Inscape

Poets are often difficult to understand, but Manley Gerard Hopkins may excel them all, for he delights in inventing new words, or recycling arcane terms that have dropped out of the English language. In a letter to a friend he explains his poetic style as “the current language heightened, but unlike itself,” and adds, “No doubt my poetry errs on the side of oddness.”

This oddness is largely a reflection of two ideas that permeate his poetry, one he describes as “instress,” the other as “inscape.”

Instress is a term Hopkins coined, borrowed in part from poet Percy Shelley who writes of the, ”One Spirit's plastic stress (that) / Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there / All new successions to the forms they wear; / Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight / To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;/ And bursting in its beauty and its might / From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.”

Shelley’s point is that God’s spirit informs all creation, compelling the “dull, dense world”—indeed, stressing and “torturing” its “unwilling dross,” into forms that reflect his likeness, working against the resistance of entropy and creation’s “bondage to decay”[1] to create the beauty we see around us. Despite a broken creation God has written his goodness and wisdom large in the universe for all who have eyes to see.

In this, both Shelley and Hopkins echo George MacDonald’s idea that “the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them.  The show of things…is the face of far deeper things than they [themselves].  It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths.  What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them.”

Put another way, all three poets—Hopkins, Shelley and MacDonald—echo the biblical assertion that visible creation reveals the invisible attributes of God.[2] Nature, as well as scripture is the manuscript of God. 

Hopkins’ “inscape,” on the other hand, is the “look” of things when we take the time to look into them. (Our suffix, “scape,” as in landscape and seascape, is from a Greek root skopos that means “a scene” or “something seen.” Inscape, thus is ”looking into,” or “insight.”) Inscape, is learning “to look through the outward look of things to their deepest meaning. Thus, in Hopkins’ poetry, speckled trout, multi-colored skies, finches’ wings reveal God’s multi–faceted love; drifting clouds are his playful jottings on the chalkboard of the sky, gracing the heavens to delight us and show his delight in his children. Every tree is an incarnation; every bush is a burning bush. Of a bluebell Hopkins writes, “I know the beauty of the Lord by it.” All creation leads us to a deeper appreciation for the One who is the source of all beauty, truth and goodness. Its loveliness hints of something higher that calls us to worship and adoration.

The old philosophers tell us that beauty is a real idea that exists apart from the material world; it is one of three “transcendentals”—truth and goodness being the other two. The good, the true and the beautiful lie beyond us, they said, but are essential to our being. There's a logical order to the three: Objectively, truth manifests itself as goodness, which in turn is beautiful when you see it. Our subjective perception of the three, however, is the other way around: beauty leads us to goodness and goodness leads us to Truth, i.e., to God himself and thus to awe—to praise and worship of the one who made all things beautiful and who is himself the most beautiful of all.

Hopkins’ poetry reflects the tension we feel between these sudden insights—the beauty of God that we see in nature—and our inability to articulate our insights, to convey that understanding to others. There is, in the higher forms of beauty, something mystical that fills us with delightful fear and unspeakable awe, something beyond what can be explained. Words fail us. As folk wisdom has it, “Such things are better felt than telt.”[3]

This is the explanation for Hopkins’ “oddness.” It lies in his efforts to convey something he has felt: he sees such things as a “dapple-dawn-drawn falcon,” or refers to a “rolling level underneath him steady air”—rambling efforts to put “inscape” into words.

That being said, some explanation of Hopkins’ poetry is in order, recognizing, of course, that explaining a poem is like explaining a joke in that it takes away the serendipity, the happy surprise that comes from self-discovery. Here, however, is one of Hopkin's better–known poems, “Pied (Variegated) Beauty,” and my explanation to whet your appetite.


Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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.

Hopkins’ poem is bracketed by the two mottoes of Saint Ignatius of Loyola: “To the greater glory of God,” and “Praise be to God always.” (In Jesuit seminaries it was customary for students to write the mottoes at the beginning and end of every exercise.)

He opens with his thesis: the pied beauty of nature—it’s dappled, mottled, checkered appearance that he illustrates with examples.

First the poet sees “skies of couple-color,” the many hues of the heavens, which he compares to brindled (mottled) cows. Then, looking into a stream, he sees a trout with rose-colored moles, “all in stipple” (variegated spots).

