God 's Grandeur By Gerald Manley Hopkins

In this paper, I will review Charles Ryrie’s book The Holy Spirit. I will detail what I feel the book is about. I will emphasize various points given by the author that stood out to me. Finally, I will give my personal evaluation of the book.

(…) the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air—look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire (…). What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like

Often times we are at a loss for words when it comes to talking about the person of the Holy Spirit. Beth Felker Jones in her work entitled “God the Spirit” serves as an introduction to the study of the Holy Spirit in a distinctly Wesleyan and Ecumenical Perspective. Jones is working against the notion that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is often the most neglected of all Christian teachings (1). She recognizes her experience within the Wesleyan tradition as one that shapes her pneumatology and this book. She asserts that one of Wesleyan Christianity’s special gifts is it’s “leaning against any tendency to neglect the Spirit” (4). Even with this framework she aims to place the Wesleyan perspective in a larger ecumenical milieu that shows the continuity of a Wesleyan pneumatology with the Tradition of the Church. Overall, her approach is very accessible, as she assumes very little and writes in such a way that allows her to cover large dogmatic topics clearly and concisely. By merit of simply being an introduction only style book, there is the risk of glossing over topics and not providing enough in depth discussion to fully understand and comprehend the doctrine discussed. A reader should feel confident that Jones has indeed provided us with a solid introduction to Wesleyan pneumatology that has the ability to bear fruit and initiate growth in the life of the believer.

In Stanley Hauerwas’s article titled “Go with God” he presents a letter to students who are going off to attend college. It’s a guide that proposes certain expectations and helpful information for students heading off on this new endeavor. He makes a point that going to college means much more than a diploma and hopes of high paying job. “To worship God and live faithfully are necessary conditions if you are to survive college. But as a Christian you are called to do more than survive” (Hauerwas). The advice in the letter reinforce its main theme: to be a student is a calling. This challenges the reader to think beyond the normal expectations of why we go off to college.

The poem, “Gospel” by Philip Levine gives a vivid description of what the narrator sees around them. The narrator focuses their description on nature. They make many references to types of plants like lupine and thistles. Throughout the poem, nature can be seen as and abstract creature. Nature is giving and lively. The conflict in the poem is between the speaker and nature. The narrator tries to show how nature can give nice outdoor views and how the earth gives people a place to walk on while people give nothing back to nature. Levine’s speaker uses repetition and comparisons to show how nature is constantly pleading for the narrators attention yet they cannot offer anything to the relationship they have with nature. The poem slowly evolves

     In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the reader is given a particular glimpse into Janie's life with reference to the men she has known.  Janie's three men are all very different, yet they were all Janie's husband at one point in her life.  Although they all behaved differently, in lifestyle as well as their relationship with Janie, they all shared certain similarities.

"Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say" (Wiesel 23). Questions were very common during the Holocaust (Shoah). They expressed the frustration the Jews had towards God. The same frustration Elie Wiesel had in the book The Night Trilogy. The author uses the exposition of these questions, (i.e. Where is God? How can he abandon us?), to show the large impact the Holocaust had on Jewish faith and to make the reader dwell deeper on God's purpose in his/her life the same way Elie Wiesel did.

In “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Zora Neale Hurston writes about a young girl named Janie who is stuck between the reality of love and the quixotic ideas of what love could be. In the book, Janie is forced to marry an older man due to her nanny's standards set on her security and safety. Janie's first marriage quickly ended after a charming man with the name of Joe Starks swept her off of her feet and made her realize what she's really worth. Despite of her initial attraction to Joe, both marriages end up making Janie unhappy and Unsatisfied.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Nora Zeale Hurston is an excellent feminist novel and an even better speakerly text. Speakerly texts speak to the readers with an authentic black voice. This authentic black voice can only come from an African-American himself or herself, which in this case, is Hurston. Speakerly text is defined as “a text whose rhetorical strategy is designed to represent an oral tradition” (Harriss). Throughout Hurston’s novel, Janie, an African-American woman, is narrating her past experiences to her good friend, Pheoby. Through her life journey, Janie faces difficult times, but times that ultimately help her find her voice and identity.

