Your latest entry in our ongoing conversation, Helen, told me things that help to know you better [The heart of the matter, Viewpoints, May 23]. My thanks to you.

You shared memories of growing up in your native English countryside with all its summertime beauty, of wildflowers and open spaces inviting you to drink it in and feel happy and free, as you said. I'm glad beyond words for those cherished memories of yours and sense how welcome they are to you now as you draw upon them for ongoing enjoyment of this good earth we are given.

Your summary of your last 10 years' experience - of the stultifying effect of institutionalized Christianity as you experienced it ("I had to turn inwards continually to thank Jesus or ask him for advice") - is a sad story but true nevertheless. You likened it to having to wear an outfit that did not fit you well, all too constraining, coercive, joyless - the very opposite of freedom.

What you describe is a religious straitjacket, not the garment of beauty, holiness and durability that serves well in all seasons of life and outlasts the vagaries of legalistic religion. Jesus himself had to confront it, and it is the ongoing bane of the church.

I hope you do not go back to that former outfit. Let it hang in the closet where you left it.

Speaking positively to your recent piece, I offer another view of truth that you seek and cherish. It comes from your English countryman, Gerald Manley Hopkins, a priest and poet of rare depth (l844-l899). He loved the beauty of God's world as you do. He also addressed its dark side with a well-anchored faith that affirmed nature as the sphere of Divine grace in spite of what we do to it. Here he is in "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?

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 nights 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.

The opening two sentences catch his sheer elation over the incredible beauty and healing power of nature, something you felt early on in your years and still find inspirational in your intent to live with integrity and care for others. The middle sentences mark the ugly realities of the human smudge on all things, secular and sacred. Then come the closing lines which I have long held close in my own mind and heart, the Biblical image of the Holy Spirit as the dove brooding over the bent world with warm breast and bright wings.

That blessed Spirit does indeed brood over a church and world that forever fall short of the glory of God. That verb "brood" carries mystery and traction, worthy of lingering over lest ghastly realities are slighted and we have no word that can face them down.

It's the closing image I love, that of the Spirit's warm breast and bright wings that beckon. There, I offer, is hope for every searching soul, believer and unbeliever, church and society, a hope that celebrates nature at its best and endures the worst winter storms. There is where I have found, and still find, a deep down joy, freedom to serve, delight in the good world all around, care and interest in people as they are, and strength for hard days when no other strength avails.

And hope for every tomorrow.

-F. Dean Lueking is pastor emeritus of Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest. He and Helen Mildenhall have been conducting a periodic dialogue in faith issues in these pages for some months now. Readers are welcome to join in the discussion.