Well, I never would have thought to pair Gerald Manley Hopkins with this type of art and imaging, but I must confess it is a feast for the eyes and the mind, and lifts the heart to fresh new discoveries. What a wonderful piece. Thank you.

One thing that I always admired about Hopkins is that he clung to his convictions even if that put him at odds with those he lived amongst or worked for. He was a Catholic in a country that looked down on Catholics and became a Jesuit, the order that was most looked down upon. (Those that remember the Porter in “Macbeth” Jesuits were the “equivocators: he l demeaned in a series of “Knock, Knock” jokes.) He was assigned as a priest to Ireland where he was a royalist in the midst of a people that wanted to boot the monarchy out of their country. He favored the teachings of Duns Scotus over those of Thomas Aquinas, the theologian of choice of the Jesuit order. He took Scotus’ concept of haecceitas, or “thisness” as a concept in his poetry. He also wrote poems no one in his order understood. His first poem “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” a eulogy to nuns that dies in a ship wreck, was submitted to a Catholic journal but was rejected largely because no one understood it. Obviously I like Hopkins a lot. Cordially, John Wilson, Jr.

Wonderful visual depictions! Thank you!