Eliade, in his book “The Sacred and Profane,” poses an interesting conjecture that all people are inherently religious. What one does and the decision they make in their lives are all reflections on what they find sacred. Sacred in this context is an extension of one’s belief held up in high esteem to the point where what is deemed sacred is god like. Religion is the frame that interprets what is sacred and gives it a name and a face. Christians, for example, view Christmas as a sacred time as it is the season of the birth of their savior; Jews view the Passover as sacred as it represents a time in their religious history where God passed over the Jews while sending a message to their enemies. What is sacred can manifest itself in any shape, form, or time; truly entering the fourth dimension of space. If something sacred is god like, what is sacred to those who do not have a God? How can something be sacred if there is not a frame of reference for the thing to be sacred? How can every decision a person makes be reflect what they find sacred, if they do not have a religious language to reflect this phenomena?

In the 1950’s the melodrama genre came to age and there is no better example than Douglas Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows. The melodrama followed some basic characteristics which can be identified in the film. First and foremost the narrative of the melodrama focused on the family. All that Heaven Allows follows the narrative of the typical melodrama but at the same time also challenges the social conventions. While Sirk follows many of the key themes he does so in a more detached fashion. The protagonist Cary is bound to her community by her social class. Change was occurring in society and the melodrama displayed people’s restraint to this. In All that Heaven Allows Sirk began his focus on the female and her desires in contrast to the more conservative male focused melodrama. As with the melodrama the legibility of the story, displayed through the plot, is simple and easy to follow. “Our engagement with the story depends on our understanding of the pattern of change and stability, cause and effect, time and space” (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008). The linear time flow of the film allows for it’s simple understanding. This is added to by the expressiveness of the melodrama, where everything is brought into the open and nothing is left unsaid. The expressiveness of the melodrama is also represented in the highly expressive mise-en-scene. Sirks use of colour, the human figure, camera work, lighting and music allow him to portray suppressed meaning and significance.

Note the parallelism of “shoulder” and “art,” in the third stanza; Not only does Blake address the fact that God must be incredible, he also realizes that it is not just the body of the tiger that is being forged, but also his heart. The first stanza introduces an understanding of aspiration and creative intention by substituting the word “dare” for

The poem, God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins is an Italian sonnet, which closely follows the traditional Italian rhyme of ABBAABBA, and then CDCDCD. (Shmoop) There are also several words throughout the poem that rhyme within themselves. For example God, rod, trod, shod all rhyme. Gerard Hopkins liked to use sprung rhythm in which the stressed and unstressed syllables have a complicated relationship, and the message desired from the reader can change the rhythm. (Shmoop) Sprung rhythm allows each person to read the poem differently and take away what they wish. The speaker of this poem has lost faith in humanity and their treatment of the world God had granted us. However, in the second half of the poem, the speaker shows his views of the world and its connection to God.

Gerard Hopkins “Gods Grander” is a poem illustrating a person concern over how the environment is being treated in the world. The narrator in the poem dislikes, how the world is being treated because of the human race not respecting or caring for the environment. The narrator wants the world to be treated with respect because God created the world with love and care. The poem introduces several literary elements like symbolism, imagery, and alliteration. The three literary elements help prove that people can be joyful when the environment is damage and poorly care for.

Some of the recurrent themes and motifs in Hopkins’ poetry include the idea that the world resembles a book written by God, through which he expresses himself in order to provide humans with an opportunity to understand and approach him (Gardner 11). In ‘God’s Grandeur’ Hopkins can be seen to express his concern about the spiritual crisis of the Victorian period. During this time of urbanization and industrialization, Hopkins voiced his distress about human indifference to destruction. This poem is one of the very few which he wrote during the time when he served as a priest.