High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘beauty’

All the sounds are liquid and deafening.  The pouring rain beats on the tree bark, on the melting leaves.  It plunks into the pools gathered in the hollows of the ground, the round ripples leaping in tiny waves.

I splash through it to the bank of the green, swollen creek and its roar rises to meet the falling rain.  Even the drenched air cannot mute it, though it wraps itself, cloud-like, around every twig and fills all the spaces.

The light is like ground pearls, milky and luminescent.  It laughs as it rides the rushing waters, as it slides down the naked braches and over the leathery surface of the leaves.

In town, people hurried along beneath black umbrellas, their shoulders hunched, their eyes cast down to the drab sidewalks, blind to the rivers of light that ran down the gutters.

But here, the colors glow, and the world is raining beauty.

You wrote yourself indelibly on our lives, oh quickly fading year.  You tried us, and tested us, and made us stronger.  Against the backdrop of your seasons, we loved and laughed, said our hellos and goodbyes, poured new learning into our hearts and minds, gathered fresh bundles of wisdom and grew our souls.

And although there were times of darkness and heartache, although we mourned and were afraid, in the end, we found ourselves braver and truer somehow, more determined, surer of ourselves and of our meaning.  Even in the darkness, you wrote poems on our hearts and filled them new understanding and compassion.

You brought us gifts of beauty and unfolded pathways of hope.  Your hours opened to us new wonders and discoveries that thrilled our minds and let us see the depths of our potential.   You brought us moments of triumph that let our spirits soar.

Now, as you take our yesterdays to the temple of times past, take with you, too, this deep red rose as a token of our heartfelt thanks for all the gifts you gave, for all the love you taught us, for all the joy.

Farewell, 2011.  Farewell.

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Even when the world is windless and drained of color, your beauty takes my breath away.

I know you give no thought to it, to the way you stand apart from the crowd, to the simplicity and balance of your life.

You think of yourself as ordinary, passing from season to season, doing what’s before you to be done.

And yet you do it all so well, with such harmony and grace.

I know that you would laugh to hear me say so, but you hold more beauty than my words could ever say.

And even in the darkness, you take my breath away.

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At the very edge of the grass, which is, by the way, still quite green, right where the creek begins, where all the fallen leaves have come to rest in the shallow water, the first ice spread itself along the shore.

I might not have noticed it at all had the bright rust of the sycamore leaf not caught my eye.  But there it lay, cupping the fragile blue ice bubble, its free edge wrapping around it, calling me.

So here it was, a crisp, pale ribbon, wrapping around December’s first days, a subtle hint of things to come, a reminder that winter, too, holds great beauty.

October’s bright hues are faded, a brilliant stain in memory’s store.  The leaves rain down.  The skies are gray.

Squirrels scurry to gather the harvest of hickory nuts, walnuts and acorns to tide them through the winter.  The snow could come now, any day.

In the fields, the corn is faded, too, its thick green leaves turned to paper, its cobs hanging heavy, waiting.  Soon the great machines will roll through to collect them, their engines purring into the night, their headlights piercing the darkness.

The moment holds a poignancy.  Another round of seasons decends into frozen winter’s stillness.

Yet October is not quite ready to bid us farewell.  Even in this owl light, she glows with a lingering beauty.

A hush falls on the woodlands.  Then the cricket song begins.

Louder and louder it winds until every leaf and blade of grass is vibrating to its sound.

That’s when she makes her entrance, a whirl of pinks and roses, dancing as if she were possessed, and yet so controlled and graceful that she takes your breath away.

Even the birds cease their flutter, so mesmerized are they by her waltz, this late summer note of beauty, unfurling in the afternoon air.

Now and then, an hour drifts past, rare in its perfection.  Thought dissolves in its beauty and peace. The line between you and not-you falls away.

Now you are the sky and the high wisps of cloud.  You are the blades of grass and the ten thousand leaves.   You are the rocks and pebbles in the stream and the stream itself.

The shadows and the light within you cast themselves across the calm waters.  The crooked and the straight, the rough and the smooth of you shine back from them and from their shores.

The distant laughter of children at play, the hum of insects, the coursing of your blood, and the rhythm of your heart all merge into a single song.

The soft air breathes itself through you until you, too, dissolve completely.  And all that’s left is the knowing that there is no outside.

You could tell within days that this lily was possessed with a passion.  It shot through the soil boldly and grew stronger and taller with every passing day, its leaves unfolding, its stalk stretching higher.  This one was focused on excellence.

“That’s the way you get results,” its instructors told it back at the Interdimensional Flower Academy.  “You give your attention completely to the work that is before you, and strive to do it with all your love and all your might.  Make your goal excellence.”

And that was exactly what the lily was determined to do.  It discovered that when it gave itself wholly to the work it hand, it  was engaging and absorbing.  And it made up its mind it would let no distraction lure it from the satisfying feeling that the work produced.

The work was so fascinating, watching the life force flow into every cell the lily created, that before long the lily sensed the harmony of working in tandem with it.  It sensed that it was a vehicle for the expression of the beauty the Great Yes sent forth on the force.  “What an honor!” it whispered to itself; “What an exquisite joy!”

One day, in late June, its blossoms finally opened to the sun, thick and firm and radiant with color.  The humans who came to see it marveled at it and sang its praise.  It gladdened their hearts and raised their spirits.  And the lily, seeing that it had fulfilled its purpose, rejoiced.

In the highest space, the white petals open.  Seemingly, thousands of them unfold.  You are lost in the beauty of their infinity, drunk on their sweet perfume.  “This?  This is mine?” you ask, not even knowing to whom you am directing the words.

The petals flutter at your question, a gentle undulation.  They pull you in, surrounding you with their smooth.  “Yes, my child,” they whisper; “Yes, if you so choose.” Their words echo through the layers, reverberating against the tall, cool walls.

Gently, the understanding unfolds for you.  This is the Labyrinth of All Possibilities, a cosmic candy store of experiences one can choose, and your pockets are lined with magical wishes made of inexhaustible gold.

So you choose.  And when you wake, the first of your dreams begins to unfold.  And your delight goes on forever.

It wasn’t that she was immune to life’s challenges.   Why, what with the late snow and the powerful winds that had swept past, just opening her petals had been a major task, requiring every bit of focus and energy that she had.

She had watched as some her neighboring buds succumbed to the cold or were ripped from their stems just as they were about to open, and she had felt grief over losing their companionship, and sorrow for their unfulfilled potential.

Today’s wonderful warmth had already brought the insects.  She could feel their tiny feet tip-tapping around on the back of her petals.  Soon, bigger, hungrier ones would come and begin to gnaw on them.

No, she was quite aware how fragile life is and how difficult and dark some of its passages could be.

But even though she was still quite young, she had already learned a great secret.  If she dwelt in the memories of the dark times, they eclipsed the beauty she could be enjoying right now.  And if she spent her moments worrying about the difficulties that the next hour or day might bring, she would be blind to this moment’s delights.

And so, she surrendered herself to the present, doing what was before her to do, and deeply feeling all the sensations and emotions that flowed through her. And as each moment passed, she opened herself to the next.

One by one, she met the challenges as they came.  And one by one, she emerged on the other side of the sorrows, more grateful and compassionate because of them.  And what she discovered in living this way, focused in the moment, was that the goodness and beauty of life far outweighed its problems and pain.

And so she collected the moments’ joys, and reveled in them, building a treasury of them as if they were jewels.  And her heart was light and filled with happiness.  And she flourished and was beautiful and strong.