It's been utterly beautiful, the past few weeks. Even when the sky is overcast, cold raindrops blowing sporadically out of the West, the world seems to have this ethereal beauty, surreal... glorious. It's Autumn. Colors, frost, the shapes of the sky, so enormous out here, and the dorsal curves of the hills rising up to meet it, some outlined in spare desert rock, some carpeted in dark pine trees... oh, I don't know. (Also, the blue spruce. They're such gorgeous trees, and the wind through them is really... musical.)
The other day, I had the thought, "I was made for this," meaning reporting - and that all else, beauty and laughter, was a sort of gift, outside of my purpose. Sort of a bonus to life. Ridiculous, of course, and arrogant to think a purpose could be that clear (and I'm just as prone to mistakes in reporting as anything else, of course). And... well, I am more than a one-purpose tool with the strange ability to occasionally appreciate non-utilitarian things.
But it was interesting, because beauty is a gift, really. And I think it's really easy sometimes to miss that, to eschew that gift. Some churches seem to regard it - delight - as almost sinful. It still astounds me sometimes, to think ghat God meant us to laugh, to delight in Creation. It also makes beauty that much sweeter, though. This is a gift, this ray of light through a fluttering cloud of red and gold, this spray of sea on rock, this rill down a cliff side, this flock of flashing waxwings...
This is the world the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
It's especially easy in the fall, though.
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