Then Hopkins sees chestnuts fallen to the ground, broken open, revealing the brown nut within like a “fire-coal”—a kaleidoscopic, glowing ember. Then he notes the flashes of iridescent color in a finch’s wings.

He looks at a countryside lying like a patchwork quilt. Some fields are folds for sheep, others lie fallow, others are under the “plow,” being prepared for planting.

Finally he remembers the haphazard arrangement of “gear, tackle and trim” on sailing ships, the work of human hands.

Hopkins is intrigued by the rarity and strangeness of things that make one thing stand out from the other. Created things are fickle (irregular) and freckled (random), as in contrasting opposites: “swift–slow; sweet-sour; adazzle-dim.”

Then the poet asks: “Who knows how?” (God’s question of Job.) His conclusion is that this ever–changing freshness and originality has its source in the Fatherly affection of one “whose beauty is past change.” Everything beautiful comes fresh from the hand of God. Thus Hopkins’ coda: Praise Him! The only appropriate response to such beauty is to kneel.[4]

This notion of singularity and uniqueness appears in many of Hopkins’ poems, for he was writing in reaction to the moral philosophers of his day that stressed abstract universals, rather than particulars. (Like those who “love humanity,” but hate the human being next door.) Hopkins believed that God is still creating the world and everything in it, shaping each individual component as it emerged, as a unique and special expression of his wisdom, goodness and love.

Thus every new emergence—every blade of grass, every butterfly, every billowing cloud, every spot and halo on a brown trout’s body—is a fresh and unique creation invented out of God’s wisdom and excitement and hand–crafted by his artistry. He paints each pansy as it emerges in the spring, he colors every leaf in the fall. Every sunrise is a new creation; every sunset a grand climax. God ponders every act of creation, and the whole business begins all over again, the business of creation that began “in the beginning,” and is still going on to this day. Thus, as on that first day, with each new creation we may “shout for joy with the sons of God and sing together with the morning stars.”[5]

“Morning has broken like the first morning; blackbird has spoken like the first bird.” What can we say, but “Huzzah!” “Hallelujah” “Praise Him!”

DHR

[1] Cf. Romans 8:21. Creation is tragically conflicted and dangerous because it has fallen from the ideal, but the book of Job tells us that God has placed “boundaries” on cruel and capricious nature to control its destructive forces (Job 38:10). Without this restraint tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and tornadoes would sweep us off the earth in the span of a day. The notable thing is not that there are natural disasters, but that there are so few. And despite the ruin of creation God has marked the world with his extravagant love.

[2] “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1); “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

 [3] Samuel Coleridge made the same point in an essay in which he recalled the reaction of two tourists admiring a waterfall. One thought it was “pretty,” the other considered it “sublime”—so awe-inspiringly beautiful that it evoked reverence. Coleridge thought the latter sentiment preferable.

[4] In my favorite fairy tale, George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind, the little girl, Nanny, stares in wonder out of the window in the moon at the “great blue beautifulness” of the sky. “Ain’t you done yet?” asks the Old Man in the Moon. “Done what?” she answers. “Done saying your prayers,” says he. “I warn’t saying my prayers,” she replies. “Yes you were,” he insists, “though you didn’t know it.”

[5] Job 38:7

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“It Doesn’t Hurt Like Nails”

I have a friend who spent several months researching the implements used in Roman crucifixions and determined that the iron nails with which victims were fastened to the cross were 6”-7” long and 1/2” wide at the broad end, only slightly smaller than a modern railroad spike. Subsequently, he hand–forged several of these nails, based on Roman dimensions, and sent them to a few friends. One rests on my desk, a harsh reminder of the pain our Lord endured.

  

I glance at that spike now and then and think of another friend who endured a series of back operations, none of which relieved his suffering. Chronic, throbbing pain became his constant companion. I asked him once how he dealt with his discomfort. He muttered in reply, “It doesn’t hurt like nails.”

We live in an age when most pain can be alleviated, but some cannot; it can only be accepted.  Jesus is our example in that He willingly embraced his suffering, resting in the will and wisdom of his Heavenly Father. (“Not my will, but yours be done.”) I think of His bravery and patient endurance when I’m inclined to grumble over the trifling aches and pains that accompany aging. Not one of them hurts like nails.

