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During college Mary Ann went to a “Religion in
Life” retreat that was totally devoted to discussing poetry. Making the
connection between a wide variety of poems and the Christian faith
wasn’t easy for this political science major, whose only experience of
sacred poetry previously had been the psalms.
Frederic,
on the other hand, has lovedpoetry since he was a young boy. In high
school he spent months reading and rereading the poems of Gerard Manley
Hopkins, a Christian mystic who translated the doctrines of his faith
into bold and sensuous forms.
Hopkins’
most famous lines appear in “God’s Grandeur,” one of the poems studied
on Mary Ann’s retreat and Frederic’s favorite: “The world is charged
with the grandeur of God / It will flame out, like shining from shook
foil. ... Because the Holy Ghost over thebent / World broods with warm
breast and with ah! bright wings” (Hopkins: The Mystic Poets; Skylight Paths, 2004). This is a wonderful example of a sacramental understanding of God present in everything.
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