Shoes off!

I want the full impact of God’s grandeur.

Well, this is a pleasant surprise. As I start walking in the parking lot of the building where Alison has an appointment, I don’t expect to find a wooded trail, but here it is, snaking down into the trees that fill the gap between office complexes. I’m mostly trying to use this hour to get steps in. That I can do it in nature is a major plus.

Today, as I ramble, a poem is playing in my head. God’s Grandeur (included below) is one of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ greatest works, a sonnet that points to the Lord’s fingerprints of glory in the created world despite how humans have “seared,” “bleared,” and “smeared” it.

He adds:

the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

This image literally walks with me today. As my sneakers soak up the dew, I keep thinking about the concept of being one step removed from the grandeur of God in the world around me. What is that insulation, that self-imposed layer I’ve added that dulls my awareness?

Time, I suppose. Busyness. The tyranny of the urgent. But it’s also about having the will to go seek it out. And eyes to see it when I do.

Along the trail, I discover some weathered information displays. I’ll use these as signposts for a solution.

The first step towards seeing what Hopkins calls “the dearest freshness deep down things” (Lovely, that.) is to be intentional. God, in his grace, will interject some beauty into our gerbil-wheel lives on occasion, like the towering cumulus cloud last night lit dramatically from the side.

But we need to set aside time to seek it out. It may involve putting something on our calendar or picking a location to drive to.

What does the grandeur of God look like? Is it only the dramatic, large-scale displays – the giant clouds, the mountain vistas, the cascading waterfalls? Or can this lovely little tableau of varied life on a stump in some way be grand?

We need to balance our expectations. Watch for the large-scale glory but notice the tiny grandness (if that’s not an oxymoron) displayed in intricate, complex elements. In small wonders.

How do we know we’re missing the grandeur of God? Hopkins writes, “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod.”  When our lives start to feel mechanical, when our days become checklists, when our devotion becomes rote – when we feel creature-ish, – we need to make intentional space for God’s grandeur.

These moments of wonder, Hopkins says, may come upon us like flashes of sunlight “on shook foil” or slowly build like olive oil flowing out of a press. Either way, Psalm 19 tells us:

They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth.   Psalm 19:3-4

Our job is to remove whatever keeps desensitizing us – our schedule, cynicism or shoes --to their message of wonder.

Glorious God, what gifts you have laced throughout the created world! We need these reminders of your expansiveness, but too rarely take time to look or listen for them. Forgive us and help us.

Reader: How do you experience the grandness of God in nature? 

And for those who aren’t familiar with the poem, enjoy! (“Reck” is short for recognize.)

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins