a blessing for transformation (for the third Sunday of Lent)

You got it right, as poets do
Mr. Gerard Manley Hopkins,
you with the whimsical name
and the solemn truth, that
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,
It will flame out like shining from shook foil.”

And that despite all that humans are and do
“There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.”

And it calls to us.
It speaks a wisdom that shines through the cracks
of all that is broken, all that is incomplete,
a beauty so strong that it calls to us
saying, “Come!
All is prepared. The table is ready.”

Here is the food that will sustain you,
the peace that will settle you and strengthen you
and make you able to do the next small
and loving thing.

We can’t change the world.
But we can come near to you, O God,
and become those who are willing to receive,
and be changed.
Amen.