Catharine Randall
Eerdmans, 195 pages
I’ve never forgotten the wise counsel I received from a mentor early in my pastoral life: Read more poetry. He had no idea how much poetry I was reading (little), yet assumed there was room for more. Among the various poets I’ve read for over 30 years, Gerard Manley Hopkins is always in rotation. Early I joined the great chorus quoting with joy, “the world is charged with the grandeur of God/it will flame out like shook foil,” and never stopped saying what seems so utterly true and necessary to announce.
Catherine Randall has done a great service with her book, which goes deeply into the experiences that shaped Hopkins. We learn of his struggles with sexuality and his ultra-devotion to God that not only influenced his controversial conversion to Roman Catholicism but drove him to various ascetic practices. Randall provides the biographical context for poetry, and helpfully describes the theological grounding that gave rise to Hopkins’ embrace of the particular beauty of all living things. Many readers will be startled by the details of his life. Pastors will appreciate Hopkins’ struggle to remain faithful to his pastoral vocation under duress — especially on the brink of despair. We have a portrait of man deeply devoted to Christ and to the search for full expression of that in the actual world of creation. In the end we discover, “the cosmic Christ Gerard had sought and loved in nature was now his great friend returned to him in fellowship.”
Not surprisingly, during the pandemic many people have found a new love for creation. Birdwatching, hiking and walking all increased. We yearn for a renewal of our place in the community of creation. Hopkins the poet-pastor knew this more deeply than most. With a heart lost in wonder, he is one of the premier theologian-poets proclaiming the glory of God. Read him.
