Almost unmade

A recent book review in the New Yorker made me appreciate the simple, spare language (& ancient antecedents) Gerard Manley Hopkins uses to capture what life's about.

From Gerard Manley Hopkins' Wreck of the Deutschland, c. 1875:
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

Snippet from Cædmon's Hymn, c. 660:
Now we must praise / heaven-kingdom's Guardian
the Measurer's might / and his mind-plans,
the work of the Glory-Father, / when he of wonders of every one,
eternal Lord, / the beginning established.

1838: Trail Where They Cried (Nunna dual Tsuny)

Allison's great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee who survived the travesty of the Trail of Tears--a heartbreaking time for a courageous, heartening people who sang hymns as they were forced along:

In 1838, in one of the best remembered incidents of the Removal of Natives from the American Southeast, sixteen thousand Cherokees were forcibly marched nine hundred miles from Georgia to present-day Oklahoma. One-fourth of the Cherokee Nation died along the route that came to be called the Trail of Tears. As they walked, Christian Indians among them sang Christian hymns in their own language. The best known of these was an atonement hymn, "One Drop of Blood," which asks, "Jesus, what must I do for you to save me?" The reply is, "It only takes one drop of blood to wash away our sins. You are King of Kings, the Creator of all things." The Cherokee translation of "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah," also sung on the trail, is equally poignant:

Take me and guide me, Jehovah, as I am walking through this barren land.
I am weak, but though art mighty. Ever help us..
Open unto us thy healing waters. Let the fiery cloud go before us and continue thy help.
Help us when we come to the Jordan River and we shall sing thy praise eternally

Source, Google Books: Jace Weaver's Other words: American Indian literature, law, and culture. UOP, 2001, p. 280.

There is additionally this snippet from the article: Among the Cherokee Indians, 1824, p. 224:

There are several hymns in the Cherokee language, which our dear friends sing almost constantly. We sing in Cherokee at night when the school closes. The Lord is visiting this nation in great mercies. I have witnessed what my weak faith hardly ever dared to expect...

Google Books is a rich repository of early 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century accounts of Cherokee history and faith, here.

It's a reminder to remember and treasure the love, faith, endurance of a great-great-grandmother at this time of year in a late May now so long ago.

Stu Hackett

I've recently stumbled across some online appreciation for the esteemed--more than that, the beloved--Stu Hackett. He, his wife Joan and the Hackett family have graced so many of our lives for so long now--with keen wit, bright intelligence, humility and lovinge kyndnesse.

The three links below serve in some fashion to inform that love and appreciation.



1. The interactive Hackett: an appreciation of Stu Hackett: works (even his monumental The Resurrection of Theism), witticisms, quotations.

2. A wonderful reflection from William Craig Lane, here.

3. A glimpse at Stu's cordial, good-humored wit:

Stu Hackett, used to tell us the story of a teacher of his who once answered a student's question about the generic use of the word 'Man' by stating that, "As a rule, 'Man' embraces 'Woman'." The smart-alecky kid who asked the question then said something like, "Yeah, in more ways than one!" Stu always got a kick out of telling us that story.

Source: here.

Though no longer at hand (I've recently given it to a dear friend) one of Stu's marvelous--and early--essays was in C.F.H. Henry's The Word for This Century, OUP, 1960--detailed here.