I Want to Catch Fire
I’d never seen a kingfisher until this spring. 
These waterbirds can be spotted in our area during the warm months, near the lake where they can keep an eye open for fish. Someday I may get to see one “catch fire.” This is what Gerard Manley Hopkins writes about in one of my favorite poems, below. His image is of the bird, which is mostly blue with a red-orange breast, diving for a fish, and as it does, the sun flashing brilliantly from its feathers. The bird is doing what it was created to do, and as it does, we witness an instant of transcendent beauty.
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 swung 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 its self; 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 goings 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.
As birds, bells, and dragonflies do what they were created for, they display brief but heavenly beauty and joy. I have had this experience, too—have you? There have been times when I have done work, sometimes extremely challenging work, that I sense “speaks and spells myself.” At those times in the midst of my toil, I sense in my heart that this is what I was uniquely made for, this is my vocation, this is why I came.
Moments like that have come for me when I’ve been teaching English, or writing, or ministering to women. The story about Shahaz from a few weeks ago was one such moment. At those times, Christ plays in this particular place through me, and I feel special joy. The kingfisher is a decorative motif we see around here, often painted on boats on the lake. It reminds me to keep watching, like that sharp-eyed bird, for my particular moment to dive, to speak, to ring, to catch fire.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged kingfisher by Lisa