A Blizzard of Blossom: Beauty Awakens the Soul to Act

I was watching the cherry blossom falling the other day. It was blowing in the wind around the wind telephone, designed to connect the living with those at the other side of the breath of life. There is a message on the telephone quoting Bob Dylan, “the answer is blowing in the wind”. I saw pink snowing blowing so beautifully around the gardens, while Molly was zooming around, sniffing all the new life. It looked so beautiful, it awakened the heart of my mind and got me thinking about the things we see, in our ordinary lives, when we lift up our eyes, our vision, when we live in hope, not expectation or optimism. When we are inspired by beauty. When my eyes are open and my mind isn't trapped in some disappointment from the past, my own or that done by others, or when I am not blinded by some fear of what might or might not be. When the eyes of eyes are awake I feel so alive and I have vision. I see what is so easy to miss.

As I watched it all I was reminded of this lovely poem “Vision” by May Thielgaard Watts

"Vision" by May Thielgaard Watts

To-day there have been lovely things
I never saw before;
Sunlight through a jar of marmalade;
A blue gate;
A rainbow
In soapsuds on dishwater;
Candlelight on butter;
The crinkled smile of a little girl
Who had new shoes with tassels;
A chickadee on a thorn-apple;
Empurpled mud under a willow,
Where white geese slept;
White ruffled curtains sifting moonlight
On the scrubbed kitchen floor;
The under side of a white-oak leaf;
Ruts in the road at sunset;
An egg yolk in a blue bowl.
My love kissed my eyes last night.

What a beautiful poem, isn't it lovely. When we live in heart, in courage, in love, we can see these signs of hope everywhere. It comes in the little things, that I think of and share upon awakening each morning. Such beauty compels me to act. It is vital to keep our senses open, despite our fears and worries, despite what troubles us. We must keep our senses open, in order to see things. In order to blessed by beauty and to act from it.

“Beauty awakens the soul to act”, said Dante. Well this is exactly what happened to the local poet and friend of the congregations Oliver James Lomax the other day, as he sat in the chapel gardens and wrote the poem which follows. He said he was looking at one of the Cherry Blossom trees in the chapel garden, and noticed “a blizzard of blossom falling from it, dancing in the low wind, it looked like it was almost shedding its memory. It transported me back to the day my Nan passed away from vascular dementia, there was a blossom tree just like it outside the Palliative Care Ward, also rather joyously, there was also a small boy trying to catch Pokemon in the corridor as I left her for the last time. This poem sits between those two images, a moment that brought a little peace and hope to my grief.”

Here’s the poem. I am sorry you can’t hear it in Oliver’s voice:

“To The Boy Catching Pokémon On The Palliative Care Ward” by Oliver James Lomax

The day nan died
the blossom tree was a blizzard

of gentle data
a white drift of unkept names

shifting like a small god
in the hospital garden.

Mine is, a god of flux
today he is a boy

catching Pokémon in the corridor
his hand consecrates the air

drawing a circle in time
where nothing consents to remain.

I watch from the threshold
of what has already gone,

how often will I
cast into the invisible?

For that glamour and strength
for the colour of her being,

drag the unseen closer
as if it might answer.

The blossom keeps falling
into itself, onto itself

a paper rain blinding the page
where the light

I’m trying to capture and name
cannot remain.

Beauty awakened Oliver’s soul to act and he shared this poem as a result of the awakening.

I just love how the beauty of the falling blossom, blowing up in the wind like a pink blizzard, took Oliver back to a time in his life and awakened something in him, something that brought healing to his soul, but also inspired his soul to act and write there and then. By the end of the day he sent me his poem. His poem inspired the service this devotion is based on, as did so many other things and people. The beauty in many forms inspired our souls to act. The answer was most certainly blowing in the wind that day.

I was awakened by beauty that day. I found myself engaged in several rather beautiful conversations. One was with the beautifully pregnant Rose our choir leader. She told me that she and her husband often see me walking around with Molly. It is an image that makes them both smile. Sometimes stopping to talk, but often just passing by, as I spend my days “farting around” as Kurt Vonneghut described it. It was a beautiful evening singing that night, as we prepare for a concert. I had another beautiful conversation with Alex the Flower man who was concerned about a mutual friend. I passed on his concern and the friend was grateful for this. I had several delightful conversations with people going through their ordinary lives that day. It reminded me of the following beautiful words of Walt Whitman:

“I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,

To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing,
Laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm
Ever so lightly around his or her neck for a moment,
What is this
Then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.”

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, Laughing flesh is certainly enough to awaken my soul. All this beauty whether natural or human has awakened my soul to act in more loving and open ways and thus pour out my own love on the world in which I live and breathe and move and have my being. It is a powerful antidote to the ugliness and violence that is going on in this our shared world too. Those forces that separate person from person and fails to recognise our shared humanity. It is easy to get caught up in the Hobbesian nightmare. The truth is that this world is both beautiful and ugly. The problem comes from when we fail to see and be moved by beauty and become overwhelmed by the ugly destructiveness that is part of life. Our souls will be inspired to act by something, better it be beauty.

On Tuesday morning Nick posted a video a blizzard of Cherry Blossom blowing up in the wind and it and all that I had experienced in the last couple of days inspired me to begin to write. I found myself caught up in the “Creative Interchange”. It reminded me of some wisdom from Matthew Fox:

“The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere”

I had enjoyed the smell of fresh baked goods that morning as I walked into Altrincham. It reminded me of Molly and her sniffing all the new life this spring. Her nose seems more alive as each day passes, it energises her. As J. Ruth Gendler claims “Beauty is an energy, not an image, and that energy can go anywhere; that energy takes on an image, a form, many images, many forms.” Beauty energises and awakens the soul to act; beauty awakens the soul of me in so many indescribable ways and it compels me to act in such a way as to pour out that beauty within on to all I engage with.



Beauty inspired Oliver to write the other day while sitting in the garden; it inspired him to give back to the world, despite experiencing current suffering and being taken back to a place of pain, grief and guilt. The beauty of the blossom blizzard inspired his soul to act.

