Crazy Stable

Thank you, client who needed revisions by "first thing this morning," or I would not have looked out my study window to see this glorious sunrise over Flatbush at about 6:30 a.m. Now this:

Pied Beauty

G LORY 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 áll trádes, 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

Speaking of which, I really like a blog called Dappled Things, by a 31-year-old priest in the Diocese of Arlington--he is impossibly articulate and wise and orthodox for someone who came of age in the Dark Age of Catechesis, and he also looks, like, really cute. (Get thee behind me, Thorn Birds!) (Well, it didn't help that he and I both came out Numenoreans on the "What race of Middle Earth would you belong to?" quiz! Flashback to teengirlgeekdom!) Here's a sample:

There is a sensuousness (often even a sensuality) built into the Catholic religion, an attention to the fact that the human spirit is ordinarily reached only through the impressions that come through our body's senses. Where Catholicism goes, the arts tend to follow…

Mm-hmm, preach it!