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.
George Williams 
Gerard Manley Hopkins
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.
