In Praise of the Dappled Things ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
September 15, 2019
Our poet knew no fame during his lifetime. Nor did he seek any. A Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins lived a conflicted life; never sure of how to reconcile his religious vocation with his poetic nature. The story goes that when he made the decision as a young man to enter the priesthood, he burned all his early poems. It was his belief that a life of artistic endeavor could never be part of a life dedicated to God, and so he renounced this side of himself.
Our theme this month is Expectation. There are so many ways to approach this topic: what we expect from life, or what we expect from ourselves or those around us. But the question that keeps poking me, that I have been finding myself pondering in recent days, is this: “Can what we believe is expected of us keep us from leading lives of wholeness?” Can we try so hard to be perfect (someone’s idea of perfect, anyway) that we cut off parts of ourselves?
Gerard Manley Hopkins was the oldest child in an English family living outside of London in the mid-1800’s. His family was comfortable and accomplished, and aunts and uncles helped the boy and his siblings develop their artistic talents: among them were painters and musicians. As a boy Hopkins showed promise both as a visual artist and as a poet. But he had another side. The story goes that while at boarding school he developed a theory that humans did not need to drink nearly as much liquid as they thought they needed, and he set out to prove this. After a week of not drinking any liquid, he collapsed. His ascetic tendency, his tendency toward self-denial, was present even as a schoolboy, as was his refusal to compromise his beliefs.
While at Oxford, Hopkins chose to convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism. This led to an estrangement with his family, who could not accept his choice. This uncompromising nature appears to have been a family trait – remain a part of the family’s religious tradition, or lose this critical relationship.
And so Hopkins carried on, deeply ambivalent about his life. He failed his final exam in theology. He was ordained into the priesthood, at first believing that poetry would keep him from devoting himself completely to a religious life. In time he did begin to write again, but refused to publish, feeling that any attention or fame would be counter to his vows of poverty and obedience.
Gerard Manley Hopkins was sent to Dublin to teach, further isolating him from family and friends. He was plagued by ill health, and died just short of his 45th birthday. It was a life that might be thought tragic, and yet he left a body of work that has since become highly regarded in literary circles, influencing the likes of T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Dylan Thomas. He would never know the impact of his life and work. (sources: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems and Prose, edited by W.H. Gardner, Wikipedia)
“Glory be to God for dappled things.”
At first reading, the poem Pied Beauty seems to be a nature poem. And it is indeed that. Hopkins could draw a picture with his words, delighting in the colors and shapes and sounds that surround us, making up new words to express his joy in the life he observed unfolding all around him.
Dappled things. We encounter the word ‘dappled’ to describe a spotted horse, or splashes of sunlight among trees. But of course we humans are all dappled, a mix of sun and shadow, of talents and mistakes, of dreams and expectations. We long to succeed, to receive affirmation and love and success, and we fear failure so greatly that we can become overwhelmed by expectations, and choose to damp down our passion, our aspirations, rather than risk failing.
How many of us are labeled, during childhood, as ‘underachievers’? How many of us struggle to meet the expectations imposed by well-meaning family, or by the voices in our own heads telling us that we need to be as accomplished as a talented, successful parent? And no matter what we achieve, might we feel someplace deep inside, in our shadowy self, that we have failed?
Nature, Hopkins tells us, has a different view of perfection. Nature, Hopkins believed, was a gift of the Creator, and if the Creator made things spotted and multi-colored, then they were worthy of praise. Perfection, then, is not plain, unmarred, uniform, but full of interest, lively. Not a cloudless sky, but one full of shapes and colors, the sun sometimes obscured and sometimes shining forth. Now, granted, we truly do love clear blue skies. “Not a cloud in the sky!” we exclaim to each other. But really, isn’t a partly cloudy day more interesting? Don’t you pay more attention?
Life is dappled – in Hopkins’ words, fickle and freckled. We are all dappled beings: counter, original, spare, and strange. Certainly Hopkins led a dappled life, probably suffering from depression, isolated, overworked, his health compromised. His expectations of what a life devoted to God would demand of him closed his mind to looking for God in other places. What if God was in the lifeboat, as in our story? What if God was present in the poetry – in the great gift given him?
In his last years Hopkins despaired, and came to feel estranged from God. He wrote poems that often expressed his own ‘dark night of the soul’. Perhaps Hopkins was beginning the journey into the center of his being, the journey to our depths that is so often necessary as we struggle to become whole.
Some months ago I preached about the journey of the second half of life. I shared the wisdom of Father Richard Rohr, the Franciscan friar who heads the Center for Action and Contemplation. Father Rohr tells us that if we look carefully at our lives, they are made up of two separate journeys. In the first journey, the first half of our lives, we are focused primarily on physical and then material development. We strive for success, focusing on building careers and families, acquiring the house and the cars and all we think we need to have a comfortable life. We respond to the expectations of others – the parents who wanted us to become doctors, or to follow Mom or Dad into the family business. We might feel compelled to hide our sexuality or our true gender. We are forced to respond to the expectations of society that are too often based on racism and sexism. We work tirelessly to overcome these assaults on our true selves in order to achieve what appears to be success.
And then, we can reach a point when shadows begin to emerge. We begin asking, “Is this all there is? Is this enough?” Some people, of course, respond by trying to acquire ever more things; a second home, more travel, a new car. But according to Father Rohr, we are being called instead to live more deeply into our essence, to reconnect with who we truly are, to get acquainted with our shadowy side. This is hard work, and the primary spiritual work of the second half of our lives.
There is a story about the great Hasidic master Rabbi Zusya. “When Rabbi Zusya grew old and knew that his time on earth was nearing a close, his students were called to come and see him. One asked him, timidly, what he was most afraid of about dying. “I am most afraid of what they will ask me when I get to heaven,” he answered. The students gathered closer. “What do you think they will ask you?” they wanted to know. “They will not ask me, ‘Zusya, why were you not like Moses?’” he said. “They will ask me, ‘Zusya, why were you not Zusya?’” (as told in Doorways to the Soul, edited by Elisa Davy Pearmain, p. 123.)
Our poet was not fully himself. Too often, we are not fully ourselves either. We listen to the expectations of others, and of our own minds, and we turn away from the hidden parts of ourselves. In Hopkins’ case, he turned away from poetry, from his family and his religion of origin, and even his country. He complained often of weakness, of ill health, of lack of energy. One cannot help but think that he cut off so many parts of his essential self that he was left physically weakened.
Quaker author and educator Parker Palmer writes, “Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks — we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.” (Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer, p. 16.)
It can be hard work, to discover our whole, true selves. We can spend many years trying to ignore the still small voice within ourselves, the voice which is our very essence longing to be heard and seen. It can be hard to admit disappointment or failure, to acknowledge that perhaps we are not the person our parents expected, or more difficult, that we have not been the person we expected to be. Without this acknowledgement we will not be able to open our minds and our hearts to the sound of our own voices. We will not be able to take the next step toward wholeness, which is to forgive: to forgive ourselves and then perhaps to forgive others.
My friends, we live our lives in sunlight and in shadow, a blend of the swift and slow, the sweet and the sour, the dazzle and the dim. We are all dappled things, perfectly imperfect, despite whatever expectations we cannot meet. In the end, the poem recognizes and praises the divinity – the holiness – present in everything, and in each of us counter, original, spare, and strange things – “Glory be to God!” says the poet. ‘Praise him’ – for all that we are, spotted and brindled, pieced, fickle and freckled. May you know yourself as part of the holy, loved, accepted, and worthy of praise and joy.
Amen.
* * * * *
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 áll trádes, 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.
