The Brother I’ve Found in Gerard Manley Hopkins

I’m Gerard — Monday-to-Friday music instructor, Bible teacher all week long, student always. I love learning, especially learning about Jesus! I also enjoy writing poetry, making music, and eating like a hobbit. I’m a Filipino-American in my thirties who lives in SoCal. YOB popped up in my life a decade ago. I often read the articles to remind myself I’m not alone; hoping my story can likewise encourage someone else on the journey.

I met a dear friend at summer camp. I deeply treasure his words. We have a lot in common. Both of us have struggled with loneliness and despair. Neither of us was very strong or “masculine” growing up. We both took our religious faith seriously. In our adult lives, we both went to seminary. And we both like poetry. (His is a lot better than mine.) And today, whenever I struggle with stuff, his words comfort and encourage me to keep going.

But here’s the catch — we didn’t meet in person at this summer camp. He doesn’t really know me; actually, he passed away many years ago!

No, I’m not talking about befriending a ghost; this isn’t some meeting from beyond the grave. But I will say — even from beyond the grave, the thoughts and words and very life of my “friend” from summer camp have comforted me again and again.

I remember it like it was yesterday. This wasn’t a “summer camp” in the traditional sense. We spent a week at a small Christian university in southern California. The camp was for high school and college students — and the goal of the camp was to teach them about “Christian adulthood,” or how to grow up well.

The camp director gathered us around him. We sat around the quad of a small Christian university, a little before noon on a warm August day. The director was in his mid-thirties, tall and thin and studious looking with wavy black hair and glasses. I could tell right away he was a communicator with a passion for discipleship. He gave us a quick talk before lunch.

I had brought several high schoolers from my church youth group to this camp. I was their adult leader, and it was our first time here. None of us had any idea what to expect. I’ll admit, I was a bit wary of this camp. My church leaned on the more conservative side, and I worried about the doctrinal orthodoxy of the camp’s speakers.

But the director spoke with confidence, charisma, eloquence, and he didn’t need a mic for us to hear every word. There were about forty or fifty students and youth leaders. He had communication skills, to be sure, but his ideas were also compelling, captivating, disarming.

He made arguments for why “growing up” is something Christians are called to do … but also, that “Christian adulthood” is a lot different than the kind of adulthood our culture (whether secular or Christian) feeds us; that adulthood is more than sex or marriage or making money; that growing up is something Christ has called us to do — and something for us to enjoy.

The start of adulthood is not the end of “fun,” but the beginning of a journey into something even grander and deeper. Kind of like that idea from the Narnia books — “Further up and further in.” The further we go in our walk with Jesus, the more beautiful, rich, and expansive it will be — all the way to eternity!

Honestly, it was very inspiring stuff — words that even I needed to hear as a 27-year-old who very much felt like he was not yet an adult.

My ears perked up when the director mentioned a guy named Gerard Manley Hopkins. “Gerard,” the director explained, “wanted to follow Jesus, but he was also gay. He struggled with same-sex attraction. But because of his desire to be faithful to God, he chose a life of celibacy.”

Hopkins, Hopkins, Hopkins — now where have I heard that name before?

Oh yeah, I had to memorize one of his poems in an English class ten years ago! Something about “the grandeur of God.”

“Hopkins became a priest. During the latter part of his life — far from his family, his friends, his country — he wrote several poems that became known as the Terrible Sonnets. They were terrible because in them he expressed some of the deepest anguishes of his heart.”

The director then began to recite one of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems — from memory:

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, despair, not feast on thee!
Not untwist, slack they may be, these last strands of man
in me, nor, weary, cry, ‘I can no more!’ I can.

Suddenly, I could feel my heart beating fast. I was afraid the director might look my direction and see my facial expressions, hear my thoughts, and know. Know about my own secret struggles.

But I was also captured by the poem. The director spoke every word like he meant it, with emotion, a broken cadence — and it was as if he had disappeared, like he had faded away, and Gerard was here, back to life, speaking to us instead.

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
thy wring-world right foot rock? Lay a lion limb against me? Scan
with darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones, and fan
in turns of tempest, me heaped there, me, frantic to avoid thee and flee?

I didn’t gather all the nuances of Hopkins’ words at that moment, but I could sense the desperation, the pleading. Hopkins was praying. Praying the very prayers that I pray.

God, why would You do this to me? Why would You allow this kind of struggle in my life? I love You. I want to follow You. But to have this burden … it feels like I’m being crushed by Your own hand. Sometimes I just want to give up, or run away, or just stop existing.

I could feel the tears welling up inside. I was moved. This guy — Gerard — it seemed like he had felt exactly the same feelings I’ve been feeling. And he was now conveying them to me (more than a hundred years after his death!) with a kind of sorrowful beauty that resonated and reverberated throughout my soul.

The camp director went on to connect Hopkins’ experiences with growing up in Christ. He talked about how following Jesus would be filled with its share of struggles and ups and downs (including, “for some of us here, wrestling with the tension between same-sex desire and faith”).

Very candidly, he mentioned how many Christians today struggle with such tensions. He spoke about the validity of choosing to be an orthodox Christian and also identifying as gay (or what we might call “Side B”).

I don’t remember much more of his talk, but from that moment onward I needed to know more about this Gerard guy.

Returning home, I started googling everything I could about Gerard Manley Hopkins. I read his biography. I looked up all his Terrible Sonnets. The more I camped out in his poems, the more I loved this guy.

With the caveat that I’ll never really know Hopkins as an actual friend on this side of eternity (I currently have real-life friends whom I do treasure deeply and could not be replaced), I must say, his poems have been a refreshment to my soul, especially in the seasons when I have felt extra lonely or particularly tired of my personal struggles. Or frustrated with life. Or grieving about the life I don’t have because of my particular Christian convictions.

I feel like I’m not alone on the days when I feel really far from God. I have a friend who has been through these seasons, too.

Since then, I’ve memorized at least one Gerard Manley Hopkins poem every summer. And when I’m alone or lonely or frustrated or anxious or tired, I have a brother walking beside me on this journey. I say his words to myself with tear-stained cheeks, in shouts or whispers, slowly, thinking through every word.

Are you familiar with Gerard Manley Hopkins? What other poets, authors, and artists speak to you in your own journey with faith and sexuality?