I took this photo sitting looking across from Brechin towards the coast on an August evening. The moon drifted to and fro between the clouds, or so it seemed. The tracks of the tractor across the cornfield brought a sense of peaceful waiting for harvest, under a harvest moon. Amongst the pleasures of taking photographs is the required reduction of pace, the suspending of other agendas, and the deliberate intention to observe rather than glimpse, and to take in rather than pass by at the maximum allowed speed limit.
By contrast there is the conflict between life pace and life peace, the contrast between rush and rest, and the impoverishment to our view of the world and ourselves if we only ever glance and seldom gaze. I love Hopkins poem because he is realistic about the elusiveness of peace, and the illusion of ever thinking life can consist of rest. Even God rested only after 6 days of creative exertion. But Hopkins is no pietist merely craving inner calm and long term serenity. He recognises that conflict within and conflict without are inevitable because essential in lives that are to grow and reach out beyond the mere interests of the self. He doesn't use the word affliction in this poem, but it is a profoundly pastoral response to suffering, loss and the absence of peace. "Patience exquisite" is the fruit of such peacelessness – and the coming of the Dove of peace, the Holy Spirit, is not to speak words of pointless comfort, or even articulated love, but more importantly to sit and brood. As at the Creation the Holy Spirit brooded upon the waters and God's creative word rang out, so upon the experiences of unpeace, the Spirit sits and broods to coax new life into being.
PEACE, G M Hopkins
When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.
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