Mariani, Paul

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Conversations on Jesuit Higher EducationVolume 50 Article 14September 2016Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: APoet's ReflectionPaul MarianiFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversationsRecommended CitationMariani, Paul (2016) "Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: A Poet's Reflection," Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education:Vol. 50 , Article 14.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversations/vol50/iss1/14                                                                                                                                                                                                               25Hopkins and Francis onthe State of the World:A Poet’s ReflectionBy Paul MarianiIt was a Jesuit priest, Gerard Man-ley Hopkins, who wrote some ofthe great Franciscan poems of alltime, so that he and Pope Francis, aJesuit who took the name of Fran-cis, share that link in common. Itfollows, then, that Francis shouldbegin “Laudato Si’,” his letter tothe world, fittingly delivered onPentecost Sunday 2015, by quotingfrom St. Francis’ “Canticle of theCreatures”: Praise be to you, my Lord,through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us,and who produces various fruitwith colored flowers and herbs.And so he begins his encyclical,“On Care for Our CommonHome,” with Francis, reminding usthat “our common home is like asister with whom we share our lifeand a beautiful mother who opensher arms to embrace us.” And so,in the name of the church, in thename of our shared humanity, PopeFrancis reminds us that the veryearth “cries out to us because of theharm we have inflicted on her byour irresponsible use and abuse ofthe goods with which God has en-dowed her.”Hopkins, who loved God’s cre-ation much as St. Francis did, weptover what humans were doing tothe English and Welsh countrysideand – by extension – to the entireworld. Forgive them, Father, forthey know not what they do. Youhave showered them with love.You have given them this beautifulworld, both on the cosmic as wellas on the microcosmic level, if theyonly had ears to hear its music andthe eyes to see what is there beforethem, if they would only take thetime to look. But look at what? Hopkins’spoems tell us what is there beforeus, just as Fr. Francis did and PopeFrancis has been doing. “Look atthe stars!,” Hopkins urges us in“The Starlight Night,” Look, look up at the skies!O look at all the fire-folk sitting inthe air!The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!Down in dim woods the diamonddelves! the elves’-eyes!The grey lawns cold where gold,where quickgold lies!Wind-beat whitebeam! airyabeles set on a flare!Flake-doves sent floating forth ata farmyard scare!This is Van Gogh’s “StarryNight” in a language rinsed and re-freshed, words with a sense of deepwonder and awe behind them. Doinstitutions might devote resources toplaces like the Center for Sustainability at St.Louis University and encourage faculty toproduce scholarship that leads to action likeHealing the Earth, a free textbook on ecologypublished by the International Jesuit Ecol-ogy Project at Loyola University Chicago (seestory, p.10) Finally, schools might sign andpursue plans with in accord with the Ameri-can College & University Presidents ClimateCommitment. As of April 2016, 12 Jesuitschools had already done so.In conjunction with such local activities,Jesuit colleges and universities can also pur-sue ecological justice through faithful citi-zenship-based support for policies toaddress climate change. This step was takenby College of the Holy Cross, Fordham Uni-versity, Le Moyne College, Loyola Universityof Maryland, and University of San Franciscoin April 2016 when they signed onto an am-icus curiae brief submitted to the U.S. Courtof Appeals for the District of Columbia offer-ing faith-based support for the Environmen-tal Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.Furthermore, schools might supportCatholic Relief Services’ climate change pol-icy work by founding CRS Ambassadorchapters like those at Boston College, Col-lege of the Holy Cross, Fairfield University,Loyola University Maryland, and Universityof Scranton.ConclusionThe world is charged with the grandeur ofGod, and “Laudato Si’” has the potential toinspire people of faith and goodwill tobetter conserve the grandeur of our com-mon home. As resourced institutions ofhigher education rooted in Catholic mis-sion, Jesuit colleges and universities havea particular opportunity – and responsibil-ity – to share and act on the first encyclicalon ecology from the first Jesuit pope.Daniel R. DiLeo is a Ph.D. candidate in theological ethics at Boston College andProject Manager of the Catholic ClimateCovenant.1Mariani: Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: A Poet's ReflectioPublished by e-Publications@Marquette, 201626 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION                                                                                                                                          you hear it? Can you see it? Get up from your chairand go out behind your house on a clear dark night,where you can actually see the stars, and let theirimmensity and beauty surround you, he tells us. It’sall free and there for the taking, he urges us on withnine exclamations in seven lines. And the stars: stars as fire-folk, as bright bor-oughs, as circle-citadels. Or – in a reversal – diamonddelves, elves’ eyes, quicksilver gold: stars like thewhite underside of poplars shining in the night sky.All that energy and life, like a flock of spooked dovessuddenly lifting from the earth. And behind thosemillions of stars, behind those untold millions of goldpieces, is something even greater: the Creator of it all,the Father and “Christ and his mother and all his hal-lows.” A taste of heaven there for the asking.