"The Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things" - Hope Arises

Image courtesy of Laura Weber

Something calls. Almost imperceptibly. Gently. Through sadness, loss, and disappointment, something calls so persistently it rends my heart. Is it Emily Dickinson's "Thing with Feathers" - Hope? Whatever it is, it runs deep.

A reason for Hope? With thoroughgoing attacks on Earth's health and wholeness, the "God Squad's" annihilation in the Gulf, the gutting of the endangerment provision, and the overall decimation of the EPA, it's tough to remain hopeful. Despite the rampage of lunacy that places profit before people and planet, Earth's human stewards joined together this month to celebrate "Earth Day." In the wake of Artemis II's astounding mission around the far side of the moon, celebrating "Earth Day" couldn't have been more apropos or necessary.

Image courtesy of Laura Weber, AI-assisted

The stunning images of our home planet from space captured once again a macrocosmic perspective of a fragile marble-like Earth in her astonishing beauty, diversity, and magnificent wholeness. What a moonshot glimpse of global harmony, health, and bio-resplendent elegance!

What is Earth? Habitat and Home for more-than-human as well as human Life? A spinning bio-globe of beauty and wonder that captivates our soul's deepest longing for Home?

"Solastalgia" - that sinking feeling that we're losing our global Home altogether - is a gut-punch for environmental advocates. Biodiversity loss, mass species extinction, global warming, and the toxification of air, soil, and water plague our global ecosystems and threaten to deplete our reservoirs of Hope.

Then, inevitably, something calls.

Image courtesy of Laura Weber

I have been walking a path of personal grief and loss, tied into the panorama of pain that is our current geopolitical dis-ease. My grief journey has intensified and morphed as environmental guardrails and protections have fallen. Global eco-initiatives and cooperative agreements have been abandoned. Human resolve and ingenuity in caring for our Common Home have experienced shockwave after shockwave of catastrophic quakes.

Solastalgia, intermingled with personal loss, has meant the primary place I find solace and Home these days is in Nature, among the trees, the songbirds, the sweet aromas of the seasons, the flowering ripeness of the garden's delights, and the springs of living water that soothe and console me. Like a womb or cocoon, it's where I feel safe and protected. Nature offers solace for what is changing and generative of new Life, pushing me out of comfortable familiarity, inviting me to take a deep breath and grow anew!

Image courtesy of Laura Weber

"There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) wrote these words in the 19th century when the "blear" and "smear" of toil meant the ravages of the Industrial Revolution were sullying the grandeur of creation. "All is seared with trade, smeared with toil; and wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod."

Hopkins captured what I and many around the globe are feeling right now - profound sadness and loss over the sheer ruination of creation (Solastalgia), sacrificed on the twin altars of expediency and avarice. Still, something calls from deep down.

"For all this, Nature is never spent," Hopkins reminds us. "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." As a Jesuit, Hopkins attributed this perennial life-force to God's presence in the grandeur of creation, and the "brooding" of a Holy Spirit that permeates Life and shelters the "bent World" with "warm breast and with ah! bright wings."

Image courtesy of Laura Weber, AI-assisted

I love that image: the ah! bright wings of a protective Mothering Spirit who watches over us, and keeps us safe in a well-tended nest. No matter how bleak or disconsolate I feel, when I immerse myself in Nature's embrace, I feel held and loved, connected and at peace. Truly Home. Practicing new Life, fuller Life, a fresh start. And I want to nurture, care for, and protect that Nest with others who feel that same charge of Energy and Hope in Earth's embrace.

Where do we find our "Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things?" What gives us cause for Hope? Hopkins found it in the grandeur of creation (poem below).

Image courtesy of Laura Weber

Here are a few of my favorites, and please feel free to add your own:

• Morning glow

• Spring bulbs peeking into sunlight

• Baby's first smile

• The heart's flutter at the sight of a Beloved

• Gentle raindrops when Earth is parched

• Fireflies dancing in the gloam

• Robin-blue eggs in the nest in the holly berry

• Caterpillars in their ascent to cocooning

• Fragrant lilacs in nascent bloom

• Flowering dogwoods and redbuds

• Morels hiding in the understory

• Puppy tails welcoming us home

• Water cascading from stone

• A pine needle bed for a dreamy nap

• Tea time in the garden

• Owls calling "Who cooks for YOU?"

• Frog-song at dusk near living water

• Friends, Friends, Friends

• Sunrise, Sunset

Image courtesy of Laura Weber

"God's Grandeur"

- Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877

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.

Oh! Hope arises!