Beauty manifests itself in so many ways in the world in which we live and breathe and move. It awakens all our senses and thus feeds and nourishes our souls; it awakens our souls and it fills our hearts to overflowing. We not only drink from the well of beauty, we also fill it too. Beauty truly is about the heart, about filling the heart to overflowing. In "Beauty: The Invisible Embrace" John O’Donohue wrote:

"The heart is the place where beauty arrives; here is where it can be felt, recognized and shared. If there was no heart, beauty could never reach us. Through the heart, beauty can pervade every cell of the body and fill us. To use a word that feels like it sounds: this is the thrill of beauty through us. Perhaps this is why we sometimes feel the absence of beauty in our lives; we have allowed the prism to become dull and darkened; though the light is near, it cannot enter to have its inlay of beauty diffused. Sometimes absence is merely arrested appearance. Compassion and attention keep the prism clear so that beauty may illuminate our life. Prayer of course is the supreme way we lift our limited selves towards the light, and ask it to shine into us. "

Beauty not only awakens the soul, but also fills the heart to overflowing, it certainly compels me to pour my heart out on the world in loving ways. In fact perhaps true beauty, certainly in a human sense, is to act morally. As John O’Donohue has pointed out Plato believed that Love was born of beauty and that it tapped into our basic human drive and desire for Good, that it was not a private or self-indulgent act of pleasure and that “the ability to love beauty has created all the good things that exist for gods and men’. He quotes Pseudo Dionysius the Aeropagite who said, "For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community. Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty. And there it is ahead of all as…the Beloved…toward which all things move, since it is the longing for beauty which actually brings them into being."

It is beauty that awakens our souls and inspires us to act lovingly in the world, to pour out our love on the world. How do we do this you may well ask? Well, I believe it begins with our neighbour the very people we interact with on a daily basis. As it has with me once again these last few days

It brings to my mind a passage from Matthew’s Gospel (Ch 26 vv 6-13). It is a much debated primarily because it has been used by some as a justification for tolerating poverty. I believe that to focus on this is to fail to recognise the central message of Matthews Gospel, the abundant blessing of love.

6 Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,* 7a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. 8But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? 9For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’10But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. 11For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. 12By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. 13Truly I tell you, wherever this good news* is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’

The power in this story is in its recognition of abundant love. The woman loves and cares for Jesus. She anoints him with oil because she loves him dearly. It truly is an act of loving, nay gracious abandonment. This is in complete contrast to the grumpy disciples who are definitely of the glass half empty brigade. At least they are consistent though as they appear this way throughout the Gospels. The woman though is overflowing with love and wants to anoint those she loves with this. This is beauty in action. This is a soul awakened by beauty and inspired to act lovingly. Her heart is over flowing with love and she wants to pour out this love onto Jesus who will soon no longer be with her or the disciples.

Just as Oliver’s poem did; just as Nick’s video did; just as Rose’s conversation did; just as Alex asking about a friend did; just as Molly sniffing around as the pink blossom blew did; just as we all can do. We can all pour out this attentive love on one another and all life. We can offer care and attention to each and everyone around us. In so doing we will help create beauty all around us. All we need to do is pay attention open our hearts to beauty and act from it.

This brings to mind the following little anecdote by William McNamara:

“I once lived near a mansion where only one of the many gardeners employed had succeeded with every one of the roses. I asked him the secret of his success. He told me that the other gardeners treated all the roses not unwisely, but too generally. They treated them all in precisely the same way; whereas he himself watched each rosebush separately, and followed out for each plant its special need for soil, manure, sun, air, water, support and shelter.”

Beauty is all around us. We are surrounded by it. If we open ourselves to it, it will fill our hearts, awaken our souls and lead us to act lovingly and morally. This is beauty in action. If we create beauty with our own hands we will touch each individual soul we meet and they will grow and flower to their own full potential. We are here to enjoy the beauty that we are surrounded by and to pour out the beauty that lays within us and thus bring it to fruition in the world around us.

As Desmond Tutu has said:

“We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of a sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew…Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful…and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.”

Let beauty awake for beauty's sake. Awake from slumber and awake from dreams. Let beauty awake from deep within us, Let beauty pour from us and be lavished upon our world.

May we be caught up in the blizzard of beauty, may we be blown in such a wind.

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

The Shyness of Spring: Beauty Awakens Slowly, But Surely

“Beauty Is Our Birthright” by Rebekah Savage

Sometimes we awake in the morning with a heaviness in our chest.
Sometimes we awake in the morning with the endless to-do list rattling through our thoughts, the nagging reminders of what was left undone yesterday,
and the pangs of “I have to do it all again today?” pinching at our insides.
Sometimes we awake in the morning, and we’d rather go back to sleep,
We would rather escape under the covers, a rock, the bottom of the closet.

And then,
The first sliver of sunshine may dance across our face. Beautiful.
And then,
The wafting scent of a new day may glide over us. Beautiful.
And then,
Signs of life blossom around us, to include inside of us. Beautiful.

Beauty is our birthright. Just as we are born in love, through love To love;
To nurture beauty is to return to our essence,
To touch, taste and experience creation as beautiful,
As the fragile, wonderful and wild interdependence with the Spirit of Life,
that which is so much greater than ourselves.

May beauty wrap and delight us, and guide our way.
May beauty be yours now and forever.

Amen and ashe.

As is often the case I woke up on Monday morning feeling tired. I could see a busy week ahead. On top of that I was wondering what to explore this week. It is a familiar feeling. Sunday does take a lot from me. I arose on Monday engaged in my usual morning rituals and stepped out into the world, and headed for the park with Molly. We walked around and took in the natural beauty. It was a beautiful blue morning. The blue sky and the green grass are good for the human soul, it awakens us, or maybe it awakens something within us. I felt it deeply that morning. As Molly played and we wandered round I noticed the other colours of the Spring flowers emerging. They emerge slowly almost one after the other, new colours each new week.

“One thing I love about Spring is its shyness. How the new life slowly emerges. How it allows us to adjust to its beauty. Every day something new to discover. A sight, a sound, a colour. An awakening feast for the senses. May you open to it slowly, but surely.”

As I returned home I typed those words as a morning blessing to friends. Why do we call this time Spring? It doesn’t just suddenly spring to life. Yes, I know it comes from an old English word “Springan”, which meant to leap, or burst forth, fly up, spread or grow. Think of water bursting forth from a spring. The season and the awakening fo the new flowers and life during spring time, doesn’t just burst froth though and suddenly appear, it comes slowly and surely, it comes faithfully. Most folk are impatient for it to burst forth, but it pays no attention to our cries. It does come though. It has being doing so all week. The blue sky, the green grass and all the new colours, bringing forth life and blessing us with its beauty. All we have to do is open our eyes to it.

