“Stop all the clocks…”

The image above is from the 1994 movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral. The actor John Hannah plays Matthew, whose love and partner in the movie was Gareth. He used the words of W.H. Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues” at Gareth’s funeral. The poem expresses the devastation of grief. Carried throughout its lines is pessimism and loss. At times we have all cried “Stop all the clocks” as we have become overwhelmed by the horrors and tragedies of our world and of our own cities. The following link should take you to that movie clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_a-eXIoyYA

In great contrast to Auden’s words written in the late 1930s, I turn to the poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur, written sometime in the late 1880s and published in 1918. The poem suggests that God has imbued nature with an eternal freshness that is able to withstand the heavy burden of humanity. The last two lines of each poem could not be in any greater contrast. I cling to Hopkins hope and I look for God’s grandeur in nature when I fail to see it in humanity. Please pause and ponder these poems and it is my hope that Hopkins stirs a freshness and an eternal hope in your soul.

Stop all the Clocks
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. W.H. Auden

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 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. Gerard Manley Hopkins

Prayer:
O Holy and loving God,
creation sings your praise.
Help us to live our lives
to the song of your creation and
may this melody cause our feet
to follow in faith, this dance
of love and forgiveness, hope and holiness.
Come close O Lord, when we desire to stop
all the clocks.
Come closer still O Lord, when we feel “nothing
now can ever come to any good.”
Restore our souls, renew our courage, and
revive our hope.
You brood over our bent and broken world,
and with your warm breast and bright wings
charge our world, full of grandeur, to celebrate
the new day. Amen.