Carry Something Beautiful

The writer Blaise Pascal wrote. “In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart.”  What good advice.  Without denying that troubles abound, ugliness proliferates, injustice reigns,   still there is beauty, always.  It may seem simplistic to just “put on a happy face”.  And, I’m not so much suggesting that as to remember that happiness exists alongside discouragement.  Alongside fear, anger, uncertainty, looming elections… still there are snap peas, tiny lettuces and red radishes appearing at the farmer’s market.  The sun still casts a gorgeous pink over everything before it sets and this week-end we will have a blue moon (the rare second full moon in a calendar month).  It matters to remember and to look for the beautiful in these days.  To not notice or appreciate the simple things risks embroiling ourselves into political knots that choke us.  Find 10 things right now that are beautiful — just from where you are sitting.  It’s a spiritual practice — to notice the beauty and the ugly — and not to cling to either — simply notice.  There is a way to balance out our personal world.  Is there one tiny way you can add a speck of beauty to this day?

WHY I SMILE AT STRANGERS

~by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And so today, I walk the streets

With vermillion maple leaves inside me,

And the deep purple of late-blooming Larkspur

And the living praise of meadowlark.

I carry with me thin creeks with clear water

And the three-quarters moon

And the spice-warm scent of nasturtiums.

And honey in the sunlight.

And words from Neruda

And slow melodies by Erik Satie.

It is easy sometimes to believe

That everything is wrong.

That people are cruel and the world

Destroyed and the end of it all

Imminent.  But there is yet goodness

Beyond imagining — the creamy

White flea of ripe pears

And the velvety purr of a cat in my lap

And the write smear of milky way—

I carry these things in my heart,

More certain than ever that one way

To counteract evil is to ceaselessly honor what’s good

And share it, share it until

We break the choke hold of fear

And at least for a few linked moments,

We believe completely in beauty,

Growing beauty, yes, beauty.