A Tribute of Beauty

“Begin with the beautiful, which leads you to the good, which leads you to the truth.”  

-Bishop Robert Barron

For years, I’ve enjoyed listening to the sermons and talks of Bishop Robert Barron through his Word on Fire ministry.   He’s personable, intelligent, and a gifted orator.  Beyond all of that, he comes back again and again to a theme that resonates deep within me:  Beauty.

He believes that the key to evangelizing in the current culture is bringing the beautiful to the world - that we are so limited in our experience of true beauty on a day-to-day basis, and we’ve forgotten how to find it in amongst the “drudgery” of our daily lives.   It’s quite possible that those of us in our 20s-40s were never taught how to even look for beauty.  We grew up in concrete buildings, with modernism and xeroxed workbooks.  Efficiency was the name of the game, not beauty for beauty’s sake.

This comes to mind today, as I sit outside, soaking up the sunshine.   Winter is coming, but today is warm and sunny, and spending every minute outside is what is called for.   I’d finished my chores inside the house, cleaned up from lunch, and had headed out to the back yard with the little ones.    The big kids got sent to go “explore the woods” on our property, without preschool tag-a-longs.   

The preschoolers and I set up an obstacle course in the backyard, and as I sit, I watch them giggle and play in the warm sunshine.   My eyes are drawn to the flower box just to their left.   The previous owners of our house were gifted gardeners, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching the blooms roll around the yard (nothing blooms at the same time, so we’ve had constant waves of flowers all summer long).   I don’t know what everything is (“gifted gardener” will not be something said of me in years to come), but I know that I like and appreciate the work that they’d put into making this yard a work of beauty.  

The flowers are simple - pink and green.   I’m not sure where we are in their life cycle, but they just recently began deepening to a gorgeous pink color and catching my eye every time I look out of the window.

They’ve also caught the eyes of dozens of bees.   As I sit there, I am treated to a show of at least two dozen bees dancing throughout the blooms, accompanied by the music of my children’s laughter.

******

I never really know what to say when this anniversary comes around.   September 11th.   This day will forever hold a place in my memory, and recall moments of fear, nausea, anxiety, and grief.   I will forever remember the newsreel from that morning, the blank eyes of all of us students, as we walked through campus, unsure of what to do.   Do we go to class?   When we get to the lecture hall and realize that class was canceled and we were instead all watching the constant news coverage on ginormous screens….do we stay or do we go back home?  What do you say when you make eye contact as you walk along the sidewalk?   It was surreal and it was horrifying.

….and yet all around, there was beauty, still calling out to us.   A juxtaposition of the ugliness of evil and the beauty of goodness:  a brilliantly blue sky behind a burning building.   A warm embrace in a street filled with debris and death.   First responders laying down their lives to save the innocent, covered in bodily fluids and dirt.   Flowers blooming along the street where clouds of smoke billow.   Candles at prayer services, chasing away the darkness.

For a brief moment, there was the beauty that can only come from unity.  From love.   From peace.

Beauty never disappeared, even in the surprise attack of evil.

******

I sat there this afternoon, under a similarly brilliant blue sky.   Not a cloud to be seen.   I listened to the innocence in my children’s giggles and voices.   I watched the simplicity of nature, exhibited in the dance of the bees in front of me.

I wondered about this thing, this Beauty, displayed in my backyard.   This steady, unescapable force of goodness and truth.   The unfailing simplicity of a love note from God.  His Truth and Goodness, illustrated for us all to see.

I worried how blind we’d become to it, this Beauty.   How often do we rush through the day, with our eyes closed to the simple goodness and truth surrounding us?  

How much better of a tribute could we give the ones lost in an attack of darkness that day, than to illuminate our world with the power of Beauty?

How much more could we teach our sons and daughters, when discussing the horrible, tragic events of September 11th, if we allowed the beauty of our world to shine through?

We could show them that the powers of darkness will never overcome the wonder, the glory, of light.   The beauty, goodness, and truth will always be victorious.

How many of those battles can we win by simply recognizing the beautiful in our daily lives?  By allowing it to be in our focused view for a few minutes every day?

******

Please join me on a quest to seek Beauty today, as we grieve in remembrance of that tragedy.  

Share your moments of goodness and truth, in written form or in pictures.   Send them to me, or leave a comment.   Share them on social media and let that candle burn away a little bit more of the darkness.

“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”  Albert Einstein

Don’t grow up today.