Discussion Topic 2 - Gerard Manley Hopkins

Alright folks, time for another discussion topic. Let's talk about Gerard Manley Hopkins. Here's a link to the Wikipedia entry on him. The short story is that he was a well educated man who decided to become a Jesuit priest. He continued to write some amazing poetry, such as the following:

God's Grandeur

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 & 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 & with ah! bright wings.

According to the Wikipedia entry, he struggled with feeling that his love of poetry prevented him from being fully devoted to his religion - which is interesting since his poems are, and have been, so effective at moving others to worship God. Some of his work was accepted, but not published by a Jesuit journal, which he took as a rejection.

You could take a lot of directions with this, and I'll leave it open, but here's some interesting questions.

• Where are the Christians creating this level of art in our day?
  
• How does the rejection of his poetry by the Jesuit order in his day mirror our expectations of priests/pastors in our day?
  

A reminder - don't respond in comments to this post, but go ahead and make a complete post, preceding the title with "DT2" so that its clear you're talking on this subject.