A RETREAT WITH GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

With Fr Michael Kirwan SJ - July 22-27, 2013

A retreat with the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Michael Kirwan has long been interested in poetry (and literature in general), as a pathway to God. A genuine experience of human creativity help us to be open to the divine, to co-create with God rather than to be forever rivals. He has been working specifically on the poetry of William Blake and the German Romantic poet Friedrich Holderlin, but the human-divine partnership is very much evident in the poetry of Hopkins. As a Jesuit, Hopkins' life and work were shaped by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. An important focus of the retreat, therefore, will be to appreciate how particular poems exemplify and reinforce key moments of the Exercises. No prior experience of Hopkins or of Ignatius will be presumed. We suggest you bring your own copy of the collected works of Hopkins.  If you haven't got a copy and would like to buy one before you come then we suggest:: Gerard Manley Hopkins Poems and Prose – Penguin Classics – ISBN-13: 978-0-140-42015-9. First published 1953, reprinted in Penguin Classics 1985. Click to order.   Fr Michael Kirwan SJ Has been interested in the poet Hopkins since his student days before entering the Jesuits. Michael is a Jesuit priest lecturing in Theology at Heythrop College, University of London and has recently published three books on theology. The retreat begins on the evening of Monday 22nd and ends after breakfast on Saturday 27th. Arrivals welcome from mid-afternoon onwards and preferably by 5pm. Cost: £280 Booking fee £75 (which is subtracted from the total offering) Book this Retreat HOME Hopkins at Beuno's >>

PIED BEAUTY Glory be to God for dappled things - For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plottted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change; Praise him.

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