Everyday wonder

I found him - the poet that I always wanted to love. Before I came to college, I didn't like poetry. It was too emotional, and impossible to understand. I think it takes life to love poetry, and maybe my experiences are teaching me to do just that.

I have always wanted to find a poet whose words I could see, and whose images resonated in my mind. Gerard Manley Hopkins is that poet, and he is quickly becoming my daily companion. His poetry is breathtaking and the depth to his language is stunning.

Hopkins loved the created. He loved nature for what it is, and life purely for its existence. In his poetry, he marvels at the world and directs himself to respond to what he sees or knows. Life is suffering, pain, heartbreak, joy, peace, and light. His poetry reflects on the mundane moments of life, and discovers them to be stunning. He loves how life is not at all wonderful, yet totally wonderful.

Beauty exists in and of itself. It is simply waiting for an observer; it is waiting for a beholder. And that is where responsibility comes in. It is our responsibility to see life as wonderful. The early morning clouds, the way the sunshine comes through the cracks in my shade, the icy snow that sparkles under the street lamps - these are all commonplace. They can be easily overlooked. They are ordinary and not at all wonderful. Yet because of the incarnation, they are absolutely wonderful, and I choose to see them as so.

Christ's incarnation permeates everything. In Romans 1, Paul writes that God's "invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made." God is manifest in the created world, and we must see Him.

Hopkins instructs his heart to rise in worship at the glory he witnesses around him. Our "blue-bleak" hearts must be stirred to flame, and there are so many things throughout each day that can ignite the heart that is longing to wonder.