Radio address for October 14, 2010, released a few days late. Have you ever been pathetically but persistently pursued?

Although there is no final transcript for this episode, a smudgy typewritten draft of today’s address is available.

The poem at the end is The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins, about which my poetry book has this to say:

After the fantastic description of the bird in the first nine lines, Hopkins turns to the poem’s divine addressee [Jesus Christ] & asserts that His glory is a billion times greater. The comparison of Christ to a million-million predators is breathtaking enough, to be sure, but the final three lines are even more spectacular. In imagery drawn from accounts of the Crucifixion (“gall” and “gash”) and the Eucharist (gold-vermilion parallel to bread-wine, in turn parallel to flesh-blood), the ember sends out brilliant light.

Music cues are Quodlibet performed by the Kronos Quartet, Setting Out from the Sherlock Holmes Televsion Soundtrack, and Air Spirals by Richard Harvey.