Procrastination

I'm way behind on my reading and my papers for class.  So what do I do?  Of course, I check Facebook, I check the news, I look at my friends' blogs.....  I contemplate going for a walk instead of buckling down to the work.  I remember, "Oh, I didn't write in THIS blog yesterday...." and sit down here even though there's not much to say.

Sometimes the time leading up to a task is like circling and circling.  Would that it were like walking a labyrinth, but maybe it's more like being the donkey tied to the grindstone, plodding, plodding.  And -- thank goodness for OTHERS' good writing -- this reminds me of another favorite poem which never fails to bring me joy.  (I always think this is best read aloud slowly):

God’s Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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.