Like Hope33, I am so pleased to find this thread and to begin to see that this forum really is a safe and nurturing place.

I will post a poem that means a great deal to me, both in the way it faces the reality of the world and, above all, in its joyful hopefulness. I'm not a Christian, but this poem speaks to me deeply.
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's 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.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

Margarita