Wednesday, September 17, 2014

New thoughts about the given life . . .



I'm trying to see. Really see. The beauty all around me (and you) all the time. Something about being able to conceive of how one might communicate a view in paint or pencil gives me insight to beauty, simplifies it to its essence, makes me stop and really see.



Some vistas are puzzles to me. A riddle that I don't yet know the answer to. I haven't discovered the hidden beauty in its jumbled, mid-day, blare. Yet.


But more and more the world is opening up to me. I see the shocking loveliness of light on a warehouse, shadow in the branches. And I am seeking. Always searching the world for the beautiful secrets in its profusion.



What kindness! That God would give these heart-stopping moments of seeing what he has made. Although it be bleared, smeared, full of anguish and struggle . . . well, Gerard Manley Hopkins says it better than I.

                                                         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;        5
  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;        10
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.

A new way to think about the given life.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...