By the way a friend responded to my question by stating “It doesn’t sound right if we rename it creeping”. She does have a point.

I have been enjoying the emerging beauty of spring all week. This is not to say I am ignoring what is troubled within me, my community and my world. I am not closing my senses to anything, I am just ensuring my senses are also open to what is good and beautiful. I am living with open eyes and an open heart and an open soul. “Let beauty awake, for beauty’s sake.”

Spring begins tentatively, but it advances with tenacity. All the new life touches me deeply. No matter how small and delicate the roots are they insist on coming to life; they insist on their way as they press up through ground that looked, only a few weeks earlier, as if it would never grow anything again. The crocuses and snowdrops don’t bloom for long. But their mere appearance, however brief, is always a harbinger of hope and from those small beginnings, hope grows at a geometric rate. The days get longer, the winds get warmer, and the world grows green again. Followed by a feast of flowers and blossoms.

This brings to my heart the wonderful poem “Metamorphosis” by May Sarton; a poem about transformation during springtime.

“Metamorphosis” by May Sarton

Always it happens when we are not there —
The tree leaps up alive in the air,
Small open parasols of Chinese green
Wave on each twig. But who has ever seen
The latch sprung, the bud as it burst?
Spring always manages to get there first.

Lovers of wind, who will have been aware
Of a faint stirring in the empty air,
Look up one day through a dissolving screen
To find no star, but this multiplied green,
Shadow on shadow, singing sweet and clear.
Listen, lovers of wind, the leaves are here!

On Sunday mornings, as soon as I arrive at Urmston, I always take Molly out for a walk. As we did this Sunday I noticed my first Cherry Blossom of the year. I took a picture. I always notice the Cherry Blossom in Urmston before I do so in Altrincham. Is there anything more beautiful. Their beauty in many ways comes from how short lived their blooming is. The cherry blossom is at its most beautiful about a week after its full bloom, when half of the pink snow covers the ground. The beauty of the Cherry blossom is in both its impermanence and imperfection; at its most beautiful when their season is half complete, or at least in the eye of this beholder.

I posted the picture and began my yearly ritual of inviting friends to share their pictures of the Cherry blossom with me and other friends. I was obviously distracted as I dropped my glasses case. I realised later and thought I must have lost it forever. Well not so. I returned to Urmston the on Tuesday, walked Molly round the block and just as I was putting her poo bag in the bin, there was my glasses case lying there in the ground. I’m glad my eyes were open on Tuesday morning. I then returned to the church and engaged in a beautiful conversation with some of the congregation in our “Common Search for Meaning” group.

I returned back to Altrincham, Molly me went for a walk, and this time I noticed the cherry Blossom in Stamford park. We walked, Molly played and I engaged in some beautiful conversations, some of joy and a couple of grief and sadness. I walked with open and eyes, an open heart and open senses, including the sixth sense.

Here is a link to "Spring Watch" episode on "Cherry Blossom" and it's beauty in Japan. it is an annual festival, spiritual in nature. It is incredible Springwatch in Japan: Cherry Blossom Time  

It is important to recognise the beauty in the world, despite the very real troubles of our personal lives, our community and the wider world. There is so much that is beautiful in this world, in this life, in each other and it is important to notice it and to share what you see. This is why I love poetry; I love the way that gifted poets see what is beautiful, capture it with words and share in such a beautiful way that it awakens something in our hearts.

Here is a lovely example; here William Stafford beautifully depicts that the world is more that the troubles we see. that there is a very real world of nature that stretches from the cells of all our bodies to all forms of life that surrounds us, that we are part of this incredible thing that is life.

“Time for Serenity, Anyone?” by William Stafford

I like to live in the sound of water,
in the feel of mountain air. A sharp
reminder hits me: this world still is alive;
it stretches out there shivering toward its own
creation, and I’m part of it. Even my breathing
enters into the elaborate give-and-take,
this bowing to sun and moon, day or night,
winter, summer, storm, still—this tranquil
chaos that seems to be going somewhere.
This wilderness with a great peacefulness in it.
This motionless turmoil, this everything dance.

As I walk in beauty I take in the natural world all around me. I remember that “this world is still alive” and it is alive in me and I need to feel this aliveness, in order to live fully in this world. It is one way that I connect to the beautiful power that I call God, it is not the only way, but is one way. As I look at the blooming flowers and the cherry blossom I am reminded of its impermanence, that it does not last for ever, but is part of the ever changing cycle of life and existence. Yes, this world can be difficult and painful at times, but that even these troubles do not last forever. I live in, by and through hope. I walk in hope as well as beauty. I know that the better world I dream of is possible, if I didn’t I wouldn’t be a minister of faith. I may not always see the fruits, but I do from time to time. As I walk in beauty and hope I see beauty and new life all around me. If lifts my heart and inspires my soul.

We have just past the Spring Equinox, last Thursday 20th, the day when light and dark are in balance. It happens twice a year both in Autumn and Spring. Equinox means “equal night”. So now there will be more light than dark, may our eyes be open to it. May we live with open eyes.

Anyone can walk around pointing out what is wrong and ugly in the world; anyone can walk around pointing what is life denying. That is easy, it takes no effort. That said to become keenly and consistently aware of what is good, true and beautiful demands effort, consistent effort, it takes work. To do so we must open our hearts, our senses and our souls and we must keep them open. You must live with open eyes. Sometimes all you have to do is look up at the blossom above and all around you, or the little dogs playing in the park and you awaken to what is beautiful and holy. For all ground is holy ground. Shake off your shoes, shed them like Moses at the burning bush. Shed the scales from your eyes and live with open eyes. See the beauty around you, the beauty you walk in. Be inspired by it, walk in beauty, absorb it, let it fill my soul, and share it with all you meet.

When you recognise the beauty in life, you will recognise it in yourself and the people in this world. Yes, there is much wrong in this world, but there is much that is right. If you recognise this, you will walk in beauty.

I am going to end this morning with some Mary Oliver. Here is “Mindful”

“Mindful” by Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for --
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world --
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant --
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these --
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Eye of the Beholder: It's How You See Things

The current “Wayside Pulpit” at Dunham Road reads “Beauty exists not in what is seen and remembered, but in what is felt and never forgotten” by Jonathan Jena. I have no memory of when or where I discovered this quotation, but the feeling it brought on has stayed with me.

