YMCA and Gerard Manley Hopkins

YMCA and Gerard Manley Hopkins ::: an unlikely and unique connection between the genius of George Williams and the British poet Hopkins – a rare exploration of the convulsive context in which the Y was founded and the poetry created – both a testament to their personal and transformative experiences of God’s salvation and calling upon their life.

The Y and Hopkins were born the same year, in 1844; both British in birth and embodiment of the diverse Christianity that grounded their culture.

June 6, 1844 is the founding of the Y; Hopkins is born July 28, 1844 and would die still a young man at age 44 on June 8, 1889.

This past Sunday I wrote about Williams founding the Y, today on Hopkins death-day I want to remember him and the cultural context he shared with the Y, and what it could contribute to an ecumenical Christian emphasis today.

There are very few articles on the internet that make this kind of unique connection; this one published by JSRT of Gonzaga University titled Romantic Critiques of Industrial Technology is illuminating.

A bit more about the context in which the Y was founded:

The Young Men’s Christian Association was founded on June 6, 1844 by 23 year old George Williams and eleven Christian friends.

Williams was involved in the drapery or clothing industry, and would become very successful and prosperous in it.

His conscience was pricked by the complex societal difficulties and suffering of urban families, especially the young men leaving the family farms for factory work.

This cultural upheaval was experienced as one caught in the roiling surf, almost caught by a riptide but almost to tired to take the extended hand of the lifeguard in the boat.

The YMCA was started for multiple intertwined reasons: to save the souls of young men in the city who had left their parish behind; to save the minds of these young men from the grinding and filthy monotony of the factories; to save their bodies from the base temptations afflicting their neighborhoods.

The wider cultural changes included resentment and resistance to the calculated rationale of the Enlightenment and its mechanistic interpretation of the world which fed the appetites of industrialists but destroyed families.

Movements emerged which sought to re-humanize the world, to lift up the heart and value personal experiences; this was reflected in part by the birth of evangelical revivals which stressed individual conversion marked by emotional and dynamic evidences.

Poets, artists, novelists, philosophers and theologians all added their talent and energy to this movement.

The YMCA was not the only Christian organization to emerge in this time to rescue young men from the de-humanizing industrialization of the community and create space for them to have a transformational inward spiritual awakening and calling.

It seems so simplistic now, but it was a radical act of hospitality to open up housing for these young men that was safe, sanitary, secure, but also spiritually alive.

Bible studies, prayer sessions, worship gatherings were all forms of protest against state-supported or traditional churches that rigidly clung to form of transformation, logic over emotion, correctness over inspiration, hierarchy over brotherhood.

Inspired by the dark and grueling context in which Williams founded the YMCA, what are the depressing and gross circumstances that young people need rescued from today?

What kind of housing and hospitality, safety and spiritual vitality can the Y offer in these dangerous days?

A bit about Hopkins and his context in 1844:

Gerard Manley Hopkins converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, inspired by the writings of Cardinal John Henry Newman, much to the sorrow and grief of his devoutly religious family.

As a young man he was caught up in continual conflict, complicated loyalties, frustrated talents, and isolated friendships.

His deep love for nature and people put him at odds with the rational industrialized culture which prioritized technology and production over people.

As a poet he had a roiled soul, drawn to love and serve God, inspired by the stunning Creation, but personally struggling with depression, loneliness, and meaninglessness.

Like the YMCA, he spent his life with young men, seeking to build them up in spirit, mind and body.

Though the YMCA was a evangelical Protestant Christian organization, and Hopkins a Jesuit Roman Catholic, they both valued the inner heart of an individual, striving to bring discipline and freedom to their soul, instructing and guiding others to be one with God and be His faithful servant in a fallen, corrupted, industrialized world.

The YMCA and Hopkins are both unique in their Christian contribution to God’s work in the world; both are still a force for good and an inspiration to Christians these many years later.

They both inspired many other people to experience renewal and attempt their own creative projects.

The Y has been a source of original contributions to the world: ESL, camping, basketball and volleyball, group exercise and swim lessons, etc.

