cafe

I often go to the cafe for lunch - because the soup is made there - this time it was carrot ginger, the sandwiches have real cheese and real bread, and there is always a salad. Besides I like to go to places that are not franchises, and the eating is far healthier. Today there were scads of people in front of me so I settled in and read theology: Sallie McFague, "A New Climate for Theology". She referred to the often quoted lines of Gerald Manley Hopkins that come at the end of "God's Grandeur" written in 1877. When I reread the sonnet I was astonished of how it now relates to the environmental situation at this point in time.
Here it is:

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.

And how about: "the last lights off the black West went"?

But then it does not end in despair, and neither should we.

As I sat waiting I desperately wanted to take a picture of the man sitting nearby. He was a dead ringer for Super Mario, complete with cap.

Instead here are two taken at the table and one of a ball cap.