"Get out you smelly wretch, can˙t you see this is for respectable people?" With that Francis Thompson was ejected from the public library. His ragged, opium-starved form slunk back to his newspaper bed among the homeless people. They shivered together under the London bridges over the river Thames. Son of a catholic doctor he abandoned his own medical studies at Ushaw College and became a modern prodigal son.
He gleaned a pittance selling matches. Cheap liqueur and begging lengthened those vagabond months into three empty years. Yet deep within he yearned to find life's meaning. On scraps of paper he penciled his poetry. He could have been any one of the broken people you see in the city today. You'd avoid eye contact. Francis was street smart at the art of the shakedown. Sometimes Salvation Army soup kitchens were all that kept body and soul together.
Wilfrid Meynell edited a Catholic Magazine. One day from the garbage Thompson wiped and read a copy of "Merry England". He bitterly reflected on the title. There was nothing merry about his shattered life. No one there could see Francis from heaven's view point. Later he caught such a glimpse. He saw how God was seeking him. The result was a poem that gripped me in high school. Its irreverent title reflects the gutter. He called it "The Hound of Heaven," equating the Almighty to a foxhound chasing its prey. If only we all could see people, however dirty, sin-scarred or disillusioned, from heaven's point of view! God sees worth underneath the scowl, the curse and the jeer.
The grubby envelope arrived on Meynell˙s desk. There was no return address, but the poems it contained were brilliant. They were published with an appeal to meet the writer. Francis wrote of his willingness to see the editor. Meynell found the hollow-cheeked poet care of a chemist shop where he owed money for his opium habit. The introductory handshake between the gentleman ands the beggar led to a life changing friendship.
Francis Thompson's poem "The Kingdom of God" reveals his search for God. An excerpt is at the end of the article. Reader, know this, God has promised: "I will be found of those that diligently seek Me" (Jeremiah 29:13). It's in seeking God that your moment of sublime discovery comes ˙ He's seeking you. You haven˙t sunk to rummaging for food in trashcans. You cling to your illusion of independence. Still the inner loneliness lingers. Francis' rescue testifies that Christ is walking your way. Like the frightened disciples rowing against the blast of the storm at sea He will come to you. The "water" upon which He walks differs. The need to be found by your Maker stays the same. Take heart: you too can know God.
Share with me the prodigal˙s poetry: "O world invisible, we view
thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know
thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! Does the fish soar to find the
ocean, the eagle plunge to find the air? That, we ask of the stars in
motion if they have rumor of Thee there. Not where the wheeling systems
darken and our benumbed conceiving soars! The drift of pinions, would we
hearken, beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. ˙'Tis ye, 'tis your
estrangd faces, that miss the many-splendored thing. But when ye (so sad
thou canst not sadder) cry--and upon thy sore loss shall shine the
traffic of Jacob's ladder pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. Yea,
in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry, clinging to Heaven by the hems;
and lo, Christ walking on the water, not of Genesareth, but Thames!"