Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Beauty

The spoonful of passion fruit rice pudding dessert from that restaurant . The music Christmas night in Liberu Jazz Bar in Ichikawa. The outstretched hand beckoning me to come dance at that school in Rwanda. The grip of my son’s newborn hand around my finger. The line from the David Whyte poem, especially when he recites it. The opening bars of ‘Streets with no Name’. The moment, just before the moment, when making love. Ron Reed in Shadowlands. Lisa being greeted in Bufukula, Uganda.

There are many beautiful things, but confronted with real beauty I am moved in my soul. I know I can’t make it up. I am sure I miss many opportunities when beauty presents itself. I have to be paying attention. Still, it surprises me.

I am watching the opening scenes of a new skateboard movie with my boys. It is absolutely brilliant. I have tears down my cheeks. I am so moved by the creativity of it, the choices the film makers made, the music, the timing. A skateboard movie for God’s sakes.

Last summer my brother and I took a long hike on the East Sooke Trail. Midway there was a small cove. We ate lunch there. Lay on the warm rocks. I jumped in the cold water. We took photos. It was the experience of being there together, in that place. Later that day, finishing the walk through tall grass I was reminded again. The beauty.

I can’t say exactly what beauty is. Is it simply the world offering it’s very best at that point in time? It seems more like a small crack in the firmament and a view beyond, to something other. I do know, that when I experience it, it’s transcendent.

Beauty may present itself in an infinite number of ways, in languages only known to the beholder. Regardless of where it is found one thing is for certain, beauty is food for the soul.

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