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 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 of 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.
(Gerald Manly Hopkins, 1844-1899)
In this slow twilight of life we geriatrics glimpse more often the utter simplicity of the really real.
The proposition is that everything, everywhere, everyone, all life, every moment of time, may be seen in the light of grace – present in the Big Bang and ever since. Each, then, is of equal value in the relational whole of this speck of a planet evolving in the boundless universe. Our co-celebrants of daily life include the trillions of good microbes in our garden soil. Indeed, their species, which gave life to the earth long before mine, is more likely than ours to survive healthily into future epochs..
That, of course, was the long view. Meanwhile, we cannot abide the view that polarized elitism and poverty in the economy of grace are natural and unavoidable within our own species and in the wider sphere. But the perceived grace-singularity disallows passive self-righteousness. The really real is, for us, intimate, not only nurturing the inner person but also disturbing, challenging. The wholeness is clearly marred by malignancies of injustice within our species and by our arrogance toward the rest of creation.
We’ve learned in sharing the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that we must accept and share humble vulnerability if, together, we are to sow the seeds of true, hopeful justice for the children’s- children’s-children and the wide world our society bequeaths its duty of care to them.
How can this sort of shared discipline and energy be unleashed in a war of generations against the short-vision injustice seen in our yawning inequality gap and global warming? Both are fertilized by quasi-faith in non-sustainable growth measured in monetary numbers of questionable real value in the ultimate economy. Directive, top-down power can never suffice; indeed, our government’s cash support of commerce during the COVID crisis may have unintentionally helped widen the rich-poor gulf; such is the amoral power of money. Tiny steps from the grassroots up by the anonymous in communities sharing long vision based on science and earthed, natural, universal faith, and readiness to accept cost to the present generations, must be vital. The science and faith are at hand. We need look no further than the younger generations of our own whāna (Māori language word for extended family) to know that the human capacities are ample.
Time to avert a tipping point beyond which climate change may accelerate out of control while socio-economic polarization leads to violent revolt, has not yet run out. The universal simplicity of the “really real” is, we reckon, the most common ground on which we may all build communities of the diverse acting in hope.
Meanwhile, Lesley and I dodder along gently, gratefully, hopefully, simply, one day at a time, trying to be in creative relatedness with all around our tiny bubble of life in the graced world.
Boyd Wilson is a former agricultural journalist who turned to rural church ministry. He lives in retirement in Auckland, New Zealand.
