Posted by Holly Ordway in Christian Life, Literature & Literary Apologetics | 0 Comments
Guides through the Shadow (1): Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Patience, Hard Thing!”
At one time or another, everyone suffers pain, loss, grief, and anxiety. In the midst of a difficult time, we need comfort, but not always the way well-intentioned people think. Sometimes what we need most is not a cheerful word, but one that acknowledges our pain – when we are walking in the valley of the shadow of death, we need our brothers and sisters to walk with us, not try to convince us that it’s not so bad after all.
In “Patience, Hard Thing,” Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks of the agony of self-denial. When we most need to pray, prayer is hardest; when we most need patience, patience is the last thing we want. Hopkins reminds us that it is through our voluntary obedience to God and the wiling crucifixion of our own desires that healing comes.
“Patience, Hard Thing!”
Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses, and obey.
Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,
Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks
Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks
Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.
We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills
To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills
Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.
And where is he who more and more distils
Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills
His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.
Hopkins reminds us that inaction is always harder than action; patience is always harder than impatience; and prayer requires us to let go of our own desires and turn to God. “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray.” Prayer is easy to talk about but hard to do at times!
The weary task of Patience is to “do without, take tosses, and obey.” It is painfully hard to accept what we cannot control, to obey rather than try to exert our own will. Yet Hopkins says that “Rare patience roots in these, and, these away, / Nowhere.” Self-denial provides the fertile soil for patience to grow; without self-denial, we get nothing and go nowhere.
Hopkins also recognizes that our lives contain pain and destruction that can’t be wished away. We must accept “Our ruins of wrecked past purpose.” No sugar-coating here!
In this poem, Hopkins acknowledges the agonizing pain of self-denial. Christ calls us to die to ourselves. That sounds inspiring when everything is going fine, but when we actually have to do it, “We hear our hearts grate on themselves” –our raw, wounded hearts – and “it kills / To bruise them dearer.” When we’re hurt, it’s tempting to assume that we know better than God what will help. It hurts to “bruise” our wounded hearts more by forcing ourselves to submit to God’s will. But, Hopkins reminds us, “the rebellious wills / Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.” We can ask God to transform even our own desires. We may not want to obey God, but we can want to want to obey Him!
Though he has spoken bluntly of pain, Hopkins ends on a note of profound reassurance. “And where is he who more and more distils / Delicious kindness? – He is patient.” Drop by drop – not all at once, but in a slow process of distillation – patience yields kindness and peace.
“Patience fills / His crisp combs” – the image of a honeybee, slowly filling the honeycomb with sweet honey. A slow process! “…and that comes the ways we know.” We know how to distil patience: with prayer and the giving up of our self-will to God.
Pain is real. Sorrow and disappointment are real. Yet we can choose whether to dwell in the broken places, or to ask God to do the painful work of healing. God is the redeemer of all things. Let us invite Him to let the heart’s ivy grow over the ruins and transform them, to let the empty chambers of our hearts be filled slowly with the distillation of His love and kindness.
Related posts:
