What Are You Looking At?

Watercolor sketch of Bellingham Bay

"No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty.  Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening---still all is Beauty!"

---John Muir.

What we are looking at in our day-to-day routine impacts our outlook and our daily accomplishments.  With the digital world being so interwoven into our moments, what we choose to focus on in the moments adds up to an overall diminishing or enriching of our souls.  The word 'diminish' comes from the Old French for "to make small" and the Latin for "to break into small pieces".  Does your day feel fragmented and incoherent at times?  Or is there an overarching theme that can pull the moments together and make meaning out of them?  Are you purposing to find Beauty in your day?  

Around some canyons near Scottsbluff, Nebraska

Looking out the window, stepping outside for a breath of fresh air, going for a walk, or sitting and gazing out across the horizon can be so renewing.  Doing this gives you a better sense of perspective on your daily life.  It also gives you an awareness of something larger than yourself.  And it makes you sense a "beyondness" of things, that there is something more to this life than just your little spot in this world.  John Barry, the great film composer tried to capture that in his composition titled "The Beyondness of Things":

With all the dark and foreboding news of war, corruption, and terror in our world, seeing beauty brings hope and sanity to our lives.  But more than seeing it, what we really desire is to be a part of it....as C.S. Lewis so ably describes it in his essay The Weight of Glory: 

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough.  We want something else which can hardly be put into words---to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it....At present we are on the wrong side of the door.  We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure.  We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.  But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so.  Some day, God willing, we shall get in."

Live bravely and beautifully!

Out of the Mouth of Babes

Wasn't it Art Linkletter who had a portion of his TV show titled "Kids Say the Darndest Things"?  Yesterday I felt I was watching that program again as I gave a drawing presentation to a local preschool.  As I was proceeding to create a painting of a Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep in pastels, all kinds of astonishing and hilarious commentary were coming from these little people wiggling on their assigned mats while watching what I was doing. 

 While I was rendering my sky, I explained to these free-spirited little artists that the sky comes all the way to the ground.  You have probably seen little children's drawings of the sky being a little two inch streak up at the top of the paper with a huge white space between that and the ground at the bottom of the paper.  One little girl piped up and strongly disagreed with that notion.  She insisted that she always kept her sky up in the sky and didn't let touch the ground!  

     I thoroughly enjoyed their commentary and unabashed love of life.  

I am fascinated by the Bighorn sheep.  I explained to these little students how amazingly God designed sheep skulls with double protection so that the rams could endure the 20 m.p.h. impact of their head-butting.  They don't get headaches.  And their hooves are specially designed with a rough but rubbery texture that enables them to climb in such precarious terrain.  

Live bravely and beautifully!

The Power of Pigment

This past week I enjoyed a field trip to the Skagit Valley south of where I live here in northwest Washington.  This area is known as the tulip capital of the world.  As you approach the flowering fields, strips of pigment stun your view!  Fields of red, yellow, purple, pink and multi-colored tulips overwhelm you with their color.  It's a feast for the eyes!!  

In a world where the news is usually grim and tiresome, taking time out to stop and smell the roses, in this case, the tulips, is a renewing activity.  

Live bravely and beautifully!

Flyover Country

Nebraska Flyover Country

6" x 8"

Oil

The world contains famous places that people travel thousands of miles to see.  Places like Yellowstone National Park, the Rocky Mountains, and the Grand Canyon come to mind.  In the process of driving to these places, many think that the spaces in between are part of windshield time or "flyover country"...places to be endured until reaching the desired destination.  May I suggest that many overlooked sights wait to entice you to behold their inherent beauty .  It may require developing an appreciation for their attributes.The Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote, "The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."  

(watercolor sketch)

Life contains many instances of the small and unnoticed vs. the big and eye-catching. Sometimes one can be tempted to think that what they are doing is small and insignificant in contrast to highly praised accomplishments and recognized endeavors by others.  But Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer wrote, "With God there are no little people, there are no little places."  He wrote in his sermon of that title that "only one thing is important:  to be consecrated persons in God's place for us, at each moment.  Those who think of themselves as little people in little places, if committed to Christ and living under His Lordship in the whole of life, may, by God's grace, change the flow of our generation."  

Another instance of the small vs. the big can be found in the historic match-up between the giant Goliath and the shepherd boy David.  And compare their weaponry....Goliath's spear head weighed about 15 pounds vs. David's slingshot and 5 smooth creek stones.  The giant was highly offended at the size of his small opponent and taunted him. Yet moments later, one of the young shepherd's stones silenced the giant forever!  David clearly highlighted the fact that his success was done in the Lord's strength and didn't depend on inadequate armor.

Then move on to the incident of Christ feeding the crowd of 5,000 men plus women and children.  The disciples were distraught over being unable to deal with the logistics of the crowd's hunger.  But what provided the missing equation was a small boy's lunch of 5 barley loaves and 2 fish.  Even then the disciple Andrew scorned the apparent inadequacy of the boy's lunchbox in contrast with 5,000 plus people's enormous hunger.  The difference was  found in what happens to a boy's insufficient offering when placed in Christ's hands. That's when the miracle of "enoughness" occurs...enough that 12 baskets were full of leftovers after the feeding!

There are no flyover moments in life.  All of life is sacred and matters!  What happens in the seemingly insignificant and small segments gathers up into a legacy that can impact eternity and make a tremendous difference for many others!

Be inspired in this video of a great woman...Mother Teresa who believed that there were no flyover moments or flyover people in this world:   

Live bravely and beautifully!