I practice looking for beauty. I look for beauty in other people, in nature, in words, in music, in myself, anywhere and everywhere. Sometimes I write the beautiful things I see, and sometimes I take pictures of them. At bedtime, I savor them again. Lately, though, I feel a certain shyness in talking about this practice of looking for beauty. In a world awash in fear-filled survival questions, looking for beauty can seem naïve and irresponsible. But it isn’t. It is simply saying, day in and day out, that the light is more real than the darkness.
“[God] encourages us to rejoice and give thanks for things small and normally unnoticed. . . . I don’t have to wait until all is well. . . . People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God. . . .” Henri Nouwen
“Consider the lilies.” Luke 12:27