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God, Creator of Colour
Sep 30, 2020
By Nancy de Flon – In “Hurrahing in Harvest” the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins revels in the marvellous elements of nature that herald the arrival of autumn. All his life, Father Hopkins discerned divine beauty in the beautiful things on earth, and autumn brings an abundance of them, many of them edible as well as nice to look at!
The poet, surveying the sheaves standing in a field and the wind-swept clouds in the blue sky, lifts up his heart and eyes: “Down all that glory … to glean our Saviour.” Father Hopkins, who lived in the 19th century, was a psalmist for his age.
The biblical Psalms burst with the praises of God’s glory revealed in the natural world. Psalm 104 is a lengthy and lyrical poem to God as Creator of all things in the universe. It begins “Bless the Lord, my soul! Lord, my God, you are great indeed!” and continues for 35 verses to extol God’s work of creation, describing it in the most exquisite poetic language.
Psalm 96 invites the “sea and what fills it,” “all the trees of the forest” and other creatures to “rejoice before the Lord,” while in Psalm 98 “the rivers clap their hands” and “the mountains shout with them for joy” at the coming of the Lord.
In the US we associate autumnal beauty with colourful foliage – nature’s own “last hurrah” before the quiet of winter takes hold. The Hebrew psalmists knew nothing of our fall foliage, but they did know about light.
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