkness seems to permeate the story of the five nuns. Although he presents them as women of faith, true to their vocation, with prayer and meditation as an integral part of their lives, still they come across somehow as not particularly hopeful, meeting death stoically perhaps, but not especially with Christ in mind or a joy to meet Him. I don't know if Hansen was afraid to create plaster saints -- always a danger in writing about faith -- but in avoiding that danger it seems to me he has struck the opposite, offering us a stoicism that could be seen in many who do not have the hope of Christ at all.

Still and all, I will seriously consider assigning this book the next time I teach a course in Hopkins. It's reasonably well-written, and offers a perspective to be considered alongside Hopkins' own work and factual biographies of him. It might also be an interesting book to use in a creative writing course, given the two different sets of information and how Hansen uses and transforms each of them into fictional biography.

Wrestling with God, Again

I have been thinking a great deal about the nature of suffering the past couple of years. Lately, a number of young women have come through my door to ask me about depression, many of them having been told that they must "snap out of it," or "get right with the Lord," so that they can be happy.

Depression is my own most intimate knowledge of suffering. I am not a counselor, only a listening empathetic ear, but I do know this: the suffering of depression is not sin. One may, of course, choose to sin in response to that suffering (as I have so terribly, far too many times), but the suffering is not sin.

We tend, I think, to see it as such because, as Christians, we are told that we must rejoice. But joy and happiness are not the same thing. One can be most unhappy and still have joy. The key for the one who suffers from depression is learning where that joy lies and how to cling to it in the midst of depression's sadness and even despair, knowing the difference between the suffering of depression and the truth of God's love for us.

I love the scene in Lord of the Rings when Pippin and Gandalf are standing together on the walls of Minas Tirith looking out over the rising darkness from Mordor that threatens to engulf all of Middle Earth; they do not yet know whether Frodo is still alive or Sauron has recovered the Ring. Pippin looks at Gandalf: "In the wizard's face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that underneath there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to burst forth."

And Hopkins, of course, in even the most terrible of the Terrible Sonnets, always seeing the spark of hope that is his salvation, knowing that the One who seems to be his enemy is in truth his Friend, and crying out to Him, even his cries of anguish a form of worship, however deep his despair.

And the star in the darkness above Mordor that gives Sam the hope that carries him through the last terrible days of their ordeal, reminding him that above the darkness is something greater and eternal, that the darkness, however long it may last and whatever evil it may accomplish, is still only for a moment in comparison to beauty.

Depression may come once, twice, or last a lifetime. But all of us suffer in this world, one way or another. What will we do with it, and will we let it overwhelm the beauty that objectively still surrounds us? In "When Roses Speak, I Pay Attention," Mary Oliver writes that the roses tell us, "Listen, / the heart-shackles are not, as you think, / death, illness, pain, / unrequited hope, not loneliness, but / lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety, / selfishness."

The first things she names come to all of us, whether we will or no. We can choose -- though the choice can be extremely difficult at times -- not to wallow in the latter ones. May the Lord bring to us the friends and counselors we need to help us learn how to make that choice, not be too hard on ourselves when we inevitably fail (repent and go on living without wallowing in guilt, either; He knows our frame and has already forgiven), and daily draw closer to Him in whatever suffering He allows for our refinement.

"Why?" Hopkins asks in "Carrion Comfort" of the suffering given him. "That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear."

I pray, with fear and trembling, for clear grain, Lord, to serve You with.

On Being Complete

A Hopkins sonnet:

In the Valley of the Elwy

I remember a house where all were good
To me, God knows, deserving no such thing;
Comforting smell breathed at very entering,
Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.

That cordial air made these kind people a hood
All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing
Will, or mild nights the new morsels of Spring:
Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.

Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,
All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;
Only the inmate does not correspond:

God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,
Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,
Being mighty a master, being father and fond.

**********
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. -- Phil. 1:6

Considering the Lilies

Chambers’ May 18 meditation reminds me of Hopkins’ “As kingfishers catch fire”:

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they simply are! Think of the sea, the air, the sun, the stars and the moon – all these are, and what a ministration they exert.”

Chambers goes on to apply this to our frequent “self-conscious effort[s] to be consistent and useful” and reminds us that “[w]e cannot get at the springs of our natural life by common sense, and Jesus is teaching that growth in spiritual life does not depend on our watching it, but on concentrating on our Father in heaven. [. . .] [I]f we keep concentrated on Him we will grow spiritually as the lilies.”

This is so simple and yet so hard to do! I am having the most difficulty in looking at that long to-do list and frantically trying to figure out when to do what and wondering how I will get it all done and looking at who and what are depending on my actions . . . and I keep forgetting that none of it, in the end, is actually dependent on me, but on Him. And so if I am frantically doing without listening to the One who desires to direct me, I may do far more damage than good in all my attempts at usefulness.

“The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould us. If you want to be of use to God, get rightly related to Jesus Christ and He will make you of use unconsciously every minute you live.”

So true. One must hear the words to understand why such people live in faith, but too often the words, and the deeds, are not flowing out of love for Him but a misplaced need to earn His approval.

