Nature--especially the ocean. I'm captivated by its vastness, the soothing sounds of the waves, the coos of the seagulls. I linger there to see the sunset and the moon rise over the ocean. The colors of the ocean and the sky change. Many have left the beach. It's quiet, dog are running about. For me that is so beautiful.
I also find beauty in humanity. Despite how the world might be, at any given moment, I see people being kind and compassionate and that to me is beauty in motion.
I find it here in the shared discussions we have, in our candlelight chats--the impossibly beautiful meeting of like-minded people who embrace all the awesomeness the world has to offer us by way of nature, art, music, spirituality. There is an "It" factor here, residing among us, bringing us together to share, collaborate, and learn. Seeing things from so many perspectives, from so many different cultures and countries joined here, is truly amazing and awe-inspiring.
For me it’s in nature, music, art - it’s there and it’s also in/through me? I’m sometimes surprised how the same situation / ‘event’ is perceived so differently - I don’t consider myself a religious person but with Bach’s music (e.g. Goldberg variations) or Biber’s Rosenkranz sonata, I feel there’s another realm behind it all - it’s beautiful, it’s true and it’s very comforting.
There was post by Chris Guillebeau last week with a ‘take home message’ for what to do in difficult times - it sounded so easy and convincing: create something (beautiful) and / or help others -
Thank you, Susan for the eternal beauty of the pearls - there’s something ‘magic’ about there soft way to shimmer and shine!
At the heart of this longing lies what makes us truly human—a deep connection to the one force that binds us all: to each other, to nature, and to the divine. Love is that force. Love for all things is the essence of our existence. When you live with this love, you discover beauty.
Your discussion about C.S. Lewis and beauty brought back the eventful first time I read something he wrote that I found magical in its impact on me. A friend of both of us had sent me a short book that had been described as “part love story and part grief memoir” written by Carol Mathews soon after my wife died suddenly. It was titled “Minerva’s Owl: The Bereavement Phase of My Marriage.” She opens with a quote from C.S. Lewis in his “A Grief Observed,” where he writes: “Bereavement is not the truncation of married love but one of its regular phases—like the honeymoon.” Matthews, in her introduction, continues: “At first I wondered how that could be, but now I know that C.S. Lewis is right. In many ways, my bereavement is not unlike the romantic days of our courtship, and the honeymoon, when we were uncertain, unfamiliar, just beginning to learn about each other. You were unknown and exotic, and when we were apart I longed for you. Later, through years of married life, you became so familiar that I could not draw a line between us. Now, since your death, you’ve become distinct, apart again, and my feelings of longing echo those early days. It’s like falling in love again, this final phase of our marriage.” I didn’t put this book down until I was finished, tears and all. Yet Lewis came up with a formulation that Matthews seemed to amplify beautifully that to this day sustains me. I have felt this grief is more bearable now because it has been for me “like falling in love again.” I can’t think of anything more beautiful for me than that.
Music--IMAGINE BY THE BEATLES, THE THEME FROM THE MOVIE," A Man AND A WOMAN,"the PLATTERS, and so many others that just make me stop whatever i am doin, and listen.
Thank you, Susan, for being a quiet, steady presence in our lives. I keep Rumi’s quote nearby: “Let the beauty you love be what you do.” Being reminded of beauty in the onslaught of ugliness is a balm to our collective sense of loss and grief. For me, the gut-punch of the last few days has torn open the scars of personal loss. My energy is consumed by grief, and the accompanying anger and loneliness. Even so (as you say), I am grateful for the impulse to keep beauty alive. I just released “Each Day As It Comes: Morning & Evening Meditations for Living Through Change.” Timely in a way I didn’t imagine. A book born from my journey through the care and loss of my poet husband/creative partner who died of Lewy Body Dementia last year. Then, like now, I need something simple and steady, lovely and lyrical to hold on to. Beauty may—or may not—save the world. But, it will save me a little each day.
