New Nazareths (Gerard Manley Hopkins sj)

Wild air, world-mothering air,

Nestling me everywhere....

I say that we are wound

With mercy round and round,

As if with air, the same.....

And makes, O marvellous!

New Nazareths in us.

(Such a grace to experience the nurturing embrace of God's mercy - as if the air around was God's mercy - so light and invisible, so easily missed......yet He is more than present - we are as it were, immersed in God's mercy. I suppose a growth in this awareness will create in us new and deep places, indeed "Nazareths" where the Christ life matures. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote poetry out of his very personal experiences, and himself went through many times of darkness. Perhaps it is out of places where we are broken open and emptied, that God's Spirit, living water, can be poured in)