A good friend, who doesn’t think himself an intellectual but who in fact is one of the best-read people in my life, sent me two different pieces over the last couple of months, both of which qualify as being old, if not ancient.  But which both speak volumes to our present environmental predicament:

Today, a poem that is at least 150 years old:

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 |&| 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 |&| with ah! bright wings.

[Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1848-1889]

It’s all here – creation’s glory, humanity’s abuse (“all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;/And wears man’s smudge”), our alienation (“nor can foot feel, being shod”  – what a great line!).

If Hopkins could see and write about the world as he did in the 19th century, what might he have had to say about the world as we see it today?

But look – the poet has left us with hope.  Not hope in technology, and not hope in policy or regulation – but hope in God:  “Nature is never spent…” not because of a mystical belief in the resilience of nature, but

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast |&| with ah! bright wings.

We have said before, and will repeat often on these pages (you’ve been warned) – the environmental crisis is a spiritual crisis.  And though technology, policy, regulation and activism all have their place, in the end it is only a return to the God who made the place that will give us hope, and help, and health – and peace.

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• By Cris Bisch, January 7, 2009 @ 1:50 pm

  Thanks for sharing this beautiful, timeless poem with us, Ed. John Muir said “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”

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