I have to admit I've stayed in my emotional hidey-hole quite a bit this week. But even as I woke up to the news on Wednesday, I was able to fully appreciate the beautiful fog that coated our city with a sense of magic and mystery. Dreamy, moody, hazy possibility. We rarely see it my part of the country, but it always uplifts my soul. I thought of you and your book, Susan...and the paradox of the bittersweet. The fog stuck around all morning until finally the sun broke through, bright and bold in the chilly afternoon. And even though I no longer believe in god per se, I keep recalling the Bible verse I learned in my youth: "weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning" (Psalm 30:5).
In the spring, my new book will be out - one that considers how appreciation of beauty, natural beauty and moral beauty, restores us and restores our place in this world. We are both grounded and inspired, at home within and in a place of transcendence. And in the presence of beauty's fragility and evanescent nature we are invited into it's preciousness. All that is a kind of formal way of remembering how regenerative it is to be in the presence of human goodness, of elegance in natural forms and of the ordinary kindnesses that lift us into an inner experience of the divine. Thank you, Susan, for this invitation. What I am finding most beautiful now...the simple fact of the rising sun each morning...no matter how mixed up it all feels down here. Maria
I see and look for beauty in the everyday. As a photographer and lover of the natural world, I need to be able to find something beautiful to photograph. Some days, it's the tiniest of things, and some days, it's a grand landscape. More importantly, I need to be able to respond to my environment and let it direct my attention to these beautiful things. Some days, my angst and worries get the best of me, and I lose my connection to what is lovely, and I have to find my way back to its life-giving gift.
Beauty gives breath to life, this longing this visceral visceral longing inside ourselves touches us so profoundly it hard to even find words for when it comes. Longing visceral kiss on your soul heart but also a teacher, a guide, an ache. What can we learn within the longing ache that is in us? What is Longing trying to tell us? Longing, Hope within the paradox of life path. Is longing a dream longing to come to wake ... Is it a gateway to somewhere deeper within ourselves or is longing your Soul Truth coming alive with the beauty that touches your existence. Maybe it all the above?... Indeed Beauty can save the world with it love that it creates within our hearts. May we never stop finding, creating, living, being what is Beautiful !!....
Today, I found a conversation with a professor to be impossibly beautiful. I reached out saying I truly had no idea how to show up to a research methods class tonight while carrying all this shock and grief. The professor responded with such humanity and compassion that it brought me to tears instantly. The plan for class is not to move through tonight business as usual, but to pause and open space to check-in with one another. In all the heavy today, that was light.
Thank you for sharing this, Olivia! What a wise professor, and great to hear you experienced this light in the darkness together! I have been dealing with heavy times - a cruel war against a country and people I love - for almost three years now, and sometimes I felt I have to fall into darkness. But when I visited those people in their place, they gave me so much light, in spite of their terrible circumstances. And that is what I learned from them: That even in the darkest times, you can always choose to let your own light within you shine on people around you. That again lights them up, and then you get the collective light that transcends the dark. I wish you a lot of this experience - and I send you my modest little ray of light from geographically far away but on soul terms nearby. Keep shining!
Thank you very much for C.S.Lewis‘s wise words! I will share them with my friends in Kiev, if I may. For the path leads there, again. In the midst of falling bombs there, I found people seeking - and producing- beauty at every corner, expressing it by means of painting, making music, staging their own plays, designing beautiful clothes… and inhaling beauty as much and as often as they could - in between their hard work, for at wartime work is so much more and so much harder. Beauty is the antidote!
what do you find impossibly beautiful?
Nature--especially the ocean. I'm captivated by its vastness, the soothing sounds of the waves, the coos of the seagulls. I linger there to see the sunset and the moon rise over the ocean. The colors of the ocean and the sky change. Many have left the beach. It's quiet, dog are running about. For me that is so beautiful.
I also find beauty in humanity. Despite how the world might be, at any given moment, I see people being kind and compassionate and that to me is beauty in motion.
