O Great Mystery We give thanks for the natural world we see: All the Creatures, Stones and Plants Who show us how to be. We learn their lessos seek their truths, Return our loving praise, We honor the peace they show us, Which guides our human ways. We ask that we may become like them, Living in harmony, And deep within our heart of hearts, Know the Sacred Mystery.
The Navaho word hozho, translated into English as "beauty," also means harmony, wholeness, goodness. One story that suggests the dynamic way that beauty comes alive between us concerns a contemporary Navajo weaver. A man ordered a rug of an especially complex pattern on two separate occasions from the same weaver. Both rugs came out perfectly and the weaver remarked to her brother that there must have been something special about the owner. It was understood that the outcome of the rugs was dependent not on the weaver's skill and ability but upon the hozho in the owner's life. The hozho of his life evoked the beauty in the rugs. In the Navaho world view, beauty exists not simply in the object, or in the artist who made the object; it is expressed in relationships.
~ from NOTES ON THE NEED FOR BEAUTY, by J. Ruth Gendler
