First Sunday at church.

The poem below does not have indents. But the original poem does. I don't know why Blogger won't let me indent. Anyone?


I went to St. Mary's Episcopal Church Manhattanville this morning. It was lovely to be in a small church with a little choir, making a joyful noise unto the Lord. I have missed the standard print-outs of the readings and the time when all visitors stand up, introduce themselves, and everyone claps. I have missed hearing people pray out loud in church for people they know who are dying, who are at war, who are ill. I have missed the service not being "perfect" but perfect in its non-impeccableness. In Seattle, going to St. Mark's or St. James sometimes felt like the church equivalent of going to Nordstrom's: sleek, beautiful, comfortable (except, perhaps, for the sermons), with everyone wearing nicely pressed designer slacks. I think the amount of money spent on the clothes on people at St. Mark's might pay for a week's operating budget at St. Mary's. And it's a relief to be out of genteel whiteness and into the parts of America the newspapers ignore.



Also, St. Mary's is likely the only Episcopal church in America with a poster of Malcolm X in the entryway. Yes! I think I'm home.

One week and two days at seminary.

Seminary looks like seminary.

I've been praying late at night from a little red book called "Hearts on Fire: Praying with the Jesuits." So of course, I am remembering what it is to get goosebumps from Mr. Manley Hopkins. Here is the poem from which this blog derives its title:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and share's man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshest deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.




I LOVE it.

I also love being here.