I find it here in the shared discussions we have, in our candlelight chats--the impossibly beautiful meeting of like-minded people who embrace all the awesomeness the world has to offer us by way of nature, art, music, spirituality. There is an "It" factor here, residing among us, bringing us together to share, collaborate, and learn. Seeing things from so many perspectives, from so many different cultures and countries joined here, is truly amazing and awe-inspiring.
I’m here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in.
I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.
- Hala Alyan from Spoiler
When I am with my dog Josie sitting in the grass with her by my side and the warm sun shining down on us is when I am touched by beauty☺️
For me it’s in nature, music, art - it’s there and it’s also in/through me? I’m sometimes surprised how the same situation / ‘event’ is perceived so differently - I don’t consider myself a religious person but with Bach’s music (e.g. Goldberg variations) or Biber’s Rosenkranz sonata, I feel there’s another realm behind it all - it’s beautiful, it’s true and it’s very comforting.
There was post by Chris Guillebeau last week with a ‘take home message’ for what to do in difficult times - it sounded so easy and convincing: create something (beautiful) and / or help others -
Thank you, Susan for the eternal beauty of the pearls - there’s something ‘magic’ about there soft way to shimmer and shine!
At the heart of this longing lies what makes us truly human—a deep connection to the one force that binds us all: to each other, to nature, and to the divine. Love is that force. Love for all things is the essence of our existence. When you live with this love, you discover beauty.
I find the acts of kindness and care shown by people impossibly beautiful
Your discussion about C.S. Lewis and beauty brought back the eventful first time I read something he wrote that I found magical in its impact on me. A friend of both of us had sent me a short book that had been described as “part love story and part grief memoir” written by Carol Mathews soon after my wife died suddenly. It was titled “Minerva’s Owl: The Bereavement Phase of My Marriage.” She opens with a quote from C.S. Lewis in his “A Grief Observed,” where he writes: “Bereavement is not the truncation of married love but one of its regular phases—like the honeymoon.” Matthews, in her introduction, continues: “At first I wondered how that could be, but now I know that C.S. Lewis is right. In many ways, my bereavement is not unlike the romantic days of our courtship, and the honeymoon, when we were uncertain, unfamiliar, just beginning to learn about each other. You were unknown and exotic, and when we were apart I longed for you. Later, through years of married life, you became so familiar that I could not draw a line between us. Now, since your death, you’ve become distinct, apart again, and my feelings of longing echo those early days. It’s like falling in love again, this final phase of our marriage.” I didn’t put this book down until I was finished, tears and all. Yet Lewis came up with a formulation that Matthews seemed to amplify beautifully that to this day sustains me. I have felt this grief is more bearable now because it has been for me “like falling in love again.” I can’t think of anything more beautiful for me than that.
Richard - this "comment" of yours - the word "comment" hardly does it justice - goes into the "impossibly beautiful" category.
Music--IMAGINE BY THE BEATLES, THE THEME FROM THE MOVIE," A Man AND A WOMAN,"the PLATTERS, and so many others that just make me stop whatever i am doin, and listen.
Thank you, Susan, for being a quiet, steady presence in our lives. I keep Rumi’s quote nearby: “Let the beauty you love be what you do.” Being reminded of beauty in the onslaught of ugliness is a balm to our collective sense of loss and grief. For me, the gut-punch of the last few days has torn open the scars of personal loss. My energy is consumed by grief, and the accompanying anger and loneliness. Even so (as you say), I am grateful for the impulse to keep beauty alive. I just released “Each Day As It Comes: Morning & Evening Meditations for Living Through Change.” Timely in a way I didn’t imagine. A book born from my journey through the care and loss of my poet husband/creative partner who died of Lewy Body Dementia last year. Then, like now, I need something simple and steady, lovely and lyrical to hold on to. Beauty may—or may not—save the world. But, it will save me a little each day.
I'm so sorry, Karen.