“The world is charged with the grandeur ofGod,” Hopkins wrote that same month. Charged,that is, with an electric energy coursing through it,instressed upon us, revealing a beauty and majestythat would “flame out, like shining from shook foil,”lightning-quick in its dazzle. Or it would dawn onus slowly, gathering “to a greatness, like the ooze ofoil/ Crushed,” that rich yellowgreen oil from olivescrushed in a press, their translucency reflecting theworld about them in each tiny drop, because “Therelives the dearest freshness deep down things.” Andbecause, in spite of what we have done to our world,the Holy Spirit, like a mother dove brooding over itsyoung, cares about us, shining out like the dawneach day, a phoenix rising again, “with warm breastand with ah! bright wings.” The beautiful serene snow blankets the entrance to Gonzaga University. Photo by Matt Weigand.2Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, Vol. 50, Iss. 1 [2016], Art. 14http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversations/vol50/iss1/14                                                                                                                                                                                                               27Why are we here, the poet asks? To burrow lice-like into some giant wheel of cheese, surroundingourselves with the fat of the world until death takesus? Or are we here to recognize what we have beengiven – air, water, light, nourishment, knowledge,friendship, art – and thus give praise back to ourCreator. “Glory be to God for dappled things,”Hopkins sang, for the kaleidoscopic variety andfreshness in all 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...For if the world is charged with the grandeur ofGod, then we are charged with acknowledging thatgrandeur, since we are the only creatures con-sciously aware of that beauty and so of praising theCreator of Brother Sun and Sister Moon. For whereelse, Hopkins tells us as he witnesses the terrible ef-fects of strip mining which leaves huge brow-likeslags to scar the earth for generations after. Howelse can the earth cry out in its hurt? What other“eye, tongue, or heart else, where/ Else, but in dearand dogged man?” Man, so dear to his Creator, andyet so “selfbent” on himself “that he would strip“our rich round world bare,” without a care forthose who come after. Earth with those monstrousslagheaps for eyebrows, not unlike that massivemethane leak in California’s Aliso Canyon. Methanein the air we breathe, lead in the water we drink,waste everywhere. The poor, the poor everywhere,without work, their dignity stripped from them,“Undenizened, beyond bound/ Of earth’s glory,earth’s ease,” he wrote late in his too-short life. Theunemployed no longer a viable part of the common-wealth, and no one to share that care. This, hewarned us, was to weigh those about us down witha hangdog dullness, a dullness which would morphto despair and then rage, turning those hangdogs toman wolves, whose packs would infest the age.Paul Mariani is University Professor in the departmentof English at Boston College. His is the author of sevenbooks of poetry and multiple biographies, including Ger-ard Manley Hopkins: A Life (2008) and, most recently,The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens(2016). He is also author of a memoir, Thirty Days: OnRetreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius (2002).Earth Day PledgesRemember Earth Day?Yeah me either but at one point we all pledged to takecare of the earth around us, to do our darndest to pick uptrash and plant more trees. Yet I went to the top of amountain, imagine it won’t you? The rolling hills, trees,birds, and critters letting us so graciously enter theirhomes as we trample through to the top. We come to apoint where you see the top, excited you climb the ridgeand what do you find?No mountains. Only rubbish.A coal mine sits just behind that mountain, the beeps andexplosions periodically interrupt your thoughts as youlook around at no mountains, no the beasts that used toreside here have long since been conquered by humans. Layer by layer.Rock by rock they disassembled the mountains. Remem-ber those earth day promises when they showed us allthat stuff our parent’s screwed up? WE screwed up now. Isat on this mountain and looked at what was left of itsbrothers and sisters, a little mound there and a little rock here.Nothing worth seeing.A STUDENT’S POETRYHaikus: I have a dream, oneWhere my kids see the mountainsMajestic, beautifulHiking all day, allNight. Top of mountain, no topNo nature, where did it-Flying high in theSkies. Humans should know beauty Like a bird; freedomMegan Trainor is a junior at Rockhurst University working towards adegree in English with minor in journalism. She hopes one day totravel and explore the world either alleviating some of the burdensothers face or shedding light on them through her writing. 3Mariani: Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: A Poet's ReflectioPublished by e-Publications@Marquette, 2016

Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: A Poet\u27s Reflection

