I've been reading a beautiful book called Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff. It is a father's honesty about his sons death, and I highly recommend it. Here's what he writes in the Preface:"A friend told me that he had given copies of Lament to all of his children. "Why did you do that?" I asked. "Because it is a love-song," he said. That took me aback. But Yes, it is a love-song. Every lament is a love-song.
Will love-songs one day no longer be laments?"
You can tell from that just how beautiful, and Romantic, the book will be.
Wolterstorff, (or Nicholas, as i feel close enough now to call him) speaks of the poet G. M. Hopkins's notion of inscape-- the combined characteristics that give a thing its uniqueness, perhaps its essence. (more on inscape)
Like Hopkins, we also had a tree that was full of inscape. It was an apricot tree that we planted sometime after we moved into where we now live. We grew with it. It never produced much fruit, but I loved it anyways. It started leaning terribly, but that only added character. Well, a few summers ago we rebuilt the back deck. And the tree was considered in the way. My brother had fun with the chainsaw... and (I am not ashamed to say it) I cried. I would be lucky if this is the extent of my sorrows or losses. Or maybe not. It is, perhaps, a greater glory to share in the sufferings and sorrows of God, and to grow through them.
There are a few others trees with inscape that i know well. The Emily Carr tree on my bus route to High School; the "joshua tree" tree on Morningside Ave (which is really nothing like a joshua tree at all. But that is what it is called in my head); that huge white pine at camp; the jumping tree that leans over the canal, also at camp....
I love things with inscape.