Over the last few weeks I have made friends with a rather sorry looking magpie in the chapel gardens at Dunham Road. There is actually a pair, sometimes three or four, who are regular attenders, so to speak. The others are plump and healthy looking, your typical magpies. My friend is not. It appears malnourished and its feathers look greasy and not attractive in the least. And yet it is this one that has been catching my attention; this is the one I have developed a fondness, dare I say a love for. I have identified with it. I have felt a little like that magpie myself as I have been licking a few personal wounds. So, we have become friends. Well, the magpie obviously doesn’t know this, but I do. It has no idea how much it delights me by just being its magpie self. It has also helped me with pastoral counselling as I have spoken with folk while sitting on the new benches there. I always point it out to folk, and we often weave stories about what its life might have been. It just carries on being a magpie, unaware, no doubt, that it is anything other than a magpie.

I was out walking by the canal the other day and noticed something else that caught my attention. It was three mallard ducks in a line. A male, a female and another one that had some of the male plumage and some of the female. It was swimming behind the other two. It made me pause and wonder as I tried to look closer. I should have taken a picture, but was too slow. It is the same with the magpies by the way. It did get me wondering about gender and ducks. I looked into it and apparently ducks, and other birds, can change gender. They can only go from being female to male and this is due to some form of disease when young. So over time they transform from female to male. This must have been happening to the third duck in the row on the canal. It is funny what you see from time to time, what your vision can open up to.

Things in life are not always as they appear on the surface. Once you see something for the first time it is never quite the same again. You cannot go back to that place of pure ignorance. You can live in denial, but you can’t unsee something. This is always humbling and in so doing it can open you up to new experiences and clearer vision. It can awaken you to knew possibilities. Well, I’m being humbled quite a lot at the moment. I do hope it is opening me up to new vision and possibility and will enable me to be of better service to those I share life with. New vision, new sight can awaken to new possibility. As Meister Eckhart once said “There is power in sight which is superior to the eyes set in the head and more far-reaching than the heavens and the earth.”

New sight ought to broaden our vision, so that we can begin to see things not so much as we want to see them, but as they are actually are, or at least closer to a true approximation.

The morning after seeing the ducks I was not feeling my best. My mood was low I was feeling quite self conscious, vulnerable, exposed. I went to the gym, but did not perform to my best. As I was showering afterwards one of the instructors came in and looked at me in a towel and quickly said “Could you just wait before towelling off as Alice needs to look round”. I couldn’t say anything as she came in he said “There’s just a hunk of man, do not worry” I remember I felt really self conscious and made a joke and started laughing. He said “don’t laugh, don’t let anyone tell you anything less than that”. Anyway they left and I got dressed and headed to chapel to work. As I walked through Altrincham I bumped into a couple of friends. One offered me a coffee and we talked. I told him what was going and how I was feeling and we shared together. In fact that day several people came to speak with me about other things and I was able to be open with them about feeling a little like that tatty, scraggly magpie, about feeling exposed, vulnerable. The way I was seeing myself and the world that day was not good. It was of course emanating from deep within me, because truth be told it was a beautiful day, the birds were singing and the sun was shining, but I was not deep in my soul. Yet just a few hours later I found myself singing with the birds in the garden. Another friend had messaged me saying “Its perfect weather for outdoor singing meditation.” I agreed and do you know what that is exactly what I did, whilst writing this address. There were some tears, but they were needed tears. They were tears that opened my eyes, my soul, to a new and clearer vision.

It brought to mind some wisdom by Frederick Buechner about paying close attention, something that the birds were allowing me to do it seemed.

“Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.”

All this brought thoughts about vision and what we see. Do we ever see reality as it actually is, or is it as much to do with the condition of the soul? The last eighteen months has brought this ever more sharply into focus for me. Diversity and life exists on a far more complex spectrum, perhaps more a kaleidoscope than any of us could ever envisage, perhaps even envision.

They say that our eyes are the windows to our souls; they say that our eyes reveal our personalities. I always remember an old friend when asking how I was would look intently into my eyes. I found it a little disturbing at first, but today I understand why he did so. He wanted to see and not just hear how I was. He wanted to see with his own eyes. After all seeing is believing, or so they say. I suspect that the friend wanted to look into my soul, to see how I truly was, not how I said I was.

It’s a curious phrase “Eyes are the windows to your soul.” I looked up the origin. Some say it comes from The Bible and certainly there are similar references to be found there. Luke chapter 11 vv 33-36 reads “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”

Others have attributed it to Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Emerson, Milton. Still others have said it is an old English folk phrase. I suspect the true author of the exact phrase is the American sculptor Hiram Powers who said “The eye is the window of the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth. The animals look for man’s intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye.”

Whatever the exact origin of the phrase it has been around in public consciousness probably ever since we became conscious. Why you may well ask? Well because it reveals a deep truth about humanity. We can hide so much about ourselves, behind a thousand and one masks, but if you look into someone’s eyes and really pay attention, you will see the soul of the person.

Of course the state of our souls will impact on what we then see through our eyes, what we project onto the world. For the eyes are also the window for our soul to vision the world.

Research at Orebro University in Sweden has suggested that that there is real truth in the statement that "The eyes are the windows of the soul". Researches looked at patterns around the iris of the eyes of 428 subjects and compared them with their personality profiles. They claim that certain patterns were consistent in individuals who had similar personality profiles. Matt Larrson a behavioural scientist at the university stated that “Our results suggest people with different iris features tend to develop along different personality lines...These findings support the notion that people with different iris configurations tend to develop along different trajectories in regards to personality.” They claim that genetic mutations may be the reason that some people have poor social skills and act impulsively and that this can be revealed through studying the pattern around the iris.

Psychologists as Yale University, in America, have suggested that we believe, even if we do so sub-consciously, that our eyes truly are the window to our souls. They conducted visual experiments with adults and pre-school children. The findings revealed that both groups reacted almost identically. Both groups believed that the essence of a character is to be found in or around the person’s eyes. They claimed that this is not culturally conditioned, more that this is something that is felt intuitively.

Christina Starmans of the Mind Development Lab at Yale claimed that

“The indirect nature of our method and the fact that these judgements are shared by adults and preschoolers, suggests that our results do not reflect a culturally learned understanding...but might instead be rooted in a more intuitive or phenomenological sense of where in our bodies we reside.”

They are suggesting that most of us intuitively believe that the essence of the person is located in or around the eyes.

Could this be true?

Well, it appears that we think so.

