I have always walked, worked and loved in a different beat. My relationships have been intense and dramatic, and my life has been about coming to terms with extraordinary emotional depths and sensitivity. There is something that cannot be fully grasp in me that many of my friends who spend years with me still find that there is something they don’t know. Coupled with this intensity is my craving for fun, activity and conversational stimulation — nothing is as boring as someone who cannot talk sense and content. Moreover, I do not like people with a black-hole personality — those that suck your energy that you end up drained and depressed. My natural curiosity leads me to desire knowledge on a broad range of topics and to pursue goals that seem to be impossible. I love the eagle and the sea: the eagle of Jesuit idealism and the sea where I take off to rest. They describe my desires: to reach higher skies and to go into deeper depths than what is normally attained. They describe my energy.
The Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, wrote the following poem from which has been taken the title of this blog:
“As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
It speaks about the ontological significance of natural, individual and human activity — the truth about Christ being me, and I being Christ. That the world is indeed charged with the grandeur of God. The pictures here are my take on Hopkin’s insight: recognizing Christ in ten thousand places and the features in people’s faces.
*Selves: v. “fulfills its own individuality”
**justices: v. “acts in a godly manner, lives fully energized by grace, justness, sanctity” (RV Shoder SJ)
