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Barbara and John Sparks offer a hopeful reflection for our first week of Lent:
On April 24, 2008, Barbara and I witnessed a most astonishing sight, a most inspiring vision of God's creation, with some minor assistance from Mankind. On the normally quiet grounds at Long Hill (572 Essex Street, Beverly, MA), an estate garden and arboretum managed and cared for by a conservation land trust organization named the Trustees of Reservations, this garden was spreading its wings. The "clouds of glory" are the breathtakingly beautiful Anise Magnolias (magnolia salicifolia) in full bloom. These 50' high specimens, along with some fine examples of magnolia Xloebneri (30" high) grace the garden with clouds of snow-white blossoms before the trees leaf out.
The sight evoked in me the wonder of William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" from the year 1807. The poem (9 out of 11 stanzas) has been beautifully set to music - a 40-minute work for tenor solo, mixed chorus, and full orchestra - by English composer Gerald Finzi (Intimations of Immortality, Opus 29) in 1950.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home
Peace and Joy!
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