NANCY HAUGHT
  • Sacred Strangers
  • My blog
  • About/Contact
  • My book
  • Archives

​“Patience, hard thing”

2/3/2017

0 Comments

 
In a baccalaureate sermon delivered at Yale Divinity School, Ellen F. Davis mentions a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins that I’d never read before:

                    Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
                    But bid for, Patience is! Patience who ask
                    
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
                    To do without, take tosses, and obey.

                    Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,
                    Nowhere. Natural heart's ivy, Patience masks
                    Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks
                    Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.

                    We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills
                    To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills
                    Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.
                    And where is he who more and more distills
                    Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills
                    His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.

                                                             Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own poetry muscles are stiff from disuse. But I want to think about this poem and stretch them in the next few days and weeks.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture


    ​My book

    Sometimes our fear of strangers keeps us from becoming the people we want to be. "Sacred Strangers" is a guide to six Bible stories about outsiders who are holy examples for the rest of us. Published in October 2017.

    Order "Sacred Strangers" on Amazon or at Liturgical Press.

    Archives

    July 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

  • Sacred Strangers
  • My blog
  • About/Contact
  • My book
  • Archives