Brief Meditation On A Line From Hopkins

Today I went for a walk. I saw a trail I'd never taken before, and followed it to a street I didn't know. For some reason, a single line from a poem began to run through my head: The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

The word "charged" means many different things, of course. You can be charged in the sense of being accused of something. You can be charged in the sense of being entrusted to carry out a task or duty. When you charge a battery, you cause it to store energy drawn from another power source.

I looked around.

There were a scattering of pink petals on the sidewalk, fallen from a flowering bush that stood taller than I ever will. Water drops on the petals winked back at the sun.

There was a tree with some kind of berry hanging from its branches. Large dark berries, like a cross between blueberries and olives, cast in silhouette against a golden light.

There were long swathes of grass growing out of the soil next to the sidewalk. Water drops on the grass sparkled like diamonds. I stopped, crouched down, stared, ran my fingers along the thin green blades. The diamonds melted away the moment I touched them. But everywhere I looked, there were more. If God so clothes the flowers of the fields, I thought.

The world is generous with its riches. God is generous with the world. And yes, the world is charged with His grandeur. In every sense of the word.