This week, we draw your attention to the WATER commitment:
“I am water and I am so good.
I am a soul,
and a brain.
I am so beautiful and I am a tree.
I am a brain and I am the heart.
I am it, and I am all.”
- Poem by a young student in Kenya
Please take time to read the entire article “Poems from Children on the Front Lines of Climate Change,” by Veronica Gaylie, and peruse JPIC’s Earth Day resources if you have not gotten to do so already.
Sister Kay O’Connell also has prepared the following reflection on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Teilhard de Chardin:
This blessed Easter/springtime, in the midst of our many concerns,
especially about global warming, we turn to the unique poetry
of Gerard Manley Hopkins to evoke our Risen Christ:
Let Him Easter in us,
be a dayspring to the dimness of us,
a crimson-cresseted east . . .
(The Wreck of the Deutschland)
And to the mystical vision of Teilhard de Chardin
who saw and loved a Cosmic Christ:
Throughout my life, through my life,
the world has, little by little caught fire in my sight
until aflame all around me,
it has become almost completely luminous from within . . .
Such has been my experience in contact with the earth,
the diaphany of the divine in the heart of the universe on fire.
Christ, his heart a fire, capable of penetrating everywhere
and gradually spreading everywhere . . .
(The Divine Milieu 9)
What do the visions of Hopkins and Teilhard evoke in you?
As you reflect on these poems and resources, consider watching and reflecting on the Kairos video, “Where do you see new life?”
