“Let the beauty we love be what we do.  There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Rumi

“I swear to you, on all that is beautiful on earth.”[1]  Dada

I’ve been inundated by beauty; in the colors of fall, in the mama moose and her calf that have been hanging around, in the book “Mona’s Eyes” from which the last quote above is taken, and even in the process of people who are near to me grieving, suffering, and dying.  Yes, there is beauty in those, though difficult at times to see.  All of this has brought to mind and heart the book “Beauty” by John O’Donohue.  If you haven’t read it, please do.  Rather than me describing it for you, I’m going to share some quotes from it.  These will comprise the substance of this week’s post.  Perhaps use these to meditate upon throughout your week? Enjoy

“The human soul is hungry for beauty . . . when we experience the beautiful there is a sense of homecoming.”

“It has become the habit of our times to mistake glamour for beauty.”

“In the light of beauty, the strategies of the ego melt like a web against a candle.”

“To evoke the sense of beauty in another is to give them a precious gift they will never lose.”

“Beauty awakens for us through what we hear, touch, taste, scent, and see.”

“All beauty is derived ultimately from the beauty of God.”

“Color is the language of light, it adorns the earth with beauty.”

“The beauty of wisdom is harmony, belonging, and illumination of thought, action, heart, and mind.”

“As faraway light yields its harvest of colors when it passes through a prism, beauty opens out its radiance when it shines through the human heart.”

“Beauty is the inconceivable made so intimate that it illuminates our hearts.”

“The overwhelming beauty which is God pervades the texture of our soul, transforming all smallness, limitation, and self-division.”

A Blessing of Beauty

May the beauty of your life become more visible to you, that you may glimpse your wild divinity.

May the wonders of the earth call you forth from all your small, secret prisons and set your feet free in the pastures of possibilities.

May the light of dawn anoint your eyes that you may behold what a miracle a day is.

May the liturgy of twilight shelter all your fears and darkness within the circle of ease.

May the angel of memory surprise you in bleak times with new gifts from the harvest of your vanished days.

May you allow no dark hand to quench the candle of hope in your heart.

May you discover a new generosity towards yourself, and encourage yourself to engage your life as a great adventure.

May the outside voices of fear and despair find no echo in you.

May you always trust the urgency and wisdom of your own spirit.

May the shelter and nourishment of all the good you have done, the love you have shown, the suffering you have carried, awaken around you to bless your life a thousand times.

And when love finds the path to your door may you open like the earth to the dawn, and trust your every hidden color towards its nourishment of light.

May you find enough stillness and silence to savor the kiss of God on your soul and delight in the eternity that shaped you, that holds you and calls you.

And may you know that despite confusion, anxiety and emptiness, your name is written in Heaven.

And may you come to see your life as a quiet sacrament of service, which awakens around you a rhythm where doubt gives way to the grace of wonder, where what is awkward and strained can find elegance, and where crippled hope can find wings, and torment enter at last unto the grace of serenity.

May Divine Beauty bless you.

---

[1] From the book “Mona’s Eyes” by Thomas Schlesser.