I was thinking about beauty today as I sat in the dark with my breakfast and watched the sky come slowly alive with color. It was a lovely, soft colored sunrise. As the colors bloomed in the clouds, I felt a bloom of joy and wonder and contentment inside of me. I found myself smiling and singing a praise song. 

If I had missed seeing it, it still would have bloomed, but I would have missed the blooming in my soul in response.

Birds and flowers have been on my mind recently with the show I have up now at the Glenrose. Birds and flowers are places of beauty for me and they remind me to enjoy the moment and to let go and trust God with my worries.

 ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?^[k] 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Matt 6:26-30 

My response to this has been writing words to a new song. It isn't finished yet, but I like these lines here for finding beuaty in the moment:

There is wonder, there is beauty
If I would stop to see, what’s right in front of me.
There is wonder, there is beauty,
All around me, as far as I can see

Beauty is fleeting like a sunrise or a sunset, a well decorated cake, a scrumptious dinner that engages your taste buds in a heavenly way, a flower growing in a rock, the shadows of a tree dancing on a wall, a child’s smile of pure delight, a new song.

If I am too busy, or too focused on tasks, I can easily miss the beauty around me. In order to see it, I need to pause, and even look for it.

Beauty can nourish your soul.

When we allow beauty in, when we take a moment to absorb it in through all of our senses, it can bring a sense of joy and peace. What brings you joy? What do you see, hear, taste, feel or smell as beautiful?

I challenge you to notice five beautiful things today. Don’t just notice them, take a minute to soak it in and be aware of your response.

Write down your responses and read them at the end of the day. Then sit with that a minute. What did you find beautiful today? How did it nourish your soul?

Fall is here, the branches are bare, and the bitter cold winds are back. I brought my flowers in from the deck in to enjoy until they were done. My Gerber Daisy bloomed again, and the others have not stopped blooming. The flowers are all straining toward the window for the glimpse of light upon their faces.

They take up space on my office floor near the sliding glass door, but it is worth a little crowding to see beauty right there as I work. So fun to extend the season of growth and blooming as we move into shorter days and longer nights.

Seasons are not only about weather and nature, we human beings have our seasons as well. As I reflect on the last few months, this has been a season of learning to be present to what is right in front of me today. The outdoor painting excursions (plein air) over the summer and early fall were, perhaps, the greatest example of this. Covid 19 shutdown all of my indoor classes, but the outdoors were beautiful after all the rain in June and July, so we went outside. And there we learned to be present to and see the beauty right in front of us.

With all of the changes due to covid, the daily news, learning new ways of doing things and uncertainties of what is coming next, I looked forward to each plein air session. As I ended the plein air season, I started the online class and we have had three of the four sessions. Although well received, it has been a big learning curve, but I am adjusting and modifying it as we go along. (I had to try different tripods, and get a new piece, an arm extension, for my tripod to make it work better.) In the last session, I had us all painting the same flower (the one blooming in my office). I tell myself that I do not have to figure it all out, and I can ask for help, which allows me to be present and take one step at a time. 

This all led to my thinking about the passage in Ecclesiates 3 that

¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

For each statement there is an antithesis. Opposites. Even extreme opposites. As I looked at the passage this morning, I realize I prefer to focus on the positive sides: to plant, to heal, to build to laugh, to dance, etc. There are times when the opposite is necessary: to grieve, to die, to throw away, to speak, to hate, etc. But there is an in between place that is not spoken in some of these, not necessarily a wishy-washy middle ground either, but another space of time to be in. I decided to find the in between space for each. Here are my results:

Born – die… there is a time to live;
plant – uproot… there is a time to grow, flourish and even harvest
kill – heal… there is a time to get along with each other, respect, nurture each other
tear down – to build… there is a time to take care of what is there, appreciate what you have
weep – laugh… there is a time to just breathe
mourn – dance… there is a time to just be
scatter – gather… there is a time to not take personally what others do
Embrace – refrain form embracing… there is a time to just be together
Search – give up… there is a time to let go
Keep – throw away… there is a time to reuse, recycle, repair
Tear and mend… there is a time to clean and take care of 
To be Silent – to speak out… there is a time to be yourself
To Love and to hate… there is a time to accept others as different from yourself
War and peace… there is a time to forgive

I cannot change others, or the world, but I can work on myself. What season or time are you in?