Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

God knows I can't pay attention for very long. As a musician, I'm always looking for innovation, a new guitar tone, maybe a fancy new way to guide rhythm in a song. When I hear new music I become obsessed. I field dress it several times a day until I can pick out every layer while hanging upside down blindfolded. Then, in the distance, I hear the new Coldplay album tinkling in the breeze. And like a child who spots a shiny yellow dump truck accross the room, I set down the White Stripes and make like a zombie toward Mylo Xyloto.

God knows I can't pay attention for very long.

One of my favorite poets is Gerard Manly Hopkins. Hopkins believed that everything carried an essence within it, an essence that ultimately points back to Christ, which is where I got the title "Christ plays in ten thousand places." This has been my life. God seems to teach me things by having them pop up everywhere, sort of like a Made in China sticker seems on practically every toy from my childhood.

In the past few weeks that lesson has been about suffering in the world around me (which will be it's own post later on). The sources include a sermon at my church, an episode of NPR's This American Life, President Obama's speech at the national prayer breakfast, an email from some missionaries from our church, and then last night through my wife's reflections on a day where God was teaching her the exact same thing through some pretty difficult and random (If you believe in such a thing) circumstances. And I just lay there, half listening, half telling God, "Ok I get it, I get it."

God knows I can't pay attention very long, but instead of beating me over the head for not focusing, He gets creative.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire - Gerard Manly Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow string finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves-goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: that keeps all his going graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is -

Christ - for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.