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Good morning. Today is a special day for all kinds of reasons. One of them is that it marks the anniversary of the death of the priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrote many of his poems while staying at St Beuno’s on the north Wales coast. As it happens, my job involves much travelling across Wales, and this includes driving on the A55 with its majestic views of the Great Orme and the north Wales coast, the Clwydian hills and glimpses of Snowdonia.Ìý It also takes me past St Beuno’s, so I recognise many of the views which inspired Hopkins’ poetry.

Hopkins has a strong sense of God’s presence in creation; indeed, one of his most famous poems begins, ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God…’ Hopkin’s work takes in both the majestic sweep of landscape but also the inherent beauty of ordinary animals and objects, as in his hymn of praise to ‘Pied beauty’ and all ‘dappled things’. He is aware of the damage which human beings can do to their environment but retains hope in the power of God’s spirit to renew and refresh creation, writing that ‘for all this nature is never spent; there lives the deepest freshness deep down things’.

Hopkins wrote in a very different age to ours; but in presenting a fresh perspective on where we stand in the order of creation, his poems offer a renewed sense of what it means to be human, made in the image of God. As the place of ‘vision’ becomes increasingly important in all walks of life, recognising the wonder of our shared humanity may not be a bad place from which to start.

Almighty God, The Psalmist speaks of how the heavens proclaim the glory of God; amidst all the important decisions to be made this day, may we not lose sight of what it means to be a part of your creation, Amen.

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