Hi Emmanuel!

Lexie Hoffman here. Every year I feel like the end of February often marks the beginning of a transition period. Whether that transition is simply moving from snow to sun, or into an entirely new season of life altogether – this time of year brings about an antsy ache and itch for wholeness. I know this past week has been particularly trying as many of you (myself included) are in somewhat of a transition mode. But, it’s important to keep in mind that the dawn always arrives and light brings so much life. While thinking about this transition phase over this past week I kept coming back to one of my favorite poems of all time, “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. My hope is that this poem encourages you.

“Pied Beauty” is a kind of beauty characterized by mixture, blending, and contrast. To be “pied” is to have two or more colors in dots or splotches. In the final five lines of this poem, Hopkins goes on to consider more closely the characteristics of these examples he has given, attaching moral qualities now to the concept of variety and diversity that he has elaborated thus far mostly in terms of physical characteristics. The poem becomes an apology for these unconventional or “strange” things, things that might not normally be valued or thought beautiful. They are all, he avers, creations of God, which, in their multiplicity, point always to the unity and permanence of His power and inspire us to “Praise Him.”

So whatever transition you find yourself in or however strange you may feel at times, rest in the fact that He is with us in “All things counter, original, spare, strange” and that “He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change.”

I’m so thankful for all of you and excited to see what is in store for each and every one of you as Spring approaches.

-Lexie Hoffman

Art and Design Director

Pied Beauty

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)