...no escaping beauty

For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies,

for the love which from our birth over and around us lies:

Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.

---Folloitt S. Pierpoint, 1864

No real reason for it. Serves no tangible purpose. Can’t be quantified, traded, saved, spent, stored. Wasteful, some have called it. Needless. Sinful, even. Beauty. That’s right, beauty. There have been periods in Christian history during which any sort of artistic expression was frowned upon, sometimes banned outright, its practitioners punished, ostracized.

Yet there it is. Open your eyes. Turn any corner. There is no escaping it. In a world created by God, beauty abundant is literally everywhere; warm light and velvet darkness, green forest and sere desert, pudgy baby knees and deep wisdom of old folk eyes. Beauty in cosmos and cell, in the physical world and the spiritual, natural beauty and human handiwork. We worship a God who flings beauty around like it will never run out. 

Praise the Lord for beauty, true good gift of God.

...the moon is there

Heavy clouds that block the moonlight now begin to drift away.
Diamond brilliance through the darkness shines the hope of coming day.
Christ, the morning star of splendor, gleams within a world grown dim.
Heaven's ember fans to fullness; hearts grow warm to welcome him.
--- Mary Louise Bringle, 2005

It's been cloudy here. The kind of cloudy that brings the ceiling of the sky low, makes it brooding. I knew there was a moon out there somewhere, knew it was well nigh on full, from second-hand reports of overflowing labor-and-delivery departments. But look up? No moon, no stars, nothing but grimy-looking, worn-out clouds, pressing down the sky. It's the kind of weather that always drives me deep into my chair, under my prayer shawl. Nothing good about days like this.

Then, tonight, I went out. The wind captured my attention first. After I caught my breath from the immediacy of it, from the biting chill, I noticed the quality of light on the oak leaves covering my walkway. Each smooth brown leaf reflected a silvery glint from...what? And then I looked up. The leaves were reflecting the crystal glow of a moon now revealed in a pure blue-black sky. The wind had blown away the clouds, and the sky ceiling now seemed limitless. In that moment everything, it seemed, from the damp ground supporting the fallen leaves to the space beyond the moon and stars, thrummed with "Yes."

That moment reminded me, in my soul, that clouds can cover the moon and stars, even completely enough that I forget what the clear sky looks like. But the moon? the stars? Oh, they're still there. And sometime soon, the clouds will be blown away, and the light will shine. The light that was there all along.

Light is there. We will see.

Pregnant with Peace

The peace of the earth be with you,
the peace of the heavens too;
the peace of the rivers be with you,
the peace of the oceans too.
Deep peace falling over you;
God's peace growing in you.

If you are in Auburn this night, and you happen to walk out of doors, you will fall in love with the sky, too. I just know it. Dark, dark velvet, yard upon yard of fine velvet; pinpricks of a million stars blinking down stillness; your breath creating the only not-black in the expanse. You will stand still, resisting the shaking and shivering that tempt your not-quite-dressed-for-the-weather body. You will look up. And up. And up. And not get to the top of up. And you will feel the pull of a tide of peace on your body; the earth and heavens long for peace; your own longing answers.

And as peace falls on you, you will realize: the Advent season offers a chance, maybe the only one in a frantic time, to wait with peace. And on this night, you will wait like Mary. You, too, are pregnant with peace.