Stage 6: Delight

Today we complete our journey from despair to delight, with six of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sonnets as our travel guide. To celebrate, we share his pleasure in his own favourite poem, The Windhover:

I caught this morning morning's minionminion favorite, darling; also, an underling or servant, king-

    dom of daylight's dauphindauphin prince; a French historical term, along with “chevalier”, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimplingwimpling rippling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

    As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

    Buckle! Buckle! to bend, attach; prepare for flight or battle. The verb could be descriptive of the bird’s action, or it could be the speaker’s imperative. AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!chevalier French word for “knight” or “champion”; pronounced Chev-ah-leer, to rhyme with “here” and “dear”

     

   No wonder of it: shéer plódshéer plód slowly, laboriously, and without break; these accent marks, inserted by Hopkins, tell the reader to place more accent or emphasis on those syllables when reading aloud makes plough down sillionsillion Fresh soil upturned by a plow (“plough”)

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dearah my dear Compare with the same phrase in the poem “Love (III)” by George Herbert, a poet Hopkins admired.,

    Fall, gallgall to become sore, crack, or chafe themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

This sonnet really does work best when you read it out loud.  It takes a few goes to get the rhythm of it, especially the first few lines. Do try it yourself -  you’ll soon find you are flying with the falcon, up and down, barely taking a breath until the first full stop arrives, half way though line seven.

Then you can have a rest and check out some of the words and images. In line 2, ’dauphin’ means ‘crown prince’. In line 6 the imagery is ice-skating – for us today it could as easily be skiing in the Alps, or surfing the waves of Cornwall. Lines 9-11 give the image of the prince on horseback fastening (buckling) his armour. In lines 12-13, ‘plough down sillion shine’ refers to the way that soil, when turned over by a plough, becomes big and shiny.  In the final line, ‘gall’ means graze or scrape, and ‘gold-vermilion’ is the colour of fire, or fresh blood.

Hopkins used the word inscape to refer to the charged essence of a thing (a tree, a landscape, a sunset or – in this case – a falcon); the absolute individuality that gives each thing its being, its uniqueness, its sanctity, its purpose in the world.  He created a second word, instress, to refer to the energy that holds the thing together and – importantly – to the impulse which carries it whole into the mind of the person seeing it.  His heart stirs for the falcon, he is at one with it in its mastery of the air.

We can gain profound courage from this sonnet. The beauty and joy of the falcon, ecstatically riding the wind, infuses with his energy not only Hopkins the poet but also ourselves the readers. It prompts us to celebrate those moments in our own lives when we are effortlessly magnificent and free.

He inspires us to believe in a glittering luminous core to our own being - a core not crushed by the ‘sheer plod’ of our daily activities, but brought by them to the surface, honed and sparkling in the sun.

shéer plód slowly, laboriously, and without break; these accent marks, inserted by Hopkins, tell the reader to place more accent or emphasis on those syllables when reading aloudAnd all this in full awareness that our existence is precious but precarious; that danger or death may be lurking around the corner. An awareness that only heightens the intensity of our joy for life in the present moment.

Stage 4: Comfort of Self

We’re now at the fourth stage of our journey from despair to delight, and it’s beginning to get a little easier.  Here is today’s sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins:  

My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this tormented mind

With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

I cast for comfort I can no more get

By groping round my comfortless, than blind

Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find

Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise

You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile

Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile

's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies

Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

A couple of clarifications - Hopkins often uses adjectives to stand in for nouns, as in line 6, ‘comfortless (world)’.  And he likes to create new words, such as ‘betweenpie’ in the last line.

           

There is a sense of interior space in this poem, of having (at long last) a little room to rest, to breathe, to grow. And a great message, that we deserve kindness and love.

Hopkins is beginning to be gentler with his ‘sad self’, giving himself a break from his incessant internal critical chatter.  It’s time to ‘call off thoughts awhile elsewhere’.

We can do the same.  We can take time out from tormenting ourselves about why we feel so unhappy.  We can resist our negative thoughts. I can stop yelling “Just pull yourself together, stupid” inside my own head.  You can recognise your own worth. You can realise that it’s alright to feel the way you do. 

For Kristin Neff, self-compassion has three basic elements: self-kindness, in place of self-judgement; common humanity in place of isolation; and mindfulness, observing rather than identifying with our negative thoughts.

We can be compassionate to ourselves – have pity on our hearts - just as much as we are towards others. We can treat ourselves just as well as we treat our friends and the people we love.

I love Hopkins’ phrase ‘leave comfort root-room’. It’s about giving ourselves permission and space for a sense of ease and well-being to set down roots and begin to grow.

Maybe it’s time for a duvet-day - or two….

And then, who knows, joy may (increase in) size and catch us unawares.  Hopkins’ evocative image of God’s smile, distilled within his new word ‘betweenpie’, is of a brightly dappled sky seen between dark mountains.  For him that brings memories of the hills of north Wales. For me it conjures up childhood days of sunshine over Glendalough in Ireland.

