Monday, April 3, 2017

Gratitude Monday Resistance moon: Nothing is so beautiful

Saturday a friend and I went to a nursery in Northern Virginia—she needed to buy a bag of dirt, and I just wanted inspiration for a future garden. The day was quite cold, windy and grey, but my soul came alive as we wandered up and down the aisles in the greenhouse and then outside.

Herbs! Ground cover! Indoor-outdoor dwarf lemon trees! Hedge material (“Get something with thorns”)! Oh, it was like going to the animal shelter—I just wanted to hug everything and bring it all home.

And, oddly, for the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel a lot of joint pain after all the walking. There’s just something about the beauty and resilience of plants that restores your equilibrium. Despite the best efforts of humans to destroy it with war, pollution, urban sprawl and just plain arrogant destruction, nature does her best to resist and persist, showing us every Spring that she’ll take whatever bit is available—even if it’s just a weak place in concrete—to push up life.

So today, in grateful recognition of the recuperative power of gardens (whether designed by mortals or immortals), I’ll share a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorite poets. Convert to Catholicism, Jesuit priest, exceptional poet of any age.


In the past you’ve had some of his sonnets for Easter, and his “Pied Beauty”, which takes delight in the parti-colored elements of nature. But for Gratitude Monday today, here’s “Spring”. Just “Spring”.

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.      



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