Inspiration for 2nd Half of Life: “the dearest freshness deep down things”

Photo by Christian Palmer on Unsplash

“The dearest freshness deep down things” is a line from the poem God’s Grandeur written by Gerard Manley Hopkins, English Jesuit priest, in the 17th century. I include it at the end if you choose to read it now. 

I first read his poem in the middle years of my life, at a point when the brochure slogans and powerful sermons — that initially motivated me to ministry — had by now left me stuttering to a sighing stop. 

Furthermore, any advertisement or article or book that used hype in order to crank up my get-up-and-go on everything from exercise to diet, with promises that I would become a smarter or better version of me, had lost their appeal. 

In fact, any kind of motivation slogan that used numbers — such as 3 Easy Steps towards a Slimmer You, or 4 Amazing Ways to Connect with God — was a sure sign that their promises, while helping me with surface involvement, would not be effective in making me go deeper. 

I still loved God. I still wanted to help the world. I still enjoyed life and meaningful work and being around conscientious and compassionate people. 

It’s just that the things that used to motivate me … now no longer did. 

This should not have surprised me. There is a natural progression to life, for as we learn and experience, our priorities will change.  Many people are afraid to embrace these changes that they feel inside. 

My Apple watch however still thinks I am that former me, the first-half-of-life me. 

It’s daily dose of cheers and encouragement reminds me of how far I have come in recognizing what inspires me. 

So . . . when I came across Hopkin’s poem God’s Grandeur the phrase “dearest freshness deep down things,” I couldn’t breathe. I took those words and hugged them to my chest. They were as real to me as anything else. I could feel the rightness of them. 

This is what I want, I thought! After all the years that I had “trod, and trod and trod,” as Hopkins writes, I could discover in my older years the fresh things that are in me. I don’t need something outside me to inspire me. It is here in me, deep and dear. 

It is a work of the Holy Spirit who “broods” over me and the world “with warm breast and ah! bright wings.” It is also my work, which is to tend to my heart from which, as Jesus says, “rivers of living water will flow” (John 7: 38-39).

Reflection: 

What first-half-of-life “Apple watch” motivations no longer appeal to you?

What dear and fresh and deep down things inspire you now in your second half of life?

God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil 

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.