DHR

9/6/13

                                                                      Promises

“I used to say ‘no promises; let’s keep it simple,’ but freedom only helps you say good-bye...” —The Carpenters

In the TV series “Lonesome Dove” (1988) Captain Woodrow McCall agrees to the deathbed wish of his friend Gus McCrae to bury his body in Texas. En route from Montana to Texas he’s often confronted by the curious who ask why he has taken on this arduous task. On one occasion, the Captain, being a man of few words, simply looks at his questioner and drawls, “I gave him my word.”

A long pause follows as the two men’s eyes examine one another. Then the stranger says, “I can see that you did.” The Captain merely nods and turns away.

There was power in that moment for it captured the character of the man. His beliefs, his words and his actions were one. “I gave him my word.” For Woodrow McCall that’s all that was needed!

In that regard I can’t help but think of our marriage vows for there we must be true to our word. The marriage vow is not a contract that can be readily cancelled by paying a few bills; it is a special promise to love, honor and cherish, “as long as we both shall live.”

The words, “for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health,” take into account the possibility that keeping that promise may be difficult and that circumstances and our spouses’ needs may change over time. While there are valid biblical reasons for separation or divorce, mere difficulty in and of itself is not a reason to forsake our vows. Integrity means keeping our word, though keeping it may entail suffering and loss.

I’ve conducted hundreds of wedding ceremonies in my time and it always seems to me that the most meaningful moment comes when the bride and groom exchange rings. The ring declares to the giver, the wearer, and the community that a binding covenant has been made. The ring, being endless until broken by an outside force, speaks of endless commitment to love, honor and cherish one another, “as long as we both shall live.”

“While a normal promise indicates a determination to try, acknowledging the possibility of failure, a marriage commitment before God is a liberation from the possibility of other futures, a choice about how to spend a life that admits no second thoughts” (from a Louis Smedes’ sermon, “The Power of Promises”).

Or, as a friend of mine once put it, “My marriage vows are the vows that keep me when I don’t feel like keeping my vows.”

DHR

What’s Wrong With My World

“Are not the gods just?” “Oh, no, my child. Where would we be if they were?”

—C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

Occasionally I get distraught by the evil I see in the world around me and wonder who’s minding the store. Does God know what’s going on? Does He care?

In my better moments, however, I know that much of the anguish in my part of the world, is self–inflicted. It is my greed, my ambition, my selfishness that has caused so much unhappiness in my family, friends and in me. I can hardly blame God for that, can I?

If, then, I am responsible for some of the evil in this world, it wouldn't do to insist that God set everything right. If he did, he would have to deal with evil unilaterally, which means he would put down monstrous tyrants around the world, but he would also put down my petty tyranny. If God were merely just where could I stand?[1]

I’m reminded of a conversation between Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday:

“Well,” says Friday, “you say God is so strong, so great: has he not as much strong, as much might as the devil?”

“Yes, yes,” Crusoe says, “Friday, God is much stronger than the devil.”

“But if God much strong, much might as the devil, why God no kill the devil so make him no more do wicked?”

“You might as well ask,” Crusoe answered reflectively, “Why does God not kill you and me when we do wicked things that offend?”

G. K. Chesterton was asked by a reporter, “What’s wrong with the world?” “I am,” the old sage replied.

DHR

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[1] Lewis’ point is that God is not merely just. He is also gracious and forgiving on the basis of the Cross.

Encore!

“It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them...The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE!” —G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Ever since I first read G. K. Chesterton’s work, Orthodoxy, I have been intrigued by his idea that God is still creating the world and everything in it. As a child delights in seeing a thing done again and again, God delights in the repetition and “monotony” of creation every day. It is possible that every new emergence—every blade of grass, every butterfly, every blossom, every billowing cloud—is a new and special creation invented out of God’s wisdom, excitement and artistry.

He paints each pansy as it emerges in the spring, he colors every leaf in the fall. He ponders every act of creation, shouts “Encore!” and the whole business begins all over again, the business of creation that began “in the beginning,” and is still going on to this day.

Thus it follows that every human conception is a new creation. God says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”—and a human life springs into being! We think of the process as purely natural: we conceive a child and it grows to term on its own. In truth it is preternatural—creatio ex nihilo as theologians say; the creation of matter and spirit out of nothing.