Hopkins invented a fresh and engaging form of poetry, putting together new words and rhythms that compel attention and spur fresh insights into Creation.

At their heart, the Y and Hopkins strive to see the world as it really is, to see men and women as they really are, to see humanity in truth and grace.

They know darkness and the light, joy and suffering, friendship and abandonment, success and failure.

For Y leaders wanting a fresh perspective on seeing the world, try taking up some of Hopkins eclectic and intriguing poems.

For Christians wanting to remember the real context for the founding of the Y in all its complexity and genius, getting to know the real George Williams and Gerard Manley Hopkins can ground you as well as inspire you.

Here are a few of my favorite poems by Hopkins that attempt to help us see the complex spirit of humanity, the faithful Spirit of God, and how we can participate in the reconciliation and restoration of all things as ones loved and transformed inwardly by Christ Jesus.

Gerard Manley Hopkins – 1844-1889

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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 plotted 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.

As kingfishers catch fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

YMCA Mission Creep: Should It Be Cured? [by Rev. Harold C. Smith]

A candid and highly relevant reflection on YMCA mission creep in regard to its emphasis on spirit, mind and body; Christian principles; for all; and being a member association.

This article was originally published in the Jan. 2007 edition of Perspective 33.

The symbol of the YMCA mission is the inverted red triangle.

It was put forth by Luther Gulick in the late 19th century as a summation of the mission of the YMCA and has been adopted worldwide.

**Historical Information**:
Luther Gulick was the first director of the physical education department at Springfield College. While at the college, he inspired James Naismith to devise the game of basketball and was responsible for the creation and adoption of the inverted triangle used by Springfield College and the YMCA as their seals and symbols. Gulick felt the inverted triangle was the perfect symbol to represent the whole man, denoting the perfect balance of the spirit, mind and body. After leaving the Training School, Gulick served as physical education director at the Pratt Institute High School in Brooklyn and later became first director of physical education for the New York public schools.

I came across the inverted triangle carved into stone one day on a walk on the Springfield College campus.

It was above the entrance to the Administration Building (one of the oldest on campus). The carving held a big surprise.

The triangle contained an open Bible; no surprise there.

The surprise was that the passage listed was Ephesians 4:13, not John 17:21.

What was Gulick trying to advance in selecting this passage?

I read Ephesians 4:13 – “until we all reach unity in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

Then I read on in the chapter where the author calls to having the “body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grow and build itself up in love as each part does its work.”

Still more, the author calls on all to be children of light and details all that means.

It was a call to fullness of life and being that the triangle symbolized and Gulick advocated, rediscovered and taught, and with the YMCA incorporated into its mission and being.

This is the tap root of all the mission statements of the YMCA.

It is where we came from and articulates a wholeness that is advocated and sought for all who enter the association.

There has been drift over the years. Let’s look at it.

There has been great concern about openness.

Some attack the word “Christian” in our name as a denial of openness.

Yet the Christian faith, is by its own documentation, open.

Listen to the words of Saint Paul: “In Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, bond nor free.”

That is universal, and that was the root of YMCA openness and of the most Christian aspects of the Movement worldwide.

There is a real danger to openness and that shows itself in some mission statements and drift.

It is far too easy for people to come to the YMCA with no knowledge of the organization or its mission and attempt to capture and /or redefine it.

It is easy to ignore one or more of the aspects of the fullness of life that the YMCA stands for and to emphasize only body or mind or spirit, although the latter two are not usually culprits in this mission distortion.

There is still another danger – the danger of selling the mission.

The YMCA puts its emphasis on buildings and plant far too often, and not on people, and what happens to people, in plants.

The results can be, and far too often is a distortion of mission for the sake of the marginal membership and the marginal contribution and source of revenue.

The temptation is to be all things to all people and winding up as nothing to anyone.

I have sat on YMCA boards that put people on the board that knew nothing about the YMCA or its mission (for them this was another form of compulsory community service to look good on their resume and to their employer), and who cared less.

They were on the board to raise money and only for that reason.

Their board attendance was marginal, and their lack of understanding the YMCA when they did attend meetings did little or nothing to further the mission or ends of the YMCA.

