students of jesus

Gerard Manley Hopkins was ee cummings before cummings ever saw the light of day. You show get to know him.

(BTW ~ Why do poets seem more likely to use three names? Who knows? But these are three names worth knowing: Gerard. Manley. Hopkins. Maybe his friends called him "Gerry".)

Actually, they would've called him "Father Gerry" because Hopkins was a Catholic priest. Born in 1844 to an Anglican family, at 18 he converted to Catholicism and by 20 be became part of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.

His work as a poet took second place to his priestly calling, because (at the poem below indicates) he saw clearly the glory of God in all human endeavor. He died a few weeks short of his 45th birthday, 1889. Nearly all of his work was published postumously.

Presumably he is still at work, creating ever-cooler stuff for us to enjoy later.

Pied Beatuy

Last week I launched a new Saturday feature: poetry. (If you're not a poetry fan, then I'll see you for the regular Tuesday/Thursday posts.) You're invited to read, muse, comment, or share your favorites as well.

I've never met Steven Lawrence Hamilton, but we've corresponded a few times, and share a background as (former) Vineyard pastors. His website, Verve & Verse is a delight and respite from the nervous chattering so common on the blogosphere.

The Bear Cub

i fear the bear-cub

not the bear-cub itself

who flops about, here and there

exploring the ways of

they-who-dwell-in-the-rotted-log

uninhibited in learning

acquiring through experience

the taste of the wild

no, it is the she-bear i fear

whose massive mother strength

adorned by cerberian teeth

ringing with the experience

of a love-struck guardian

it is she who thunders at any threat

to her precious, frolicking

inquisitive likeness

i don’t quite understand God

but God is a she-bear

thus i fear men

not for men themselves

but whose image they bear

How about something different on Saturdays? For the next few weeks I'd like to share some of my favorite poetry with you. If you're not a poetry fan, then I'll see you for the regular Tuesday/Thursday posts. And, although this first offering is pretty serious, there's no rule requiring that every poem has to be somber--beauty and whimsy belong in my collection as well.

Fania Kruger (1893-1977) was born in the Crimean peninsula, married a rabbi, and eventually settled in Witchita Falls, Texas. I stumbled across a paperback collection of her work, and bought 63 poems for 97¢. That's a parable in itself.

I hope you like it. Let me know what you think:

THE TENTH JEW

The cold was bitter and the sky was red,

Within the Polish ghetto lay the dead.

And in the corner of a blasted of wood

In wounded bleeding circle, nine men stood

Praying for the dead. When the shadows draped

The fields with gray, these hunted had escaped—

Nine only out of hundreds burned and slain,

To offer Kaddish, grief’s austere refrain.

No other left in a ghetto of red slaughter,

To join in prayer for absent son or daughter,

For mother, wife, all vanished in that day—

No tenth man for a minyan and to pray.

And though the Temple's law required that ten

Male voices must make valid grief’s amen,

Shivering, moaning there, while bare boughs swayed,

Deep in the forest, only nine men prayed:

“Yisgadal . . .” Their quivering, plaintiff chant

Rose hoarsely as they held their covenant—

Closed in a gray mist, a cowl of twilight haze,

Their faces pale as a frozen meadow glaze,

Nine voices growing fainter and fainter . . . Then

Suddenly from the gloom a sound— “Amen!”

A tenth voice, a minyan! They all turn to see:

Behold upon a starkly twisted tree

A tortured sufferer, murdered anew,

Crucified Jesus, the tenth praying Jew.