High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘grace’

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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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Until the sun no longer shines in the sky and the earth no longer spins, grace will fall.

It will usher the last leaf from the last tree, wash the last wave to the last shore, and kiss the last eyelid as it closes.

Endings are not its business.  To grace, they are nothing more than turnings in time.  They carry neither the sadness nor that finality that accompanies them in human dreams.

Grace falls, wrapping all things in its tenderness, simply because it is the outer edge of love’s constant whisper.   It welcomes all things into being.  It carries them beyond time’s end.

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“There is an eloquence in enthusiasm.” ~Edgar Allen Poe

Even though, compared to others, she may seem quite plain, November has a certain grace.  Her creations are subtle, but possessed of such attention to detail that, when you stop and study them, they make you catch your breath.

She thinks nothing of it.  To her, it’s all a work of joy, a service of thanksgiving.

She she moves through the hours with quiet splendor, riding wherever the Great Yes leads.

It is all she wants; it is the very reason for her being.

And as we watch her pass, we are awed.

All the way from the core of the infinite Yes it comes, up through the swirling pathways of starlight and atoms, curving, bending, pushing outward and outward into the form of these particular petals and leaves.

Here, beneath the autumn sky of this particular planet, on this particular day, it sings itself into expression, tenderly unfolding breath after breath after soft golden breath.

How amazing that this pattern of light, this long dance of the Yes, can leap synapses inside our brains to create in our minds a perception of beauty, in our hearts a response of joy.  How amazing that we can walk by and not even see it at all, and still it breathes its grace and dances golden in the sun.

The drum beat of the Great Cosmic Heart throbs out to the furthermost places.  It sets whole nebulae in motion and swirls space with its oscillating stars.

Nothing escapes its tenderness.  It penetrates everything with the force of its desire.

It quivers on iridescent wings and pulses through delicate petals.  And all things ache with the beauty of its sound and long to follow it home.

So we dance wearing gowns of electrons to the beat of its resonant call, alive with its power, surrendered to its passion, drowned in the grace of its love.

Wherever being erupts from the void, grace extends.  Its love, exquisite and free, enfolds the shapes of things and fills the spaces between them.

It knows no boundaries.  It has no limit.  It seeks only to whisper the tenderness of the Great Yes to the heights and depths and farthest edges of being.

It is ceaseless and earnest.  It is not deceived by false appearances; everything brings it joy.  Everything yields to its ardent song.

It upholds and embraces stars and souls with its fervor and understanding.  It spreads consolation everywhere.  “Be at peace,” it murmurs.  “You are free.  All is well.  You are loved.”

She lay in a field all fresh and green that stretched to the far horizon, watching clouds paint scenes of sailing ships and roly-poly bears.  Lipizzaner stallions led a parade and grew wings and became pearly dragons.  And overhead the tree branches swayed and a thousand white doves turned into flowers whose petals drifted down on the breeze.

Down, down, down they fell, light as angel’s wings.  She floated somehow up to meet them and some turned into whispers and wrapped themselves around her like ribbons, dancing and trailing behind her as far as she could see.  And she twirled in the air, laughing, and still the white petals fell, each one singing a note of the song.

“Serenity,” one chimed.  “Happiness,” hummed another.   And soon she was surrounded by a symphony of exquisite sounds:  friendship, grace, generosity, joy, harmony, innocence, goodwill.

The petals were cascading down in waves now, singing every beautiful word she had ever heard, and she thought that she could float on forever.

But at last the shower of petals slowed, gently placing her back on the grass as their music faded away.

She opened her eyes, and there before her, three perfect white crocuses bloomed.  “Faith,” chimed one, every so softly.  “Hope,” piped the second.  “Love,” sang the third.  And she tucked their music in her heart and waltzed home, filled with gladness and joy.

All summer they had blossomed, and into fall.  They were but a spot of color in the corner of the courtyard, lending their ambiance to the hotel’s atmosphere.

None of the guests really noticed them, except in passing, on their way to conferences or to dinner or to the pool.

But they didn’t blossom for attention’s sake.  They blossomed because it was their nature and it gave them joy to bloom.

They reveled in the sunshine and in the rain, and they loved unfolding their buds and their petals and their leaves.  They loved the way their color danced with the colors of their neighboring flowers and perfumed the air.  For them, every day was a celebration of being, whether anyone noticed at all.  And they were beautiful in their gladness.

When the frost and snow came to usher their spirits back to the realm from which they had come, they left behind a legacy of grace, a dance of lines etched against the winter’s snow.

Now, as a gift of serendipity, that legacy has come to dance across your vision and mine.  And as the quiet beauty of it sings in our awareness, a wave of peace and fulfillment washes through the dimension where spent flowers go and they echo it back to us with their appreciation and joy.

To reduce it all to chemistry, to photosynthesis, to outplaying patterns of DNA, is to understand nothing at all.

The essential mathematics of this symphony of form were born in ecstasy.  This is the stuff of stars you see before you, called to life by that which dreamed them.

Listen to it play the wind, its mighty limbs shaping the timbre, its ten thousand tongues singing the song.  Its harmonies cascade down in flakes of silver manna, feeding our souls, lifting them into the swirling heaven of its ancient grace.

It is inexplicable, a mystery too deep for mere intellect to solve.  And yet, to understand it, all we need to do is to stand here, in the wind, beneath this white miracle and to listen with our spirits to its song.

Peace flows as calmly as a winter stream, as deep as the sky.  Riding our breaths, it fills the spaces between them.  Riding life’s music, it’s the song between the notes.

It’s the presence of harmony and connection, weaving all things into an endless, dynamic whole.

It’s the grace that underlies being, the motion that makes all things sing.  It’s the ever-changing rhythm of the dance, the river of life’s flowing seen through eyes of acceptance and love.

Peace is the whispering of the great Yes, the infinite affirmation that all is, and will be, well.

It unfolds its gifts to us when we trust life as it comes, when we embrace its mystery and echo back its Yes, letting go of our need for it to be anything other than it is, letting ourselves take it as beautiful and perfect beyond our ability to see.

And when we accept the gifts that peace would offer, it wraps around our wounds and heals them.  It dissolves our fears and leaves us valiant and free.  It bathes us in its beauty and makes us fresh and new.

Its right here, now, this very season, this very moment, gift-wrapped with joy and tied with ribbons of love, offering itself to us for a single, silent yes.