I have always had a penchant, a hankering for anything dappled. As an eight-year-old, one of my prized possessions was a Breyer horse, 12 inches of plastic perfection, an gray Appaloosa with an exquisitely dappled rump. It transported my Barbies and me into worlds in which there were horses–glorious horses–and infinite pastures. Having saved $10 (it may have well been $10,ooo for an eight-year-old), I purchased my Breyer at a souvenir shop during an annual summer visit to my grandparents.

These same grandparents often sent me home with other dappled things: namely salamanders rescued from my granddad’s biology classroom. Most were three-legged (results of biology experiments on regeneration), but they were gloriously slimy, slow-moving, and dappled. They lived in a terrarium on a window shelf in our dining room. Until they didn’t. Live, that is.

In high school, for a time I believed that I would be an art teacher; I could not imagine a better way to live my life than surrounded by colors and shapes and the possibilities of a blank canvas. Drawn particularly to the Impressionists, I studied how they mottled color and, with small dabs of paint, created a sense of light that defied anything I had ever seen on a two-dimensional canvas. As I looked closely, I could not identify the exact place where blue turned into green. And in that nether space of translucence, I discovered that it was futile and foolish to do so. The Impressionists taught me that what was dappled was that which was wholly exquisite.

When light falls through the leaves of summer trees, there is a artful dappling that is just right for resting and thinking. Just right for dreaming.

When my father introduced me to Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Victorian poet and Jesuit priest, I was amazed by a kinship with one who saw great worth in all things dappled. In his poem, “Pied Beauty,” he writes:

Glory be to God for dappled things–                                                               For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;                                                 For role-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;                                   Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls; finches’ wings;                                 Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;                             And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, and strange;                               Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)                                         With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;                                                   He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:                                                                        Praise him.

Oh that I would have written these lines! Hopkins uses sound and rhythm so perfectly, creating a dappledness that deepens and compliments each image.

Although I realize that it is naive and too preciously romantic to yearn for a world in which “all thing counter, original, spare, and strange” are things of great worth to all, I yearn for it nevertheless. This is a world in which birthmarks and blemishes, scars and moles are constant reminders of a beauty that is “past change.” This is a world in which we willingly enter that nether space in which we cannot, we dare not name colors, for it matters not. All are glorious, all are just right. And this is a world in which we see our dappled selves for who we are: imperfect yet loved.

Glory be to God for dappled things–dappled rumps on horses, dappled skins of salamanders, dappled light through trees, dappled oil on canvas .  .  .