RARENESS

WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

Sunday, May 1, 2022 

“Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mold or mind or what not else makes rare.”
– from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Lantern Out of Doors”

            Gerard Manley Hopkins came to see that rareness is everywhere, and so, slowly but steadily, have I. In my 80th year, all things, more and more, seem superior and second-to-none. Every little leaf these early spring days seems somehow outstanding, and all the passing breezes bring a bit of brand-newness with them. Even more wonderful is that all the people I pass strike me as being beyond compare, somehow suffused with uncommonness. It’s as if they all have lights inside them that shine in the rarest of ways, as if some sort of peerless “beauty bright” is always present with each of them. In one sense, they are just the most ordinary people, but in another sense – the sense that’s steadily on the rise in me – they are utterly unparalleled, unsurpassed, and unsurpassable. It’s no wonder, I suppose, that I’ve taken to staring more and more these last few years, since I seem to be living in a wonderland that makes magic every moment.

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Some scenes from today’s hike in the Peace Sanctuary…

And our friendship poem for today …