From “God’s Grandeur,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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
***
Rebirth — and the possibility of rebirth — is an idea buried at the core of our culture.
“There are no second acts in American lives,” said Fitzgerald, and you’d think we never heard. This time, this year, this resolution — this will be the one that makes us and all things new.
Perhaps so. Though, if we’re honest, we should pause to wonder why all the previous efforts did not work, yet this one will.
And yet. As long as we accept both that nature is never spent and that it is not to be frittered away foolishly, there’s room for freshness, hope, rebirth. Again. This time, for real.
Colin Steele 