"The world is charged with the grandeur of God."

—Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur

Hopkins wrote this in 1877, in a world that was rapidly industrializing and, he felt, losing touch with something essential. The charge he describes is not metaphor exactly—it is more like electricity, something live in the fabric of things, present whether or not we are paying attention to it.

Self-will can move through a day without quite making contact with any of it. The morning, the light, the person across the table—these become backdrop to whatever we are trying to manage. What Hopkins seems to be pointing toward is not a different world but a different quality of presence within this one. The grandeur may not require special conditions. It may simply require that we stop long enough to notice what is already charged.