As might have been expected, there is in this issue of The Journal one article on the Focus topic-Lines from Hopkins. That response is from Jim Noonan. When I read Hopkins, I am reminded of what Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1944: "Hopkins is full of pitfalls for the unwary." These pitfalls come on one hand from the depth of Hopkins' thought and on the other from his expression of his experience. For example, in the first quatrain of "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," Hopkins piles up images of fiery kingfishers, flaming dragonflies, roundy wells, ringing stones, plucked strings, hung bell's bow finding tongue to fling out broad its name. Then he sums the whole of the created universe wherein each thing announces "What I do is me: for that I came." The wary reader sees in this the poetic expression of the philosophical axiom "Everything acts according to its nature." Hopkins' christian faith then takes the axiom to a new level: the graced person lives and acts "in God's eye" with the nature of Christ who "plays in ten thousand places,/ Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/... through the features of men's faces." This is the poetic expression of The Mystical Body of Christ. 

Hopkins' poetry is worth the struggle it sometimes takes to see his vision of God's Cosmos: "The world is charged with the grandeur of God... (where, and Hopkins here uses a mothering image) the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings." For Hopkins, God's Cosmos is sure: "As sure as what is most sure, sure that spring primroses/ Shall new-dapple next year..." 

Much of this issue of The Journal is given over to the work of Diarmuid O'Murchu who sees Cosmology replacing Theology as the queen of all the sciences. God's Cosmos is a seamless robe. There is an Irish story that the mythical Fionn McCumhaill asks "What is the finest music in the world?" and he concludes that "The finest music in the world is the music of what happens." O'Murchu takes his readers through his vision of God's Cosmos, of what is happening, and we are indebted to him for that.

The Journal asked Sheldon Oleksyn to interview Diarmuid O'Murchu in Saskatoon, and Diarmuid gave Sheldon time to do that. Our readers will appreciate the questions and answers that are reported in this issue. There is a great deal to think about and discuss. Two other reports of O'Murchu's spirituality are included here too, one from Jack Sproule and the other from Claudia and Maurice Sullivan. 

Chris Diamond, Cobble Hill, BC