I want to learn to listen . . . and listening is my weakest point. I can only be grateful that He knows our frame, that He holds us and that our life in Him is itself dependent on His abounding and never-failing love and not on our perfection in responding to it.

Clinging to Hope

For J and others whom I specially love and pray for

{Please note that I am speaking here of day by day coping. Many people need medication to help with this, and it is always wise to seek counsel from those who can help an individual to understand particular needs. But even with such help, the sufferer of depression may still sometimes find himself in the darkness. My prayer is that what I say here may be an encouragement – not a prescription.}


“Spleen LXXXI”

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit aching for the light
And all the wide horizon’s line is hid
By a black day sadder than any night;

When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank
Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering
And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank,
Bruises his tender head and timid wing;

When like grim prison bars stretch down the thin,
Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain,
And the dumb throngs of the infamous spiders spin
Their meshes in the caverns of the brain,

Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air,
Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky
As ‘twere a band of homeless spirits who fare
Through a strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.

And hearses, without drum or instrument,
File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful,
Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent,
Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.

– Charles Baudelaire

Anyone who has been struck with depression will recognize it here. Yet it cannot be understood without being experienced; and no one who has experienced it would wish it on others just for the sake of understanding. Those who read these words and wonder why anyone would write so darkly, wonder if it isn’t mere affectation, a pretentious show of fashionable angst – they are indeed blessed. As Hopkins says in “No worst, there is none,” the mind “has mountains; cliffs of fall / Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap / May who ne’er hung there.”

Yet this insidious fog must not be allowed to hold sway even as it enshrouds heart, mind, soul. It must be resisted, even if it seems impossible. “Do the next thing.” Then, “do the next thing.” The simple getting out of bed, putting on clean clothes and making oneself neat, making the bed, eating breakfast, speaking to a friend . . . These are the very things that seem impossible, yet hold within them hope. For by refusing to give in, to hide in sleep or slovenliness or isolation, we declare that hope, however dim or distant, is not dead.

Hopkins writes in “Carrion Comfort”:

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.

Even as he questions God – why are You doing this to me, the middle stanza cries out in agony – he refuses to give in to despair. He sees that he can act, even if that acting is simply to hope that the light will come again, merely to hold onto life until his hope is justified. And when he emerges from the despair of many months, he is able to see a little of what his God, whom he questioned but never ceased to trust and love, had accomplished in his life:

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, cheer.
Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trod
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.

Even as God had, as it seemed, flung him to the ground and trod on him, even as he had fought Him throughout those darkest weeks and months, he was being threshed like wheat to rid him of the chaff, to better serve the God he loved despite the despair he felt, despite the sense that God was ignoring or even actively and deliberately hurting him. He emerges from the darkness rejoicing, and realizing with awe that he has indeed wrestled – like Jacob – with God Himself, and found a blessing.

In the darkness, do not be afraid to cling to Him. “I will not let You go until You bless me,” Jacob told his Adversary. And because he did not lose faith, did not give up, because he persisted like the woman before the unjust judge, he was indeed blessed – and, remember, marked as well. We do not emerge unscathed – only with a deeper trust of and joy in our Savior, who loves us enough to sift us like wheat until our grain lies “sheer and clear.”

And, too, with a deeper sense of compassion and desire to comfort others with the comfort with which He has comforted us. Even as Hopkins, from years long past, ministers to us through both his despair and his hope, we will be better able to help those whose lives He entrusts to us. Whether this depression is once and gone or a thorn in the flesh all our lives, if we cling to hope, we glorify Him and serve our neighbor.

So hold to hope. Do the next thing. Seek, demand His blessing as you cling to Him. And know that He is with you, however you may feel, and will make you able to show Him to others.

The Inscape of Suffering

I am not Catholic, but I have often appreciated Pope John Paul’s articulate and eloquent stand for righteousness in a world gone amok, and I mourn his passing with the rest of the world.

In these last days before his death, I have mostly been drawn to consider the nature of suffering. As a Christian, I understand that suffering entered the world with sin, and that there will be no dearth of it till Christ’s return. Scripture tells us that suffering benefits us: we learn to trust and rely on our God; we learn perseverance; we learn humility; we learn compassion. But in our humanness, we do not really want these benefits at the cost we must pay.

I have read that Pope John Paul would often refuse painkillers because he said it was his call to suffer for the world. I didn’t understand that at first, but I think I am beginning to grasp a little of what it means.

Pope John Paul accepted his suffering. He didn’t resist it, complain of it, try to avoid it at all costs and at all times. He accepted it. He demonstrated to us the life of the suffering servant; he shone forth Christ to us. Christ suffered to save us. Pope John Paul suffered to show us how to accept suffering and allow God to turn it to our good.

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of the essence of all beings in his sonnet “As kingfishers catch fire.” Kingfishers’ and dragonflies’ wings flash in the sun, stones ring on the well’s rim, bells peal their notes . . . They cannot help but do what they were created to do, to play out the “inscape” of their being. And we were created for a purpose, too:

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.

What if we learned to accept suffering as Pope John Paul did? How much more deeply might we touch the lives of those around us to show forth Christ and draw men to Him?