And how beautifully you phrased this - "it will save me a little each day" - you must be a writer. :)
I have to admit I've stayed in my emotional hidey-hole quite a bit this week. But even as I woke up to the news on Wednesday, I was able to fully appreciate the beautiful fog that coated our city with a sense of magic and mystery. Dreamy, moody, hazy possibility. We rarely see it my part of the country, but it always uplifts my soul. I thought of you and your book, Susan...and the paradox of the bittersweet. The fog stuck around all morning until finally the sun broke through, bright and bold in the chilly afternoon. And even though I no longer believe in god per se, I keep recalling the Bible verse I learned in my youth: "weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning" (Psalm 30:5).
I so relate to that emotional hidey-hole! And thank you for "dreamy, moody, hazy possibility."
In the spring, my new book will be out - one that considers how appreciation of beauty, natural beauty and moral beauty, restores us and restores our place in this world. We are both grounded and inspired, at home within and in a place of transcendence. And in the presence of beauty's fragility and evanescent nature we are invited into it's preciousness. All that is a kind of formal way of remembering how regenerative it is to be in the presence of human goodness, of elegance in natural forms and of the ordinary kindnesses that lift us into an inner experience of the divine. Thank you, Susan, for this invitation. What I am finding most beautiful now...the simple fact of the rising sun each morning...no matter how mixed up it all feels down here. Maria
I love "how regenerative it is to be in the presence of human goodness, of elegance in natural forms and the ordinary kindnesses..."
Thank you for sharing this beauty in your work!
Good luck with the launch, Maria!!
I see and look for beauty in the everyday. As a photographer and lover of the natural world, I need to be able to find something beautiful to photograph. Some days, it's the tiniest of things, and some days, it's a grand landscape. More importantly, I need to be able to respond to my environment and let it direct my attention to these beautiful things. Some days, my angst and worries get the best of me, and I lose my connection to what is lovely, and I have to find my way back to its life-giving gift.
Beauty gives breath to life, this longing this visceral visceral longing inside ourselves touches us so profoundly it hard to even find words for when it comes. Longing visceral kiss on your soul heart but also a teacher, a guide, an ache. What can we learn within the longing ache that is in us? What is Longing trying to tell us? Longing, Hope within the paradox of life path. Is longing a dream longing to come to wake ... Is it a gateway to somewhere deeper within ourselves or is longing your Soul Truth coming alive with the beauty that touches your existence. Maybe it all the above?... Indeed Beauty can save the world with it love that it creates within our hearts. May we never stop finding, creating, living, being what is Beautiful !!....
The Theme From Paginini by Rachmaninoff. The most beautiful music I've ever heard.
yes it is so beautiful.
Today, I found a conversation with a professor to be impossibly beautiful. I reached out saying I truly had no idea how to show up to a research methods class tonight while carrying all this shock and grief. The professor responded with such humanity and compassion that it brought me to tears instantly. The plan for class is not to move through tonight business as usual, but to pause and open space to check-in with one another. In all the heavy today, that was light.
Thank you for sharing this, Olivia! What a wise professor, and great to hear you experienced this light in the darkness together! I have been dealing with heavy times - a cruel war against a country and people I love - for almost three years now, and sometimes I felt I have to fall into darkness. But when I visited those people in their place, they gave me so much light, in spite of their terrible circumstances. And that is what I learned from them: That even in the darkest times, you can always choose to let your own light within you shine on people around you. That again lights them up, and then you get the collective light that transcends the dark. I wish you a lot of this experience - and I send you my modest little ray of light from geographically far away but on soul terms nearby. Keep shining!
What a beautiful way to conduct a class. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Thank you very much for C.S.Lewis‘s wise words! I will share them with my friends in Kiev, if I may. For the path leads there, again. In the midst of falling bombs there, I found people seeking - and producing- beauty at every corner, expressing it by means of painting, making music, staging their own plays, designing beautiful clothes… and inhaling beauty as much and as often as they could - in between their hard work, for at wartime work is so much more and so much harder. Beauty is the antidote!
I appreciate the reminder of how much beauty is created by those in war-torn places..."inhaling beauty as much and as often as they could."
Thank you for this example.