Chesterton suggested the idea of on–going creation to me, but David, Israel’s poet, convinced me, for he describes God first “musing” and then “weaving” David together in the darkness of his mother’s womb. He did so, David insists, “before one of them (the various elements that became ‘David’) came to into being” (Psalm 139:13–16).

In other words, God created David out of nothing. No, he created David out of himself. He imagined what David was to be, and then brought him into being according to a pre–imagined plan. [The Hebrew text reads, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance and in your book they (David’s “component parts”) were written day by day before there was one of them.” The metaphor is that of a “journal” in which God wrote his ideas of what David would become and then brought each idea into being through his handiwork in the womb.]

Put another way, we begin as a gleam in our Heavenly Father’s eye and are shaped by Love into unique, immediate creations—immediate in the ordinary sense of “unmediated,” in that we come directly from the inventive heart and hand of God. We are loved into existence; we are God’s planned and wanted children.

That means that I am special and so are you—and so is everyone else in the world. This being true I must be “pro–life” in the purest sense of the word in that I sanctify all human life[1]—Stanford University sophisticates and untutored semi–illiterates; Seattle socialites and skid–row derelicts, winsome children and doddering old curmudgeons, fundamentalist preachers and left–wing political pundits, anti–abortion enthusiasts and pro–choice activists. All persons–all classes, ages, sexes, and races–are unique productions of our Creator’s genius.

Which is why Jesus said we should never call anyone a “fool (worthless)” (Matthew 5:22).

DHR

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[1] The Bible supports the sanctity of human life, not life in general for it is human beings alone that are created in the image and likeness of God, i.e., more like God than any other creature.

Why?

Psalm 131 is an admonition to intellectual peacefulness, an encouragement to understand that paradox is one of the hallmarks of God’s nature and that mystery marks out the limits of our intellect. We do not need to understand all that God is doing in this world and the next. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:28).

But there is another side of David’s quietism: I do not need to understand all that God is doing in me.  

David draws a comparison between a weaned child that no longer frets for what it once demanded, and a soul that has learned the same lesson. It is a call to learn humility, patient endurance and contentment in all our circumstances—and calm acceptance. Divine wisdom and logic are beyond our ken.

We ask, Why this affliction, this disappointment, this delay? God answers, “Hush, child. You wouldn’t understand if I told it. Just trust me!”

So, I ask: Can I, despite my circumstances, ‘hope in the Lord’ (vs. 3).[1] Can I wait in patience without fretting and without questioning God’s love and wisdom? Can I trust him while he works in me his good, acceptable and perfect will?

DHR

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[1] The Hebrew word for “hope” in this text (vs. 3), is a verb that stresses the concept of patient endurance rather than expectation.

^{The Winter Years}

“The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it will speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry” (Habakkuk 2:3)

The morning mist is cleared away,

Yet still the face of Heaven is grey,

Nor yet this autumnal breeze has stirred the grove,

Faded yet full, a paler green

Skirts soberly the tranquil scene,

The redbreast warbles round this leafy cove...[1]

—John Keble

Keble makes his way through a quiet grove. The morning mists have burned away, but the sky is leaden and gray. Autumnal trees with faded, withered leaves are ominous signs of cold and bitter winter.

Yet ‘midst these omens of impending gloom, Keble hears a robin warbling, “singing so thankful to the dreary blast, though gone and spent its joyous prime. And on the world's autumnal time, 
'mid withered hues and sere, its lot be cast.” The robin sings in the face of “calm decay” and a beclouded future, a thankful, cheerful disposition that reveals the heart of a true seer:

Watching...the appalling future as it nearer draws:

His spirit calmed the storm to meet,

Feeling the rock beneath his feet,

And tracing through the cloud th’ eternal Cause.

This is the heart for watchmen true,

Waiting to see what GOD will do.”

And so our thoughts rise to seek an answer for the questions of our winter years. Does loneliness, poverty, disability or dementia await us? If so, what will we do?

Heaven answers: “Be calm and cheerful in the present though the future is clouded and uncertain. Have this quiet assurance: Eternal Wisdom and Love is working for you; all that God does, if rightly understood, will bring about your final good. Wait to see what He will do.”

DHR

7/11/13

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^[1] You can find the poem at http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/twenty-first-sunday-after-trinity/