In our climate, you might say that “Spring” means the season when trees and shrubs and flowers and grass look dead and very gradually tell the careful observer that they are coming back to life. \u00a0Very gradually. \u00a0For some years, I’ve followed a ritual to remind myself about how slowly this happens: \u00a0I look for a large shrub or a low-hanging tree branch somewhere along a pathway I walk. \u00a0I stop nearby, close enough that I can look at one twig on one branch from a distance of 6 to 8 inches and look at the twig for half a minute or so, paying attention to signs of rebirth. \u00a0 I try to remember to stop there 3-4 times a week. \u00a0 From day to day not much new appears. \u00a0Very gradual. Little by little this attention is rewarded by delicate hints of rebirth.<\/p>\n
Stopping and looking is a form of Lenten prayer and helps more than giving up candy or beer, stopping and looking at a twig on a shrub can be a metaphor for close watching other parts of life and waiting there in hope: a \u00a0child growing up; \u00a0a city laboring through bankruptcy; a Congress waiting to learn civility again. \u00a0A university teeming with people trying to learn, trying to teach, trying to renew its day to day operations. \u00a0Beauty all around us.<\/p>\n
The growing length of daylight during this year’s Lent comes to about 3 minutes more light each day.<\/p>\n
Have a blest weekend.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
john sj<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s Post: \u00a0 Gerard Manley Hopkins, sj \u00a0\u201cGod\u2019s Grandeur”<\/strong><\/p>\n The world is charged with the grandeur of God. And for all this, nature is never spent; Gerard Manley Hopkins \u00a028 July 1844 \u2013 8 June, 1889<\/p>\n Friday, March 27 – “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things” “In the late\u00a0Middle Ages, as\u00a0sermons\u00a0began to be given in the\u00a0vernacular\u00a0instead of Latin, the English word\u00a0lent\u00a0was adopted. This word initially simply meant\u00a0spring\u00a0(as in the German language\u00a0Lenz\u00a0and\u00a0Dutch\u00a0lente) and derives from … Continue reading
\nIt will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
\nIt gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
\nCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
\nGenerations have trod, have trod, have trod;
\nAnd all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
\nAnd wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
\nIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.<\/p>\n
\nThere lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
\nAnd though the last lights off the black West went
\nOh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs \u2014
\nBecause the Holy Ghost over the bent
\nWorld broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2014\/11\/GMHopkins.jpg\")
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