Daily Prayer, 13 April

Easter season is spring time, and the renewal of nature should inspire us to thoughts even deeper than the beginning of the baseball season. It’s a good time to look again at poetry.

I’d like to share with you tonight another of my favorite poems. It’s by William Wordsworth and is a bit long, so I’m only reading a small part of it. It’s called Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, and in it Wordsworth describes the changes that come over us as we grow up. As a child we are amazed by new discoveries, particularly in nature: blossoming flowers, butterflies, even the grass, which provides a great place to roll around, is an amazing thing. But as we age we become insensitive to such things and lose our sense of wonder. To Wordsworth, it was important to recapture that wonder, but with the renewed perspective of maturity that knows that life includes death and suffering, but also much more, things even more permanent. And if we remember these more enduring things, then we can bring back that wonder and remember anew what it was like to be a child.

 Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
                Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
                      We will grieve not, rather find
                      Strength in what remains behind;
                      In the primal sympathy
                      Which having been must ever be;
                      In the soothing thoughts that spring
                      Out of human suffering;
                      In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
                      Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

LET US PRAY

Lord, we pray you will give us the philosophic mind that is capable of looking through death, and the faith that will bring soothing thoughts out of suffering. In this way may we then be granted to see your presence in the world around us and again appreciate the beauty of your world. For You are the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, and to You we give glory, honor, and worship always, now and forever, and to the ages of ages.

AMEN