Beauty

Beauty.m4a
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It isn’t a very masculine word, but it fits. It is lovely today.

The sunlight on the trees, is lovely. There are hundreds, thousands, of types of green. There are verdurous mosses, darker ferns, rich trillium. The nearby meadow shimmers a waving yellow-green, the blackberries are reaching across paths with their own spectrum of hues. I see aspens shaking their leaves in the light breeze, shimmering an emerald song of life, of spring. Majestic douglas firs stand nearly motionless with their deep verdant psalm of praise. This is Oregon and the word “green” is too brief, too simple to express what I see. The forest marches away into the distance, the hills are clad in trees, turning bluish green with each successive wave that climbs and falls as they march toward Mount Hood. Even the base of that beautiful mountain, forty miles away, wades through a distant blue green which peers from below the cloak of winter snows.

A few white clouds are sauntering across the afternoon sky. Not large, grand thunderheads. Simple wisps of cotton, dreamily sliding against a cerulean canvas.

It is so lovely; it makes me tremble.

I am rather scientific by nature. I like things measured, proven, well-considered. I ground my thinking on firm foundations of rational evidence. But there is something about faith which defies measurement, testing, debate. This up-welling of my spirit shouts of a creator, offering proof that brooks no debate.

Do you wish to argue the existence of God, of a creator? I’m sorry, I have no eloquent words to give you. But there is proof.

There is a deep, intrinsic beauty to the world (when I turn my eyes away from the sorrows born of Man). There is a loveliness that cannot be explained twofold.

First, I cannot explain why I feel it. Why does my heart leap at such things? Why do I feel a twisting, beating, shouting, singing joy within my heart? What part of who I am is responding to this? What do I have within me that makes me feel this way, and what evolutionary benefit could it possible have? For this joy does not make me more likely to pass on my genes. I experience joy at the beauty of the world, and there isn’t any scientific reason for it.

Secondly, I cannot explain why it is here. We must concede the point that beauty exists, even if we are at a loss to define it. We can point to what is beautiful and what is not. But why is it here? What function does beauty serve?

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? --Psalm 8:3-4

Beauty exists for a very simple reason: Yahweh. God does not make unlovely things.

That rising passion I feel within my heart is the recognition my soul has for seeing the craftsmanship of my Lord, my master.

May all things praise the Lord God Almighty.

He is a wondrous God. For He has provided all I need. He gives me food, shelter, love, life...

...and beauty.