Today is the feast day of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus.
In his honor, here are the words of the 19th century Jesuit priest-poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose heroism was in his quietly dealing with his own, unique oddities in a way that was for the greater glory of God.
                       PIED BEAUTY
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 áll trádes, 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
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