There's a really interesting article here with an interview with Malcolm Guite, a priest/poet/songwriter in Cambridge . There's a transcript excerpt as well as the podcast audio of the interview. Here's an excerpt:
At the very heart of gospel as I understand it…is transfiguration. By which I mean not that we get out of the place we’re in…at what may be a very broken and disfigured situation. But that if you look at something clearly enough, open enough to the Spirit, sometimes the very thing you’re seeing -- while not ceasing to be itself -- is transfigured.
George Herbert again was the one who wrote those words, “A man that looks on glass, on it may stay his eye, Or if he pleaseth, through it pass, and then the heav'n espy.”
And Herbert also wrote about windows. He wrote a poem called “The Windows” in which he redeems the word “stain.” He doesn’t use the word, he just redeems it. Because if you think about the word “stain,” it always means something negative, except in one context. There’s only one context in which it has no negative connotations, it’s completely redeemed, and that’s stained glass.
And he wrote a poem about being a preacher, you might say being a leader as well. This is kind of a core vision...It starts, “Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word? He is a brittle, crazie glasse: Yet in thy temple, thou dost him afford this glorious and transcendent place, to be a window, through thy grace.”