At moments along my journey, just like all of us, I have had moments of discouragement and despair. And when I bottom out, I hear the phrase “Remember who you are.” That phrase acts as a life raft and, when I hold onto it, it brings me back to where I need to be. I often see despair as an opportunity to pursue what is next, no longer deluded but fully engaged with the real story being lived. And once I’m floating on this raft, I am brought to where divine beauty resides.
Beauty is a tool for presence. It is an opportunity to remind us of who we are. Inviting beauty– seeing it, smelling it, touching it, hearing it, tasting it– receiving beauty through all of ourselves. Beauty is the remedy for despair, the remedy for discontentedness and disengagement. To be fully immersed in beauty means that there is no room for disengagement; beauty fills the space with divinity.
And what about pain and sadness, can beauty live there? Absolutely. Beauty isn’t limited to glossy joy, it rumbles deep within the earth. It’s messy and real. It comes when you least expect it. Like birth and death, it causes some to cry in grief and others in joy. What makes beauty so incredible is that it’s our thread to the Divine.
We all seek beauty. It drives us towards life and inspires us to live with fullness in our hearts. If we’ve lost that fullness, it is beauty that returns us to ourselves.
Where our culture has gotten sidetracked is in its emphasis on outer beauty and the quick ways to polish the surface. The divine beauty that I’m referring to is how it feels to smell a fragrant rose; the experience of a slice of sweet mandarin on your tongue; listening to the harmony of a string trio; feeling a young child holding your hand. Divine beauty is that which comes from and reaches deep within.
The way to heal ailments of the body and mind is by inviting beauty. Sit on the earth and breathe. Invite beauty to permeate your skin and enter your soul. Beauty brings us home. It shines from within and is what lives beneath the surface of inspiration. The medicine that will heal our earth is for all hearts to receive the beauty that surrounds them.