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Good morning.Ìý May in Scotland still feels like spring to me.Ìý At this far end of the month, the daffodils are long gone, of course, and that glowing, sweet green of the leaves has turned darker - but there’s still a sense of newness and fragility.Ìý Of perfection which flits past before you’ve properly greeted it.Ìý Every year I think, If only I could watch more carefully; be outside in the air and the green for longer – then, somehow, it could all be absorbed and understood.Ìý

No poet expresses this kind of fretful joy better than Gerard Manley Hopkins.Ìý

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý When weeds in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens …Ìý

I remember snatches of this poem when I see new grass gleaming in the sun, or a shock of bluebells among the trees, or if I don’t want to come in from the evening light:

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý What is all this juice and all this joy?

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý In Eden garden. - Have, get, before it cloy…Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý

Hopkins the Jesuit priest saw spring as the perfection of God’s creation, before the Fall. In a different way for me, these lines capture the feeling of this time of year.Ìý That it’s impossible to hold on to the beauty and newness we crave – and that’s why it’s so precious. It’s a graceful gift.Ìý The glory of new life.Ìý It passes.Ìý It is reborn.Ìý

For the quenchless beauty of this earth, and for the love of God which surrounds us and does not fade or pass awayÌý – we give thanks this morning.Ìý Amen.