I am sometimes tempted to think that I must wait for better times to find or create beauty in our world. But there is no better time. No matter what times we live in there are challenges. The war in Ukraine rages and our hearts break. Climate change continues and we feel afraid for the future. COVID continues around the globe and we grieve for those who died or are suffering. Still, there is beauty, courage, laughter and grace. So I say…
No Matter What, Find Beauty
The following paragraphs are from a talk given by theologian and thinker, C.S. Lewis to students at Oxford University in December 1939. As German tanks had begun to roll through Europe, Lewis spoke…
“We ask ourselves, how we can continue to pursue our ‘placid occupations’ when the lives of our friends and the liberties of Europe are in the balance?”“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice…. If [people] had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life’. Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of crises, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right.“But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. [Humans] propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss, the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature.”— C.S. Lewis
Beauty for yourself, for the world
No matter what is happening in the world, it is possible to find beauty and to make beauty. Find or make beauty today—for yourself, for your friends, for Ukraine, for the neighbor who drives you crazy, for those who lost a loved one recently, for the world. Let wonder, awe and delight live right alongside your caring and sorrow for those who are suffering.
May you walk in beauty.
Note: photos today — a contrail of an airplane divides the sky, twilight reflections on the ice of the pond with deliberate camera movement
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