Saturday, October 21, 2006

Distractions, Language, Hopkins

I won't title this blog until I'm done writing it.

I have been so distracted lately from scripture study. Other pursuits derail me: a television show, a task in the house, a crying baby, a desire to go play basketball. It's not smart to lower-level my scripture study, for when I do it right it becomes the spine of my life, upholding the rest. My faith.

We should try to speak and write the English language correctly. What we speak closely reflects what's inside. I have enjoyed teaching prefixes, suffixes and roots this year to my students. Some cool web sites I have used to help me: www.etymonline.com, www.dictionary.com, and www.acronymfinder.com. The more I understand about our English language, its origins and influences, and the meanings of words, the more amazed I am. I believe that language is a gift/creation of God. Language is so incredibly complex; how on earth could we have evolved from a one-celled organism into this? Surely we had some Outside Help.

Although I'm nearly 39, I know that I can still maintain good physical shape. I just need to get into a good routine.

Beautiful music is beautiful.

I have been reading some Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems lately. Here is one that enriches me:

"God's Grandeur"

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 shares 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 freshness 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.

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I don't fully understand the poem, but it's beautiful. It has multiple meanings.

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