April 14, 2009

Talked about early Christianity in Humanities today and about Gerard Manley Hopkins in poetry. Religious ecstasy may be the hardest thing of all to convey to people who have not experienced it, for it is counterfeited so often, and therefore derided so often, that the real thing is difficult to take at face value. Mary’s name spoken by Jesus in the garden on Easter morning kept Christianity alive through twenty centuries of misdeeds. It, and moments like it, are candles in great darkness, which, however great the darkness is, light the whole way. Hopkins’ ecstasy of love leavens centuries of pious church-mouthing on the part of minor poets. . . but what to say to faces who do not understand this, and probably think that I am paid to say such things and cannot believe them myself? How does one present that when Hopkins cries out “Praise Him!” it is different praise altogether than when the sidewalk evangelist in front of the dining hall does so. How does one present the proposition that two thousand years of ignorance and tyranny are balanced by the image of a child in the arms of a shepherd? One blunders through, hoping that something sticks, something penetrates. The young are asked to absorb too much, and so become hard-hearted.