There is another curious phrase that we often hear uttered “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” a phrase that literally means that beauty is subjective. I was thinking of the tatty old magpie and how it fascinated me far more than the perfect plump ones. Maybe it was because it looked different that it touched my heart and soul, or perhaps it was because I was feeling a bit like the magpie myself, who knows. All I know is that for the last few weeks that tatty old magpie has enchanted me and lifted my spirits when I have felt low. It has simply carried on being a magpie, not aware that folk might not think it was the most pleasing on the eye.

Beauty is subjective and ideas of beauty change I suspect directly in relation to the state of our hearts and souls. As they say “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, another phrase that is of disputed origin. Some say it was coined in ancient Greece. While others site Shakespeare, “In Love’s Labour Lost” he wrote:

“Good Lord Boyet, my beauty though mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not utter’d by base sale of chapmen’s tongue.”

Benjamin Franklin, in “Poor Richard’s Almanack” wrote “Beauty, like supreme dominion is but supported by opinion” David Hulme wrote “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” The exact phrase though is attributed to Margaret Wolfe Hungerford who in “Molly Bawn” (1878) wrote “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”

But is it merely beauty that is in the eye of the beholder? Maybe everything is subjective?

It’s seems that it not only beauty that is in the eye of the beholder. So much of life is about how we see things and how we look at things; so much of life is about perspective. Actually it is more than that it is about “how” we look at things. The eyes reveal so much. So often in life what we are able to see in life is due to condition of our hearts and souls.

It matters how we see life, how gaze on each other. Yes the eyes are the windows of the soul, but also how we see life depends so much on the condition of soul, our humanity. So in actual fact it does matter how we look. Not so much our appearance, but how we vision life.

How we see the world matters and how respond perhaps even more so. Life truly is in the “eye of the beholder” How we see one another is vital. Try to look with open eyes, let your soul be fed by life and let your soul feed the life of others too. The world needs us to look through loving eyes, compassionate eyes, eyes that are wide open and thus able to create a new and beautiful vision, whatever that might be. Me I’m going to keep my eyes open for that scratty looking magpie, for it feeds my soul.

Please find below a devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Beauty Awakens the Eye of the Beholder

Sometime when I stand in the gardens here at the chapel I feel like a cross between Snow White and Francis of Assisi...I feel like I want to preach a sermon or sing to the birds and other creatures all around...Then I come to my senses and just simply listen and soak in what is all around me and realise it is they who preach to me...I am a blessed man indeed. There is beauty all around me and it awakens my soul to act.

The Cherry blossom is out again. Nature is alive all around us, beautifying life. It is wonderful to just wander around and savour it, in the warmth of the sun. Several times over the last couple of weeks I have stood listening to someone as they have pointed out the beauty of the natural world. As I stand there savouring I am reminded once again how much I revere life. It awakens my heart and feeds my soul.

Many years ago our “General Assembly” had to create an Object that described who we are. I’m told that this was to fulfil a commitment to the Charity Commission to gain charitable status as a religious organisation. One line read “The worship of god and the celebration of life”. I have often thought about these words and today I kind of see them in reverse. For me what we ought to be aiming for is the worship of life and the celebration of God. That life is what we ought to hold in highest value, highest worth and that this is celebrated through that love which animates all life, that love that I know as God. That though is just me I am sure that many folk would disagree.

 

I have been feeling reverence for life powerfully this week as I have noticed the beautiful pink cherry blossom beautifying the trees. This will not last, it is so short lived, but I will enjoy it while it does.

Cherry Blossom is much loved throughout the world. In Japan though it is revered, worshipped. Each year the Japanese people come in large groups with their families and friends to view the flowers and to enjoy festivals with food, drink, and music. The significance of the cherry blossom tree in Japanese culture goes back hundreds of years. It represents the fragility and the beauty of life. It is a reminder that life can at times become overwhelmingly beautiful, while at the same time tragically short. The cherry blossom, blooming for a short time each year, is an overpowering visual reminder of the precious fragility of life. So, when Japanese people come together to view the cherry blossom trees and marvel at their beauty, they aren't just thinking about the flowers themselves, but also about the larger meaning and deep cultural tradition of the cherry blossom tree. This is a truly religious experience. It is more than just spirituality, as they are bound up together sharing the experience.

Life has taught me that how I see the world really depends on where I am at spirituality. I wonder if I have ever seen the world as it really is. Do any of us? How I see the world seems to be constantly changing. I believe it really matters how we see the world, because how we see the world will affect how we live in the world.

As Victoria Safford wrote

“To see, simply to look and to see, is an ethical act and intentional choice; to see, with open eyes is a spiritual practice and thus a risk, for it can open you to ways of knowing the world and loving it that will lead to inevitable consequences.  The awakened eye is a conscious eye, a willful eye, and brave, because to see things as they are, each in its own truth, will make you very vulnerable.”

The beauty all around awakens something in me; it awakens my eyes. It also awakens something else; it awakens my heart and soul and compels me to act more beautifully in the world. Surely the purpose of the religious, the spiritual life is to be awake, awake to the world.

“Let beauty awake, for beauty’s sake”

When the Buddha started to wander around India shortly after his enlightenment, he encountered several men who recognized him to be a very extraordinary being. They asked him: "Are you a god?" "No," he replied. "Are you a reincarnation of god?" "No," he replied."Are you a wizard, then?" "No." "Well, are you a man?" "No." "So what are you?" They asked, being very perplexed.  Buddha simply replied: "I am awake." Buddha means “the awakened one.” How to awaken is all he taught.

 “Let beauty awake, for beauty’s sake”

Beauty awakens something. That said what is beautiful to me may not be the same for you. The things I find most beautiful, apart from the obvious, are of course the beautiful blossom on the trees, but I am just as enchanted by the wild geese flying high, or the song of the blackbird, or the incredible football that Marcelo Bielsa is creating at Leeds United, or the music of New Model Army, or the batting of Joe Root, or watching our little dog Charlie playing at home or out the park with other dogs, just delighting in life. Charlie is only a little Shi Tzu, but she holds her own with the big dogs, she has such a beautiful spirit about her. She pours out her love and she receives it in equal measure too. I also caught sight of my first ducklings of the year the other day, when out walking Charlie by the canal.