Conversations on Jesuit Higher EducationVolume 49 Jesuit Higher Education in a GlobalContext Article 409-1-2016Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: APoet's ReflectionPaul MarianiFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversationsRecommended CitationMariani, Paul (2016) "Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: A Poet's Reflection," Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education:Vol. 49 , Article 40.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversations/vol49/iss1/40                                                                                                                                                                                                               25Hopkins and Francis onthe State of the World:A Poet’s ReflectionBy Paul MarianiIt was a Jesuit priest, Gerard Man-ley Hopkins, who wrote some ofthe great Franciscan poems of alltime, so that he and Pope Francis, aJesuit who took the name of Fran-cis, share that link in common. Itfollows, then, that Francis shouldbegin “Laudato Si’,” his letter tothe world, fittingly delivered onPentecost Sunday 2015, by quotingfrom St. Francis’ “Canticle of theCreatures”: Praise be to you, my Lord,through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us,and who produces various fruitwith colored flowers and herbs.And so he begins his encyclical,“On Care for Our CommonHome,” with Francis, reminding usthat “our common home is like asister with whom we share our lifeand a beautiful mother who opensher arms to embrace us.” And so,in the name of the church, in thename of our shared humanity, PopeFrancis reminds us that the veryearth “cries out to us because of theharm we have inflicted on her byour irresponsible use and abuse ofthe goods with which God has en-dowed her.”Hopkins, who loved God’s cre-ation much as St. Francis did, weptover what humans were doing tothe English and Welsh countrysideand – by extension – to the entireworld. Forgive them, Father, forthey know not what they do. Youhave showered them with love.You have given them this beautifulworld, both on the cosmic as wellas on the microcosmic level, if theyonly had ears to hear its music andthe eyes to see what is there beforethem, if they would only take thetime to look. But look at what? Hopkins’spoems tell us what is there beforeus, just as Fr. Francis did and PopeFrancis has been doing. “Look atthe stars!,” Hopkins urges us in“The Starlight Night,” Look, look up at the skies!O look at all the fire-folk sitting inthe air!The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!Down in dim woods the diamonddelves! the elves’-eyes!The grey lawns cold where gold,where quickgold lies!Wind-beat whitebeam! airyabeles set on a flare!Flake-doves sent floating forth ata farmyard scare!This is Van Gogh’s “StarryNight” in a language rinsed and re-freshed, words with a sense of deepwonder and awe behind them. Doinstitutions might devote resources toplaces like the Center for Sustainability at St.Louis University and encourage faculty toproduce scholarship that leads to action likeHealing the Earth, a free textbook on ecologypublished by the International Jesuit Ecol-ogy Project at Loyola University Chicago (seestory, p.10) Finally, schools might sign andpursue plans with in accord with the Ameri-can College & University Presidents ClimateCommitment. As of April 2016, 12 Jesuitschools had already done so.In conjunction with such local activities,Jesuit colleges and universities can also pur-sue ecological justice through faithful citi-zenship-based support for policies toaddress climate change. This step was takenby College of the Holy Cross, Fordham Uni-versity, Le Moyne College, Loyola Universityof Maryland, and University of San Franciscoin April 2016 when they signed onto an am-icus curiae brief submitted to the U.S. Courtof Appeals for the District of Columbia offer-ing faith-based support for the Environmen-tal Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.Furthermore, schools might supportCatholic Relief Services’ climate change pol-icy work by founding CRS Ambassadorchapters like those at Boston College, Col-lege of the Holy Cross, Fairfield University,Loyola University Maryland, and Universityof Scranton.ConclusionThe world is charged with the grandeur ofGod, and “Laudato Si’” has the potential toinspire people of faith and goodwill tobetter conserve the grandeur of our com-mon home. As resourced institutions ofhigher education rooted in Catholic mis-sion, Jesuit colleges and universities havea particular opportunity – and responsibil-ity – to share and act on the first encyclicalon ecology from the first Jesuit pope.Daniel R. DiLeo is a Ph.D. candidate in theological ethics at Boston College andProject Manager of the Catholic ClimateCovenant.1Mariani: Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: A Poet's ReflectioPublished by e-Publications@Marquette, 201626 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION                                                                                                                                          you hear it? Can you see it? Get up from your chairand go out behind your house on a clear dark night,where you can actually see the stars, and let theirimmensity and beauty surround you, he tells us. It’sall free and there for the taking, he urges us on withnine exclamations in seven lines. And the stars: stars as fire-folk, as bright bor-oughs, as circle-citadels. Or – in a reversal – diamonddelves, elves’ eyes, quicksilver gold: stars like thewhite underside of poplars shining in the night sky.All that energy and life, like a flock of spooked dovessuddenly lifting from the earth. And behind thosemillions of stars, behind those untold millions of goldpieces, is something even greater: the Creator of it all,the Father and “Christ and his mother and all his hal-lows.” A taste of heaven there for the asking.