I feel a strange resistance this year; a resistance to the pursuit of acquisitions and adventures. Instead, I feel the need to explore the motto ‘think less and feel more.’ My first quest is beauty.
I want to behold things of beauty, and send the ugly to the shadows. Instead of picking scabs and running my finger along the scars, I want to focus on all that is beautiful in between.
Beauty by definition is the very quality that brings delight and pleasure to the senses. Beauty is more than what we see, it is also in what we hear, we taste, we touch and we smell. It is not always that our senses are not operating. It is that we are not conscious of what they absorb. It may not be that I need to feel more, but slow down enough to allow my senses to explore.
I take in a deep breath, and I smell summer. Freshly mown grass. The air heavy with pollen. A tickling breeze that carries the smell of barbequed onions.
I listen, and I hear noises. Murmuring voices and a saw-mill whirring. And then silence. But the world is not really silent. Is that cicadas I hear? The song of the butcherbird?
The spices of my chai tea and the sweetness of honey lingers. I reach for the cut watermelon in the fridge. The bright red flesh is beautiful, just as its sweetness, that does not disappoint.
The day is heating up and the humidity is rising. The tickling breeze that flutters over my bare limbs is welcomed. It’s beautiful.
I choose to ignore the weeds in my garden, and the grass that needs mowing again. I spot the butterfly flitting from leaf to leaf, adding a splash of yellow to the green. How beautiful are the red chilies; glossy and heavy on the plant. The lime tree is laden with fruit; as always. I marvel at how one cluster of citrus flowers, sets into a cluster of perfect fruit, growing daily until ready to eat. Or drop into a cool, refreshing drink.
What is beauty to you? Is it smooth or rough? Is it cool or warm? Is it light or dark, or coloured? Is it loud, is it soft? Or a range of sounds, making music?
Is it a matter of perspective? Is it subjective? I will stop there, because that is too much thinking.
The Bible talks about beauty from ashes. (Isaiah 61). How does beauty rise out of grief and loss? It’s a promise that the God of the Bible has the capacity to take something so ugly and turn it into something beautiful. I can seek beauty but I am not the creator of it. Co-creator maybe. Let’s not overthink that either.
I cannot replicate the pink and blue hues of a sunset, reflected in the silver trunks of the sentinel gum trees. If I was an artist, I might paint that, capturing the beauty of the sunset. If I was a photographer, I might snap that too. If I was a musician, I might record the song of a bird, or the ripple of a breeze. No essence replaces the flavour of a ripe watermelon; but a chef can present it to eat. In a world that is presented too often as two dimensional; how do we capture the texture and its depth? 3D does little to replace the experience of being present in the world, with all our senses.
Will you join me in finding and restoring a sense of beautiful, implanted in our soul by the Lord.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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