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.
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