The deep silence of creation is Spirit's voice directing the people as they walk ... Their steps are firm, for Spirit guides the moccasins to tread where it is safe.
Knowledge was inherent in all things.
The world was a library and its books
Were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks...
We learned to do what only the students
of nature ever learn, that was to feel beauty.
The surfaces of the world are aesthetically uneven. You come around a bend in the road and the world suddenly falls open. When we come upon beautiful things... they act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting–a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing...
One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.
Happily, may I walk.
Happily, with abundant showers,
may I walk.
Happily, with abundant plants,
may I walk.
May it be beautiful before me.
May it be beautiful behind me.
May it be beautiful below me.
May it be beautiful above me.
May it be beautiful all around me.
In beauty it is finished.
Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that [he] is touching transcendental truths; that [his] images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there; something behind the clouds or within the trees; but [he] believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it...
Dear Friends ~ In a world filled with such ugliness and hatred, violence and sorrow, is beauty a luxury we really cannot afford? A distraction or false covering like the "sheep's clothing" thrown hurriedly over the wolf's crouching back? Or is beauty as necessary to our souls as the air we breathe is to our bodies? Nurturing beauty is a way to see beyond and within, to envision other possibilities, to dare to give care and attention to wholeness. In Matthew Fox's ORIGINAL BLESSING, he quotes Adrienne Rich as she names the world's desperate need for the unleashing of our creative power:
the passion to make and make again
where such unmaking reigns
the refusal to be a victim
we have lived with violence so long
Let us, therefore, choose making and remaking. Let us seek out beauty, pay attention to it, cultivate it, and create it in our work, in our homes, in our relationships, and our land.