“The world is charged with the grandeur ofGod,” Hopkins wrote that same month. Charged,that is, with an electric energy coursing through it,instressed upon us, revealing a beauty and majestythat would “flame out, like shining from shook foil,”lightning-quick in its dazzle. Or it would dawn onus slowly, gathering “to a greatness, like the ooze ofoil/ Crushed,” that rich yellowgreen oil from olivescrushed in a press, their translucency reflecting theworld about them in each tiny drop, because “Therelives the dearest freshness deep down things.” Andbecause, in spite of what we have done to our world,the Holy Spirit, like a mother dove brooding over itsyoung, cares about us, shining out like the dawneach day, a phoenix rising again, “with warm breastand with ah! bright wings.” The beautiful serene snow blankets the entrance to Gonzaga University. Photo by Matt Weigand.2Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, Vol. 49, Iss. 1 [2016], Art. 40http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversations/vol49/iss1/40                                                                                                                                                                                                               27Why are we here, the poet asks? To burrow lice-like into some giant wheel of cheese, surroundingourselves with the fat of the world until death takesus? Or are we here to recognize what we have beengiven – air, water, light, nourishment, knowledge,friendship, art – and thus give praise back to ourCreator. “Glory be to God for dappled things,”Hopkins sang, for the kaleidoscopic variety andfreshness in all 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...For if the world is charged with the grandeur ofGod, then we are charged with acknowledging thatgrandeur, since we are the only creatures con-sciously aware of that beauty and so of praising theCreator of Brother Sun and Sister Moon. For whereelse, Hopkins tells us as he witnesses the terrible ef-fects of strip mining which leaves huge brow-likeslags to scar the earth for generations after. Howelse can the earth cry out in its hurt? What other“eye, tongue, or heart else, where/ Else, but in dearand dogged man?” Man, so dear to his Creator, andyet so “selfbent” on himself “that he would strip“our rich round world bare,” without a care forthose who come after. Earth with those monstrousslagheaps for eyebrows, not unlike that massivemethane leak in California’s Aliso Canyon. Methanein the air we breathe, lead in the water we drink,waste everywhere. The poor, the poor everywhere,without work, their dignity stripped from them,“Undenizened, beyond bound/ Of earth’s glory,earth’s ease,” he wrote late in his too-short life. Theunemployed no longer a viable part of the common-wealth, and no one to share that care. This, hewarned us, was to weigh those about us down witha hangdog dullness, a dullness which would morphto despair and then rage, turning those hangdogs toman wolves, whose packs would infest the age.Paul Mariani is University Professor in the departmentof English at Boston College. His is the author of sevenbooks of poetry and multiple biographies, including Ger-ard Manley Hopkins: A Life (2008) and, most recently,The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens(2016). He is also author of a memoir, Thirty Days: OnRetreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius (2002).Earth Day PledgesRemember Earth Day?Yeah me either but at one point we all pledged to takecare of the earth around us, to do our darndest to pick uptrash and plant more trees. Yet I went to the top of amountain, imagine it won’t you? The rolling hills, trees,birds, and critters letting us so graciously enter theirhomes as we trample through to the top. We come to apoint where you see the top, excited you climb the ridgeand what do you find?No mountains. Only rubbish.A coal mine sits just behind that mountain, the beeps andexplosions periodically interrupt your thoughts as youlook around at no mountains, no the beasts that used toreside here have long since been conquered by humans. Layer by layer.Rock by rock they disassembled the mountains. Remem-ber those earth day promises when they showed us allthat stuff our parent’s screwed up? WE screwed up now. Isat on this mountain and looked at what was left of itsbrothers and sisters, a little mound there and a little rock here.Nothing worth seeing.A STUDENT’S POETRYHaikus: I have a dream, oneWhere my kids see the mountainsMajestic, beautifulHiking all day, allNight. Top of mountain, no topNo nature, where did it-Flying high in theSkies. Humans should know beauty Like a bird; freedomMegan Trainor is a junior at Rockhurst University working towards adegree in English with minor in journalism. She hopes one day totravel and explore the world either alleviating some of the burdensothers face or shedding light on them through her writing. 3Mariani: Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: A Poet's ReflectioPublished by e-Publications@Marquette, 2016

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Hopkins and Francis on the State of the World: A Poet\u27s Reflection

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