Pilgrim Ponderings – June
It’s a little hard to define hope, isn’t it? We might know deep down what it is, but to try to say it, or to capture it… It’s almost too slippery to catch! Or…too sublime? Well, too something. Enter: Poetry.
A few of our sisters, when asked for their reflections on hope, offered the following poems. And another took a photo of our new baby chicks – which, actually, pairs quite well with the verses below!
First, two excerpts from works by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
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.
-from “God’s Grandeur”Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out
To take His lovely likeness more and more.
-from “Hope Holds to Christ”
And the ever apropos Emily Dickens:
‘Hope’ is the things with feathers –
That perches int he soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity –
It asked a crumb – of me.
-“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”
[For some background information about our Jubilee Year “Pilgrims of Hope” series, please see https://mississippiabbey.org/pilgrim-ponderings-may/ .]