What San Diego is Like For Me

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.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). "God’s Grandeur" Poems. 1918.

Art is Everywhere

Yesterday, my son and I watched a documentary on Andy Goldsworthy. It was truly beautiful to see my five-year-old son sit still and be amazed at how Goldsworthy creates pieces that are both taken from and given to nature. The tension the artist creates between impermanence and permanence, light and dark, stone and water is both powerful and poignant.

During our viewing of the documentary, the sun began to reflect off our neighbor's pool in such a way that the light from the water shone through our blinds and onto our ceiling. The result? A perfect rectangle of shimmering light broken by thin, dark stripes.

My son looked up and said, "Look Mom, art."

Indeed.