What is beautiful to you, what does it awaken in you? Beauty is subjective. As they say “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

It is a curious phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. It suggests that beauty is subjective. The phrase is of disputed origin. Some say it was coined in ancient Greece. While others site Shakespeare, “In Love’s Labour Lost he wrote:

 “Good Lord Boyet, my beauty though mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:

Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,

Not utter’d by base sale of chapmen’s tongue.”

Benjamin Franklin, in “Poor Richard’s Almanack”  wrote “Beauty, like supreme dominion is but supported by opinion” David Hulme wrote “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” The exact phrase though is attributed to Margaret Wolfe Hungerford who in “Molly Bawn” (1878) wrote “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”

Beauty is subjective. it is in the eye of the beholder. It is about what our eyes can, but it is also about how we see, with my little eye.

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with…Choose your own letter…

I’d like to share a little Mary Oliver with you. Here is “Mindful”

“Mindful” by Mary Oliver

Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

“Mindful” by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early. © Beacon Press, 2005.

It is easy to look at the world and see what is destructive and life denying, what is ugly. It is less easy to become consistently aware of what is good, true, and beautiful. This requires discipline to open our eyes, minds, and hearts, and keep them open. It takes consistent effort. Beauty appears as a grace, but it takes effort to be aware and thus be affected and moved by beauty, that does not come unbidden. That said if we do and if we keep on doing so, despite the very real troubles we are surrounded by. we will begin to see beauty everywhere, not only in nature and one another. There’s a lot of bad news out there, but there’s a lot of good news as well. Pass the word and help keep hope alive. For it is not good enough to merely see beauty, we must be moved by it and moved to action so as to continue to create things of beauty ourselves, or even better become people of beauty, by living beautiful lives.

Plato believed that Love was born of beauty and that it tapped into our basic human drive and desire for Good, that it was not a private or self-indulgent act of pleasure and that “the ability to love beauty has created all the good things that exist for gods and men’.

This brings to mind a passage from Matthew’s Gospel (Ch 26 vv 6-13). It is a much debated primarily because it has been used by some as a justification for tolerating poverty. I believe that to focus on this is to fail to recognise the central message of Matthews Gospel, the abundant blessing of love.

The power in this story is in its recognition of abundant love. It describes a woman who loves and cares for Jesus. She anoints him with oil because she loves him dearly. It truly is an act of loving, nay gracious abandonment. She is overflowing with love and wants to anoint those she loves with this. This is beauty in action. This is a soul awakened by beauty and inspired to act lovingly. Her heart is over flowing with love and she wants to pour out this love onto Jesus who will soon no longer be with her or the disciples.

This is something we can all do we can all pour out this attentive love on one another and all life. We can offer care and attention to each and everyone around us. In so doing we will help create beauty all around us.

Dante claimed that “Beauty awakens the soul to act”. Beauty awakens the soul of me in so many indescribable ways and it compels me to act in such a way as to pour out that beauty within onto the world in which I live and breath and share my life with, in reverence for life.

Beauty not only awakens the soul, but also fills the heart to overflowing, it certainly compels me to pour my heart out on the world in loving ways. In fact perhaps true beauty, certainly in a human sense, is to act morally. 

Beauty is all around us. We are surrounded by it. If we open ourselves to it, it will fill our hearts, awaken our souls and lead us to act lovingly and morally. This is beauty in action. If we create beauty with our own hands we will touch each individual soul we meet and they will grow and flower to their own full potential. We are here to enjoy the beauty that we are surrounded by and to pour out the beauty that lays within us and thus bring it to fruition in the world around us.

Let beauty awake for beauty's sake. Awake from slumber and awake from dreams. Let beauty awake from deep within us, Let beauty pour from us and may we lavish our world with it.

Here is a video devotion based on the "Blogspot" material

Let Beauty Awake

“A Modest Love” by Sir Edward Dyer

The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,
The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat;
The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small,
And bees have stings, although they be not great;
Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs;
And love is love, in beggars as in kings.

Where rivers smoothest run, deep are the fords;
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;
The firmest faith is in the fewest words;
The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love:
True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak;
They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break.

I suspect that this poem by sir Edward Dyer maybe one of the most beautiful in the English language. He must have known and recognised the beauty present in life. He must have been touched deeply by life, to recognise the beauty of the most humblest aspects of life. To be touched by beauty is to be fully alive. This is how love feels...

The great American poet Walt Whitman also recognised beauty in the ordinary, particularly the people in whose company he found himself. I feel it too when I am awake and alive to life. I have felt it intensly and powerfully all of this year. Time has felt very thick these last few weeks. I have been around much suffering and pain, but also deep, deep love and joy. I have felt alive and touched deeply by the beauty of life.

I have felt closer to the people around me than I have ever done before. To quote Whitman, from

“The Body Electric”:

“I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing,
Laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm
Ever so lightly around his or her neck for a moment
What is this
Then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.”

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, Laughing flesh is certainly enough to awaken me to life, to bring me alive, to truly animate my being, to awaken the soul of me. Such beauty makes one feel alive and thus to feel a part of life and act in life in ever more loving and open ways and thus pour out my own love on the world in which I live and breathe and move and have my being.

Matthew Fox claims that “The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere”

J. Ruth Gendler once claimed "Beauty doesn't mind questions and she is fond of riddles. Beauty will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her.” She later described beauty as being like water “ordinary and essential, as well as extraordinary and magnificent. That it takes many forms and permeates our whole environment.

She writes:

"Writing about beauty feels like drinking water out of the cup of my hand from a clear spring. As I bring this water to my mouth, so much spills away. The water tastes delicious; the freshness and purity startle me. I have been drinking water that was mediocre for so long. I have forgotten how good water can taste. Like water, beauty is ordinary and essential, as well as extraordinary and magnificent. That it covers everywhere, gathers and concentrates. “Beauty rinses our eyes. Sometimes beauty moves us to tears. We bathe in, drink the presence of beauty.”

She claims that “Beauty is an energy, not an image, and that energy can go anywhere; that energy takes on an image, a form, many images, many forms.”

Beauty awakens one fully to life, beauty makes you feel alive and thus a part of life and so act in more loving ways. Beauty awakens the soul of me in so many indescribable ways and it compels me to act in such a way as to pour out that beauty within on to all I engage with.