 We can help our own smiles to grow. One way that works for me is the meditation technique of visualising a constant, infinite stream of warm, spacious, liquid sunshine; pouring in through my head; slowly and gradually filling my body, from my toes all the way upwards.

A bubble of joy

Our local community centre is closed for the summer, so we’re holding our Monday evening tai chi class in my back garden.    

A dozen of us, working our way through the movements.

I’m barefoot, feeling the soft grass and firm ground beneath. The threat of rain has passed and the sun is warming my face. The wind comes up, gusting towards me through the wooden arch by the pond, resonating in the trees overhead.

A bubble of joy swells from my belly, up into my head.
 

Grief and Joy

Here are four of the many wise and thoughtful responses I’ve received to my most recent posts, plus a beautiful poem.  The writers have given their permission for me to share their thoughts with you. I hope you find them as helpful as I do.  

1. 

I was thinking, "Don't rush. Grief doesn't have a destination. It's a journey of a lifetime".  I wonder if you have read "Carrying the Elephant" by Michael Rosen?  It's the first of three volumes of poetry for adults, primarily about the death of his son.  He has some powerful imagery about "walking along".  I find this helpful, and the poem always makes me cry.  I think the whole journey of life thing is a bit trite, but I like the idea that we walk along.  I take myself to the lakes and think of those who accompany me on the way, sometimes we hold hands, sometimes pulling or helping each other, sometimes the kids and dogs dash about in front.  There are those who walk with us for a while, join another group then return, and those who just spend a short time with us.  There are those with whom we walk in comfortable silence, and those to whom we cannot stop chattering.  We take in the ever changing view, in all its weathers.  I find life can be hard to make sense of, and I find this idea comforting.

  

2.  

My brother died nearly 15 years ago, and I still miss him.  I found it took a year before I was back to normal functioning. One of the hardest things was not the absolute grief – which was like falling off a cliff into profound sadness, but the brain fog.  Quite simple tasks became almost impossible, and academic work was quite beyond me.  My experience was that with time, and by that I mean over the course of the year, not just a few weeks, although the level of sadness didn’t diminish, the frequency of falling off the cliff did, and each time I fell off, it lasted slightly less long.  So I went from being always at the bottom of the cliff, to being mostly at the top of the cliff, but with episodes of feeling the same searing loss as right at the beginning.  It was like losing half my self.

I’d like to add one more thought that came to me while reading your blog: when one grieves a loved one, the more this person was important to us, the heavier we’ll feel when we lose this person because to some extent, this person inhabits us more; we sometimes feel responsible for pursuing this person’s mission; thus it feels like gaining a lot of weight suddenly and having to learn how to balance our body with this new weight after.

 

3.

I agree completely when you challenge the foolish notion that there is a set ‘healthy’ period of time to grieve. Simply not true! Loss affects everyone differently; the person, your relationship and manner of their passing also play a large part in determining how you come to terms with what has happened. In many ways, you never recover from what has happened, but you learn to accept it and manage your emotions. I know that my grief is managed when I can let go of those moments I missed or wasted (survivor’s guilt?), and think of that person with a sense of joy that overrides my sorrow. Other times I relive the grief as raw as ever, usually when I think I should have moved on – but this is not something that makes me concerned or ashamed.

I feel that in many ways people are the memories they gain and share with others. These transcend being, and can never be taken away from you. I will feel sadness as well as happiness, and this will probably continue in waves throughout my life. It means that the person was important to me. And I find that to be a comforting thought.

 

4.  

Thinking/wondering about grief and how long it lasts, I think we can be still grieving gently at some level while learning to live on without the person we mourn, so these two experiences co-exist within us. There isn't a 'stop time' when the grief has ebbed away and we see no mark of it on the sand; there isn't a 'start time' when happiness and lightness begins again and we exchange one for the other. Each informs the other, perhaps.

In the poem 'Lovers on Aran' Heaney asks a wonderful question of the Aran land-sea scape: 'Did sea define the land, or land the sea?' and he goes on to say that 'each drew new meaning from the waves' collision'. I wonder if perhaps grief and joy are just like that, defining each other, quite powerfully, each drawing new meaning from the collision that happens within our identify when we are shaken and upended.

And I think of how you've also had to cope with your accident and the whole recovery process, and that 'squishiness of being' that reminds us we are so very vulnerable, and so very precious. And how in your blog you talked about handing over to others to take care of you. I imagine that here, too, in the collision of strength and weakness in our physical being, we might find some definition, some new meaning/s about who we sense ourselves to be, our growing identity.

It's late, it's a dark blue night, the wind is sweeping in from the west; rain is gusting down from the Connemara hills and sparkling against the windows. I send my warmest thoughts, and to Sue and Sasha, every good wish. It sounds so good to have their care and comfort. I get the impression you are forging ahead to where you want to be, so I'm also sending various Irish pishogues, magical spells and mythical beings to speed that up!

Lovers on Aran

The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass,
Came dazzling around, into the rocks,
Came glinting, sifting from the Americas

To possess Aran. Or did Aran rush
to throw wide arms of rock around a tide
That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?

Did sea define the land or land the sea?
Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity.

 

Seamus Heaney