Inscape

Thinking about the beatific - when a thing is perceived as so exquisite or compelling, it acquires a spiritual dimension ...

Gerard Manley Hopkins is rarely content to accept beauty unalloyed by moral values.

Gerald Roberts (1994)

On 18th May 1870, Gerard Manley Hopkins writes:

"I do not think that I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at.

I know the beauty of the Lord by it. Its inscape is mixed of strength and grace, like an ash tree. "

An atheist can perceive inscape too - defined by Peter Cash as ‟ a physical flash of insight into the divine nature of a living thing" - without dogma or moral values. A wonderful way of being in the world.