Beauty manifests itself in so many ways in the world in which we live and breathe and move. It awakens all our senses and thus feeds and nourishes our souls; it awakens our souls and it fills our hearts to overflowing. We not only drink from the well of beauty, we also fill it too. Beauty truly is about the heart, about filling the heart to overflowing. In "Beauty: The Invisible Embrace" John O’Donohue wrote

"The heart is the place where beauty arrives; here is where it can be felt, recognized and shared. If there was no heart, beauty could never reach us. Through the heart, beauty can pervade every cell of the body and fill us. To use a word that feels like it sounds: this is the thrill of beauty through us. Perhaps this is why we sometimes feel the absence of beauty in our lives; we have allowed the prism to become dull and darkened; though the light is near, it cannot enter to have its inlay of beauty diffused. Sometimes absence is merely arrested appearance. Compassion and attention keep the prism clear so that beauty may illuminate our life. Prayer of course is the supreme way we lift our limited selves towards the light, and ask it to shine into us. "

We feel alive in the presence of beauty, it awakens the soul and fills the heart to overflowing, it certainly compels me to pour my heart out on the world in loving ways. In fact perhaps true beauty, certainly in a human sense, is to act morally. As John O’Donohue has pointed out Plato believed that Love was born of beauty and that it tapped into our basic human drive and desire for Good, that it was not a private or self-indulgent act of pleasure and that “the ability to love beauty has created all the good things that exist for gods and men’. He quotes Pseudo Dionysius the Aeropagite who said, "For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community. Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty. And there it is ahead of all as…the Beloved…toward which all things move, since it is the longing for beauty which actually brings them into being."

We feel alive in the presence of beauty, it awakens our souls and inspires us to act lovingly in the world to pour out our love on the world. How do we do this you may well ask? Well I believe it begins with our neighbour the very people we interact with on a daily basis.

Matthew’s Gospel (Ch 26 vv 6-13) is a much debated passage, primarily because it has been used by some as a justification for tolerating poverty. I believe that to focus on this is to fail to recognise the central message of Matthews Gospel, the abundant blessing of love.

The power in this story is in its recognition of abundant love. The woman loves and cares for Jesus. She anoints him with oil because she loves him dearly. It truly is an act of loving, nay gracious abandonment. This is in complete contrast to the grumpy disciples who are definitely of the glass half empty brigade. At least they are consistent though as they appear this way throughout the Gospels. The woman though is overflowing with love and wants to anoint those she loves with this. This is beauty in action, bringing us to life, making us feel alive. This is a soul awakened by beauty and inspired to act lovingly. Her heart is over flowing with love and she wants to pour out this love onto Jesus who will soon no longer be with her or the disciples.

This is something we can all do we can all pour out this attentive love on one another and all life. We can offer care and attention to each and everyone around us. In so doing we will help create beauty all around us. It brings to mind the following little anecdote by William McNamara:

“I once lived near a mansion where only one of the many gardeners employed had succeeded with every one of the roses. I asked him the secret of his success. He told me that the other gardeners treated all the roses not unwisely, but too generally. They treated them all in precisely the same way; whereas he himself watched each rosebush separately, and followed out for each plant its special need for soil, manure, sun, air, water, support and shelter.”

To act beautifully is to pay attention to the individual needs all around us

Beauty is all around us. We are surrounded by it. If we open ourselves to it, it will fill our hearts, awaken our souls and lead us to act lovingly and morally. In so doing we feel truly alive. This is beauty in action. If we create beauty with our own hands we will touch each individual soul we meet and they will grow and flower to their own full potential. We are here to enjoy the beauty that we are surrounded by and to pour out the beauty that lays within us and thus bring it to fruition in the world around us. We are here to live our lives fully alive.

As Desmond Tutu has said:

“We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of a sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew…Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful…and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.”

Let beauty awake for beauty's sake. Awake from slumber and awake from dreams. Let beauty awake from deep within us, Let beauty pour from us and be lavished upon our world.

Let beauty awaken us to life, fully, abundantly.

...Let beauty awake for beauty's sake...

“Beauty awakens the soul to act”

I recently received a new blessing. Through the post came a new book, by David Whyte “CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.”. It truly is wonderful. Below is the reflection on "Beauty", from it.

"The harvest of presence, the evanescent moment of seeing or hearing on the outside what already lives far inside us; the eyes, the ears or the imagination suddenly become a bridge between the here and the there, between then and now, between the inside and the outside; beauty is the conversation between what we think is happening outside in the world and what is just about to occur far inside us.

Beauty is an achieved state of both deep attention and self-forgetting; the self forgetting of seeing, hearing, smelling or touching that erases our separation, our distance, our fear of the other. Beauty invites us, through entrancement, to that fearful, frontier between what we think makes us; and what we think makes the world. Beauty is almost always found in symmetries: the symmetries seen out in creation, the wings of the moth, the airy sky and the solid earth, the restful, focused eyes of a loving face in which we see our own self reflected: the symmetry also, therefore, of bringing together inner and outer recognitions, the far horizon of otherness seen in that face joined to the deep inner horizon of our own being. Beauty is an inner and an outer complexion living in one face.

Beauty especially occurs in the meeting of time with the timeless; the passing moment framed by what has happened and what is about to occur, the scattering of the first spring apple blossom, the turning, spiraling flight of a curled leaf in the falling light; the smoothing of white sun-filled sheets by careful hands setting them to air on a line, the broad expanse of cotton filled by the breeze only for a moment, the sheets sailing on into dryness, billowing toward a future that is always beckoning, always just beyond us. Beauty is the harvest of presence."

...It got me thinking about "Beauty". The rest of this "blogspot" is a reflection on beauty, inspired by wiser and holier fools than I...

Now as if by chance, or not, the very same day that the book arrived a friend of mine posted a “meme” on social media which read “Beauty awakens the soul to act”, it is a quote by Dante. It struck me powerfully and got me thinking and feeling. I opened my new book and the first subject I happened upon was the piece above on "beauty". I've have been contemplating the word ever since as I have witnessed, and remembered the beauty of nature as life has been delighting in its own being once again.

My soul has reawakened has engaged with and appreciated the beauty of nature whether by night or day. I remembered the Passover moon that moved me over the Easter weekend and of course the cherry blossom that delighted my eyes and heart and so beautifully moved me to engage with so many friends recently. I also contemplated the beauty of the many people I have come to know and the joy of watching and listening to them as they have just simply gone about their daily business, as they were just simply being themselves. As I have watched the people around me I have constantly been reminded of the following words by Walt Whitman.

“I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing,
Laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm
Ever so lightly around his or her neck for a moment,
What is this
Then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.”

