“Mothering Air”: A Poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins

It was a special grace for me to reconnect a week ago with David Abram, whose book The Spell of the Sensuous was a groundbreaker for me and others 30 years ago. He and I interacted last Tuesday in my current class on the Common Good sponsored by Cameron Trimble and her organization, Convergence. Our session was entitled, “The More-Than-Human World and the Recovery of Belonging.”

During the class, David shared a marvelous poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which was deeply cosmic and celebrates Mary, the mother of Jesus, and compares her to the common air we breathe. He devoted a chapter in his book to “The forgetting and remembering of air,” and I treated the same topic about the sacredness of air in two daily meditations a week ago.  

I reproduce the entire poem here.  It rocks with the implications of what is at stake when we finally recover the preciousness of air, and the reality of the divine feminine and a cosmic awareness, such as the new creation story from science elicits, the story of cosmogenesis.

I believe there is deep nourishment here for Passover and for Holy Week. Because of its length, we will offer the poem in today’s and tomorrow’s DM with a modest exegesis in the latter.

The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe 
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life’s law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race—
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess’s
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do—
Let all God’s glory through,
God’s glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms’ self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.
If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man’s beating heart,
Laying, like air’s fine flood
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.
Of her flesh he took flesh:

He does take fresh and fresh,
Though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvelous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn—
Bethlem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done,
Both God’s and Mary’s Son. 

To be continued.

Banner Image: “The Assumption of the Virgin Mary.” Silk painting by Guido Reni, 1638. Wikimedia Commons

Queries for Contemplation

Do you recognize in yourself a new Bethlem or Nazareth where the Christ is born anew and a new son or daughter of God and Mary? Are you “wound with mercy/compassion round and round”?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond

Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Time

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations

Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings in Creation Spirituality

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance