Full Account

“Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”― Gerard Manley Hopkins

When the counting comes up short.
The comparison leaves you behind.
The measure is half full.
Sit with it for a bit to let it out.
Going through is the path.
Especially the hard parts.
Then look up and around.
Recount. Recalibrate. Review.
Complete the picture.
Take full account.
Blessings and burdens coexist.
Not either or but both.
Neighbors with no fence.
Life is beautiful and hard at the very same time.
Don’t miss the beauty in difficulty.
Don’t dismiss the difficulty on the surface of denial.
It’s the mixture and texture of life, loss, love, gain.
Gratitude, hope, joy are gritty and tough.
Knowing the whole story, choose light, accept and grow in dark.

Pied Beauty by Gerald Manley Hopkins

“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.”