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, Laughing flesh is certainly enough to awaken my soul. All this beauty whether natural or human has awakened my soul to act in more loving and open ways and thus pour out my own love on the world in which I live and breathe and move and have my being.

In “Notes on the Need for Beauty: An Intimate Look at An Essential Quality” J. Ruth Gendler wrote:

"Beauty doesn't mind questions and she is fond of riddles. Beauty will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her. When I first wrote these words twenty-five years ago, I had only begun to imagine how we could invite beauty into our lives. I had no idea how deeply they would lead me into an exploration of beauty.

"Writing about beauty feels like drinking water out of the cup of my hand from a clear spring. As I bring this water to my mouth, so much spills away. The water tastes delicious; the freshness and purity startle me. I have been drinking water that was mediocre for so long. I have forgotten how good water can taste. Like water, beauty is ordinary and essential, as well as extraordinary and magnificent.

"Beauty, like water, takes many forms and permeates our environment. Just as water travels across the world and pools in everything from our cells to underground streams to magnificent storms, beauty also travels, gathers, concentrates. It is beautiful to look at and listen to the way the world changes with rain, to trace the path of the river by foot or from an airplane window, to talk at the ocean's edge, swim under the waterfall. Beauty rinses our eyes. Sometimes beauty moves us to tears. We bathe in, drink the presence of beauty.

"Slowly I have come to savor the beauty of the unknown, the unnameable, the contradictions and paradoxes. Beauty is simple and complex, obvious and elusive, superficial and profound, spontaneous and achieved with great effort, impossible to define and essential to articulate. Beauty is allied with the radiance of fire, body and soul, vision and music, movement and stillness, the daily cycles of night and day.

"Beauty refuses to yield to analysis, refuses to be perfection. Beauty moves within and around us, rearranging our moods, taking us home. Beauty is always moving and beauty is very still, the light in the dark, the dark in the light, the subtlest shades of pale white and blue, the richest tones of indigo and black and deep brown, the brightest reds and oranges and golds. We find beauty at the intersections, the edges, the center of so many experiences. Although we keep trying to talk about beauty as inner or outer, that language is too static, trying to fix beauty in a single location. Beauty is an energy, not an image, and that energy can go anywhere; that energy takes on an image, a form, many images, many forms.”

...Just beautiful...She captures beauty, so beautifully...

Oh yes indeed beauty awakens the soul of me in so many indescribable ways and it compels me to act in such a way as to pour out that beauty within on to all I engage with.

Beauty manifests itself in so many ways in the world in which we live and breathe and move. It awakens all our senses and thus feeds and nourishes our souls; it awakens our souls and it fills our hearts to overflowing. We not only drink from the well of beauty, we also fill it too. Beauty truly is about the heart, about filling the heart to overflowing. In "Beauty: The Invisible Embrace" John O’Donohue  wrote 

"The heart is the place where beauty arrives; here is where it can be felt, recognized and shared. If there was no heart, beauty could never reach us. Through the heart, beauty can pervade every cell of the body and fill us. To use a word that feels like it sounds: this is the thrill of beauty through us. Perhaps this is why we sometimes feel the absence of beauty in our lives; we have allowed the prism to become dull and darkened; though the light is near, it cannot enter to have its inlay of beauty diffused. Sometimes absence is merely arrested appearance. Compassion and attention keep the prism clear so that beauty may illuminate our life. Prayer of course is the supreme way we lift our limited selves towards the light, and ask it to shine into us. "

Beauty not only awakens the soul, but also fills the heart to overflowing, it certainly compels me to pour my heart out on the world in loving ways.

Matthew Fox claims that “The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere”

It is beauty that awakens our souls and compels us to act in loving ways. In fact perhaps true beauty, certainly in a human sense, is to act morally. As John O’Donohue has pointed out Plato believed that Love was born of beauty and that it tapped into our basic human drive and desire for Good, that it was not a private or self-indulgent act of pleasure and that “the ability to love beauty has created all the good things that exist for gods and men’. He quotes Pseudo Dionysius the Aeropagite who said, "For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community. Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty. And there it is ahead of all as…the Beloved…toward which all things move, since it is the longing for beauty which actually brings them into being."

It is beauty that awakens our souls and inspires us to act lovingly in the world and thus inspires us to pour out our love on the world. How do we do this you may well ask? Well I believe it begins with our neighbour the very people we interact with on a daily basis.

Below is a passage from Matthew’s Gospel (Ch 26 vv 6-13). It is a much debated primarily because it has been used by some as a justification for tolerating poverty. I believe that to focus on this is to fail to recognise the central message of Matthews Gospel, the abundant blessing of love.

6 Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,* 7a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. 8But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? 9For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’10But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. 11For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. 12By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. 13Truly I tell you, wherever this good news* is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’

The power in this story is in its recognition of abundant love. The woman loves and cares for Jesus. She anoints him with oil because she loves him dearly. It truly is an act of loving, nay gracious abandonment. This is in complete contrast to the grumpy disciples who are definitely of the  glass half empty brigade. At least they are consistent though as they appear this way throughout the Gospels. The woman though is overflowing with love and wants to anoint those she loves with this. This is beauty in action. This is a soul awakened by beauty and inspired to act lovingly. Her heart is over flowing with love and she wants to pour out this love onto Jesus who will soon no longer be with her or the disciples.

This is something we can all do we can all pour out this attentive love on one another and all life. We can offer care and attention to each and everyone around us. In so doing we will help create beauty all around us. It brings to mind the following little anecdote by William McNamara:

“I once lived near a mansion where only one of the many gardeners employed had succeeded with every one of the roses. I asked him the secret of his success. He told me that the other gardeners treated all the roses not unwisely, but too generally. They treated them all in precisely the same way; whereas he himself watched each rosebush separately, and followed out for each plant its special need for soil, manure, sun, air, water, support and shelter.”

Beauty is all around us. We are surrounded by it. If we open ourselves to it, it will fill our hearts, awaken our souls and lead us to act lovingly and morally. This is beauty in action. If we create beauty with our own hands we will touch each individual soul we meet and they will grow and flower to their own full potential. We are here to enjoy the beauty that we are surrounded by and to pour out the beauty that lays within us and thus bring it to fruition in the world around us.

As Desmond Tutu has said:

“We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of a sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew…Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful…and all all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.”

Let beauty awake for beauty's sake. Awake from slumber and awake from dreams. Let beauty awake from deep within us, Let beauty pour from us and be lavished upon our world.