It is a year since the The Sycamore Gap tree was cut down close to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.
This 150 year old tree was a very popular landmark and caused outrage and much anger at its illegal felling. In the care of The National Trust the tree became famous after featuring in the 1991 film Robin Hood. New shoots are now appearing at its stump so there is hope it will grow again.
Gerard Manley Hopkins was a priest and poet who experienced a “great pang” within him when he saw a tree being felled in the garden of Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. “I wished to die,” he wrote, “and not see the inscapes of the world destroyed any more.” The word “inscape” is peculiar to Hopkins. It can mean the individual quality and beauty of all that is created by God. And so trees and flowers, hills and mountains, birds and animals – each in its own way gives witness to the love of the Creator. Yes there are some who are created in the image and likeness of God who are the ones who pollute, dig up, tear down in such a way as to do irreparable damage to God’s creation.
St Paul had a vision of the whole of creation sharing in the mystery of redemption and salvation, yet “groaning in one great act of giving birth”. Jesus compares God’s kingdom to a small seed, which gives birth to a mustard tree wherein the birds of the air find shelter. There is a continuing cycle of birth, death and rebirth in the whole of creation. This is true not only of the natural order but also of the spiritual, for the kingdom of God belongs to this same pattern. Like the mustard seed it is at first hidden before it blossoms into life and branches out to give shelter to all who seek salvation.
Hopkins wrote that the world is “charged with the grandeur of God.” If that grandeur is seen more easily in the highest mountains we ought never to forget its presence in the smallest created thing.
Enjoy the Season of Autumn
Every Blessing
Peter