All things counter, original, spare, strange...

Image by Lisa at daintee

Sometimes the truth of tradition is wielded like a knife to pare away growth yet not understood and therefore deemed unholy and false. Sometimes the word of scripture is torn from its pages and sharpened into judgment of cases it has not heard. In the wrong hands the wisdom of the ages can be wrung of its sweetness and forced like a bitter medicine on those who are not sick.

We have learned so much and yet we are still so afraid of what is different, unknown and unfamiliar. That would be sad enough would not our fear beat down on lives and loves longing to be known and understood.

What hubris that we who are blind to our own and native disfigurements should pretend to see and understand through God's eyes the Pied Beauty of the world around us...

Glory be to God for dappled things --
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls; finches wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Listen to this reading of Pied Beauty by Richard Austin.


-ConcordPastor