Instead, they often undermined the nature and very purpose of the organization and led it away from both the inclusiveness it stands for and the wholeness it attempts to bring to the lives of its members.

Here I bring out a fact that is basic to the mission and nature of the YMCA.

It is an association, a member association.

The members are the association.

This undermines efforts that you see to say that this is a community organization or to make broad claims which facts and realities do not and cannot support.

Since people and communities are different, YMCAs will be different and this leads to an important aspect of considering mission.

Each YMCA will state its mission and realize its mission in its own way in its own time and place.

This variety is both a strength and a weakness.

The strength is that this leaves room for mission interpretation, creativity, and experimentation.

The weakness is that we can lose sight of the great heritage in which we stand and the great mission that we inherit and pass along; to help people rise to the fullness of being children of God.

For more about Rev. Dr. Harold C. Smith (1934-2017)
Chief Investment Officer of the YMCA Retirement Fund (1983-2000), pastor of Unity Hill Church in Connecticut, and the HCS Foundation.

Be The Light

Be the light. A YMCA devotion for those called to bring hope to darkness and to stay faithful amidst suffering. Like Mary, the beloved mother of our Lord Jesus. #flourishingforall

When the times seem dark, when the burdens of living cause you to stumble, when you wonder why life is turning out this way, remember Mary.

Artistic gifts from the nations, of Mary mother of our Lord Jesus, at the Basilica of the Annunciation, Nazareth Israel

Our OnPrinciple team of 24 YMCA leaders visited Nazareth in February 2020, and a highlight included visiting holy sites where it is believed that the messenger Gabriel announced to young Mary that through her the Messiah of Israel would be born – The Annunciation.

Below are more pics of the Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation, as well as some from the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation.

Growing up as a Evangelical Protestant Christian in the Midwest, I was taught to be suspicious of Catholics, to not consider them as even Christian unless they had a born-again experience like me.

This included disregarding Mary, reviling at Marian devotion, and looking down on anyone who held Mary in high esteem.

I’ve been having to detox from this bigotry.

Visiting the Basilica of the Annunciation changed something within my heart towards the Mother of Jesus.

The pictures below try to capture some of the beauty created through architecture and art in remembrance and celebration of The Annunciation.

I was humbled by the lower section of the Basilica, which has an earthen, wooden feel to it, centered around the home of Mary, where Gabriel visited her.

The upper level is full of light, it draws your eyes up, particularly to the towering cupola, a structure of magnificence and awe.

What turned my heart towards Mary in a more personal way was the many works of art depicting her from the point of view of over forty different countries.

I posted a few of my favorite below – Brazil is so joyful, Mexico makes me smile; America makes me grimace, and I still can’t figure out the Canada one.

As I reflect on this place, this sacred space, I’m reminded of the light that Mary brings to those who remember: her simplicity, her faithfulness, her courage, her determination, her fierceness, her enduring hope, her generous love.

The times were dark when she was visited by the messenger of God. The times are still dark for many in the world.

We can look to the mother of Jesus as a source of inspiration, as one who trusts in the Lord, who will follow him to the end, in love.

When I think of the need for more light, I think of the need for more of us to let Mary light our way.

She was loved by Jesus; but it was her mothering love that shaped his infant, adolescent and adult life. It was her songs that stirred his soul, her faithfulness to God that he in part imitated when he faced heart-breaking hardships.

Be the light.

Let the light of Jesus shine through you in the dark.

Learn from Mary the mother of Jesus on courageously enduring to the end, to the vindication, when God makes all things right.

Basilica of the Annunciation, Nazareth, Israel

Basilica front door; 8 engravings from the life of Christ

Basilica lower level, facing 4th century basilica ruins over the home of Mary, where she was visited by the angel Gabriel

Upper level of basilica, facing the back of the sanctuary

Facing the front of the basilica upper level sanctuary

Flower shaped dome jutting up above the front of the basilica sanctuary

“And Mary sang out:

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.””

‭‭[The Magnificat, the Song of Mary, from the Gospel According to Luke‬ ‭1:46-55‬ ‭NIV‬‬]