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?) 

                                Praise him.

Gerald Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”

Hopkins wrote these words in the 1880’s. Forty years later they were published. His religious order, the Jesuits, has not allowed him to publish anything. They perhaps never read this poem, Pied Beauty. If they had done so and understood it, and, if they had known what was going to happen in the next century, they might have let it be published sooner.

Hopkins is arguing that what belongs to God, and what we should be thanking him for today, is the uniqueness and specialness of the natural world. When a thing belongs to God, says Hopkins, it is
unique and dazzling. This is true of nature and it is true of all things, even architecture. Hopkins saw in
Oxford that houses were being built in the 1880’s that all looked the same and was appalled. What then
would he have thought of the next hundred years of the relentless, overpowering, money-led rush for
sameness in the world which gathers at a pace each day. Soon it will be the case that if you are
parachuted into any town or city in the world they will all look the same.

This sameness is combined with complete control of all our actions which are filmed and monitored and
watched by some computer big brother controller everywhere we go. Some of you may think that this is
nothing to do with God. God, however, is central everything yet often moves within us and without us
unnoticed. When God is central there is delight and originality, when he is absent there is godless sameness.

Sameness is indeed the enemy of God. There is not just a sameness of architecture. Fed by absurd newspapers and increasingly partisan TV reporters, there is also a national sameness of thinking. People start to talk the same. They speak the same nonsense from Portsmouth to Leeds to Inverness, and, if you are not very careful, you will find not only is our architecture taken over by sameness but our minds too. The same half-truths and lies are spoken throughout the country because nobody possesses their own soul and, therefore, hearts are not tuned to the uniqueness and originality of God.

Not even our churches are exempt from the relentless sameness of the world. Christianity can become a type of all-in package holiday, which has its own fraternity and its own certainties. Whether you go to Portsmouth, Leeds or Inverness there are people who are acceptable and people who are not to these supposedly true Christians’ whether that be because they are evangelical, catholic, fundamentalist or liberal.

I wonder how our young original thinkers just gone off to University last year are getting on. Will they have the courage and the faith to do some searching? Will their faith become a journey or will they escape into those certainties of which many of us have grown unsure?

I am never convinced by the faith of anyone who says they are certain about anything. I do not think you can classify or standardise the work of God so that He works in the same way in Portsmouth, Leeds and Inverness. Nevertheless there is an energy, which comes from God that you can receive, anywhere and everywhere, what some people call the Holy Spirit.

I argue with the same old words that are used but I agree that ultimately Christianity is not necessarily perceived intellectually but by the heart. It is possible to have a relationship with God.

Indeed whatever your intellectual worries you will not discover the joy of the Christian life if you are not prepared ultimately to dive in.

There is a lot of nonsense talked about receiving the Holy Spirit which frightens the pants off most of us and seems to be entirely irrelevant to anything we see in this world. However I do know there is a thrilling energy of God, which some people rather boringly call the Holy Spirit. It might be better to call it PZAZZ or some such word. It is not just for churchy people.

Anyone can connect with it, You can connect with it. (help this sounds more and more like star wars theology – may the force be with you!) I wouldn’t mention it if I did not feel its presence every day. There is an energy that you can receive from God which will help you to become instruments of change in the world and part of God’s resistance to sameness movement.

It is an energy that will help you to withstand the darkness, in this broken money-led world; the relentless sameness of things: the sameness of thinking, of churches and architecture and all things. It will set you off on a journey, which you will recognise because of your capability to be original and your love for dappled things.

Richard Burkitt from “In defence of God and Laughter: 10 short sermons” 2010

Richard published this short sermon in 2010. How much more true are his words in the current age of social media, political correctness and ‘cancelling’ of people who challenge the prevailing narrative?

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.“

John 3:16-17