Reflection Masthead
Issue 148 - Bright and Beautiful - February 2017
      A hymn celebrates "all things bright and beautiful," created by God. Two recent trips to our bay cottage near Rockport, Texas, gave us rich experience with God's beautiful creation, feather and fin, and inspired these reflections. See the Dance of the Dolphins video below.
Wet and Wild 
                                                   
       Whooping Cranes winter on Eighth Street. And where they gather you will see other magnificent shore birds. But who would have imagined - near the same pond more than 20 species of birds in the same sighting! Five whooping cranes, a dozen or so Sandhill Cranes, 49 Roseate Spoonbills with their brilliant fuchsia breeding striped wings, 'hundreds' of Great Egrets, and 'thousands' of Black Belly Whistling Ducks (locally, also called Mexican Squealers) loitering around the dining room size pond, never bothered by a young alligator sunning on the bank - a breathtaking sight for avid birders of any ilk.
        Ibis hatchlings fledge out of the dark holes in the wet weeds while mothers solicitously look on. Meanwhile Whooping Cranes make any ballerina envious as they engage in their graceful mating ritual dance and song. They sing free and dance free. They must have been Rumi's mind's eye when he said, "I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think."
       Why can't we humans dance and sing as if no one is watching? If feathered families can gather in the same dining room day after day, why can't we humans share simple meals in harmony? If Squealers and alligators can nap together, why can't we humans humbly endure our political foes? If the wet and wild share their homes with migrating guests, why can't we humans?
 
What would the world be once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
                        --Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Inversnaid"         
         --by Jan

As Dolphins Dance

Tonight, a trio of dolphins danced, in the marina just down from the cottage. (See video below.) Earlier,
a couple of miles away, a great blue heron soared, then settled, then perched atop an oak tree, surveying his domain. Down the road from the heron, a family of whooping cranes, two adults and their chick, fed quietly in a field they shared with cattle.
My spirits lifted. My heart soared, simply because these creatures exist, they are themselves.
For Christmas, Jan gave me a wonderful set of lectures, on CD, about the British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. In his poem, "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," Hopkins celebrates the "thisness" of every thing:
 
Each hung bell
... finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
....
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
 
And so, the dolphins dance and dive, the great birds soar, crying "This is me! For this I came." Each celebrates its own identity, its God-given being.
For Hopkins, priest as well as poet, this "thisness" of each thing was not only God's gracious gift, it was a channel of God's grace. Christ, through whom the world was made, is part of every creature and revealed in each one's essence. Thus, Hopkins continues, the just person
 
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.
 
Tonight, I saw Christ playing in dancing dolphins and soaring herons. In my joy, I pray that others may see Christ in me, in my true essence.
-Bill
 
Source: Joseph J Feeney, SJ, PhD, "Gerard Manley Hopkins: Magician of Words, Sounds, Images, and Insights," Now You Know Media, 2014, Lecture 5.



The Dance of the Dolphins
At sunset, a trio of dolphins play in the
SeaGun marina, just yards from our cottage.

 
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Sincerely,


Bill Howden and Jan Davis
Soul Windows Ministries