Twilight Beauty

Last evening I spent time out on the deck enjoying the

There was a bright sliver of a moon shining in the sky, the fragrance of lilacs in the air, and a soft warm breeze. Ahhhh…as I swayed on the deck swing I soaked in beauty through all of my senses.

I perused a book of photographs, Gravity of Light, by Doug and Mike Starn and read more in the book Becoming Wild by Carl Safina. Beauty filled me to brimming and then overflowed my being with joy. Then I read this passage in Becoming Wild…

Animals, because they are mobile, must choose the right habitat. They must choose to be in the right place. To make that choice, it must look and feel “good.” Macaws stick to forest with plenty of fruit and enormous ancient trees. Humans prefer an open expanse with a view of water (as real estate prices prove). Habitat selection becomes aesthetic: a sense of being home. The emotion we call love is a feeling telling us we are “at home” in someone’s arms. Think of the simple profound happiness that comes from being in the “right place.” And how beautiful that is. Being at home—whether on our native land or in our kitchen—can fell us with fierce swipes of exquisite pleasure. When we look into a dark night sky, the mere sense of our existence, here, among the stars, can completely wash us off our rafts.

…

…the radical preference of Life is: beauty. …animals are capacitated not only to experience beauty but also to feel love. Life has created, then consistently moved toward, both love and beauty. Those two capacities are the living world’s two Truths, capital T. If Life, in its long and difficult journey, has come to be about anything, it is about the progress of love and beauty.

— Becoming Wild by Carl Safina

Yes, I said to myself, this feels true to me. We are created to move toward both love and beauty.

Life is Brutiful

Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed, says,”Life is brutiful—brutal and beautiful.” I think she’s right. Though I speak often of joy and beauty I am also aware of the brutal aspects of life. One only needs to watch the nightly news to see how violent and brutal we humans often are towards the earth and one another. And if you spend any time in nature you realize quickly that life feeds life. Not all of the ducklings that hatch in nest near our pond survive. The snapping turtles, raccoons, and foxes all hunt them to sustain their own lives or those of their young.

One day when I saw a hawk in our backyard I grabbed the binoculars so that I could see it more closely. I quickly put the binoculars down when I realized that the hawk had just caught a small songbird and was eating it. What looked brutal to me was simply a part of the cycle of life. I believe that it is important not to look away from the brutality we see in our human communities but to witness and work where we can to create positive change. But it’s important to see the beauty and seek connection and love because that is what gives us the strength to carry on.

Beauty is not superficial, or “mere,” or a luxury. Beauty is the birthright of living beings. Imagine the unrelieved drudgery of life without beauty. Subtract beauty, then consider all the grim imperatives and demands of finding food and shelter, competing, procreating: who would want to bother?…Beauty is the thing that makes life worth the time it takes. Beauty makes life worth the effort, the risks and the frights and the struggles that being alive requires. Beauty is the reward our brains give us for making the effort to stay in the world. Beauty is what eases that effort into joy. Beauty makes our smiles, and gets us past the tears. I think it’s that profound, that fundamental…Beauty makes us love what it takes to live.

— Becoming Wild by Carl Safina

I choose to see beauty and to follow joy giving thanks for twilight evenings with bright sliver moons above and the fragrance of lilacs in the air.

May you walk in beauty.