Gerard Manley Hopkins - June 8th

Gerard Manley Hopkins

From "Telling the Stories that Matter" blog

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a poet and so he wrote poetry. It was a natural thing. Not only did he produce beautiful art in words and thoughts but it was, by itself, beautiful in the way he did it. At its very essence, Gerard's art produced art. But he struggled mightily with a variety of sins and compulsions. To add to his pain, he suffered under long bouts of depression and anxiety that often left him feeling hopeless. This depression and dismay led him to write poetry while at the same time despising the product of his pen--such is the nature of most foul depression. He resolved to become a Jesuit and a priest and in this resolution he took his poetry and burned it as an act of sacrifice and renunciation. Apparently, Gerard had decided that the mind of a poet could not be or become the mind of a priest. Though many have insisted he was wrong to think so, perhaps he was right at the time. Perhaps Gerard-who-was had to lay down a part of himself to find Gerard-who-could-be. So, his aims changed but poetry still beat within his heart and his words ("I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day") even now give expression to that dark predator that haunted his waking hours:

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.What hours, O what black hours we have spentThis night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!And more must, in yet longer light's delay.With witness I speak this. But where I sayHours I mean years, mean life. And my lamentIs cries countless, cries like dead letters sentTo dearest him that lives alas! away.I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decreeBitter would have me taste: my taste was me;Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see The lost are like this, and their scourge to beAs I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.

Read it all HERE at Telling the Stories that Matter




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President Obama on Muhammad Ali

"Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he’d tell you. He’d tell you he was the double greatest; that he’d 'handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder into jail.'

But what made The Champ the greatest—what truly separated him from everyone else—is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the same thing. 

Like everyone else on the planet, Michelle and I mourn his passing. But we’re also grateful to God for how fortunate we are to have known him, if just for a while; for how fortunate we all are that The Greatest chose to grace our time.

In my private study, just off the Oval Office, I keep a pair of his gloves on display, just under that iconic photograph of him—the young champ, just 22 years old, roaring like a lion over a fallen Sonny Liston. I was too young when it was taken to understand who he was—still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square Garden.

'I am America,' he once declared. 'I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me—black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.'

That’s the Ali I came to know as I came of age—not just as skilled a poet on the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.

He wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes—maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world. We saw a man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.

Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it. Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family, and we pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace." —President Obama

Muhammad Ali

Heroic Geniuses - Ansel Adams

I just watched a wonderful American Experience program on PBS highlighting the amazing photographer Ansel Adams. His work is incredible and I have long loved those photos, the beauty of God's creation, the black, white, the capture of the wondrous gift of this natural world. Amazing!

Bruce Springsteen - American Prophet?

Bruce Springsteen
True Patriot!

View the 60 Minutes interview video HERE.




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I'm a week late on this post, but if you missed the 60 Minutes interview with Bruce Springsteen, you need to check it out HERE. A few excerpts are below; he rocks!!!! (on so many levels!)

Are rock stars serving as our most public prophets these days? Bruce seems to be calling our nation back to its original dream, its original mission and reason for being. In this interview, he mentions that things like wire-tapping and torture are not "American" but are "anti-American." His sense of where we are is insightful and fascinating. Rather than just blasting the war, and blasting the Bush Administration, he raises the question of whether we have moved off-course from our tradition -- he is rooted, deeply, in the best of the American tradition ... like the prophets of old, he may be calling us back to our original "covenant," ...

I wonder if the Church would be as willing to raise these questions as our rock stars? (and, in so many ways, represent the Church....his critique points at our politicians but also at me!)

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(CBS) It's hard to picture, but Bruce Springsteen turned 58 last month. His breakout hit, "Born
to Run," is 32 years old. While rock stars his age are content to tour with their greatest hits, Springsteen launched, last week, what may become his most controversial work as a songwriter.

Even now, Springsteen is an artist in progress, having moved from stories about girls and cars to populist ballads that echo the dust bowl days of Woody Guthrie. Springsteen has put all that together now in his first tour with the E Street Band in four years. As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, he has returned to full-throated rock and roll, and a message that's sharper than ever, damning the war in Iraq, and questioning whether America has lost its way at home.

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Springsteen told 60 Minutes his concert is part circus, dance party, political rally, and big tent revival. "You're the shaman, you know? You're the storyteller. You're the magician. The idea is whatever the ticket price, we're supposed to be there to deliver something that can't be paid for. That's our job," Springsteen says.

"You have got to be, wild guess, worth somewhere north of 100 million dollars. Why are you still touring? You don't have to do this," Pelley remarks.

"What else would I do? You got any clues?" Springsteen asks. "Got any suggestions? I mean, am I going to garden? Why would you stop. I mean, you play the music and you know, grown men cry. And women dance. That's why you do it."

"It's good to be a rock star," Pelley says.

"I would say that yes it is," Springsteen says. "But the star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention. My son has a word, he calls it 'Attention Whore.'"

"But you have to be one of those or else why would you be up in front of thousands of people, you know, shaking your butt. But at the same time, when it comes down to it, it's the way it makes you feel. I do it because of the way it makes me feel when I do it. It gives me meaning, it gives me purpose," Springsteen explains.

"Some of the pieces in the new record are gonna be considered controversial. Give me a sense of what you think has to be said. Why are you still writing?" Pelley asks,

"It's how I find out who you are, and who I am, and then who we are. I'm interested in that. I'm interested in what it means to be an American," Springsteen says. "I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is. I got the chutzpa or whatever you want to say to believe that if I write a really good about it, it's going to make a difference. It’s going to matter to somebody." See the rest of the transcript from the video HERE.