We Could Make This Place Beautiful

Good Bones, by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

The thing about paying attention to beauty is that once you begin to yearn for it you long for it more and more. You become adept at putting yourself in the way of it, knowing where it meets you in the course of an ordinary day. Like me and the sky. Or my morning coffee. Or taking a walk. Tending my garden.

But then a time will come when the places we live and move and have our being are very much less than beautiful. As Maggie Smith writes in her poem, Good Bones, “The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate.”

We each have our own sufferings and the circle of suffering changes as time goes on.

Contrary to popular belief and the news we see on our phones, we don’t have to drown in the despair of that fifty percent.

But wherever we are we can make space for beauty, for goodness in the living of our days. To believe this from the depth of your soul is to have good bones. To have a foundation on which to construct a beautiful life, even if it is seemingly small and deceptively simple.

If the world were a house right now, we’d have to disclose the fact that it was a real fixer-upper. Maybe we have to go to extremes, have to gut it to expose those good bones supposedly lying in wait. But we can do that. We can tear down all this ugliness and build something fresh and strong and steady. Something that enfolds us in love and care and goodness.

If the world is fifty percent terrible, that means it’s fifty percent beautiful. Right now I see a long line of strong beautiful people. They’re making food for thousands of war and climate refugees; there are those right in the midst of disaster and desolation, unloading trucks of supplies, cooking, serving in the hot sun or the pouring rain, meeting people completely enfolded in pain and suffering. They offer nourishment in the form of a hot bowl of soup, some bread, a kind word and a smile. Continents and oceans away are more people packing up trucks, shipping containers, boats. Still more are working in offices or online, ordering, keeping track of what goes where and how much. Still others all over the globe posting photos, asking for helpers, volunteers, patrons. And even more (like me, sitting in their own comfortable homes) sending money so that all this can begin to happen.

This long chain of goodness is just a fraction of a percent of the beauty we can see. The beauty we can be.

Every act done in love, with the intention of building a foundation of care and healing and community – those are the ways we make this place beautiful. I know you know this.

What I want to say to you is this: When you feel afraid that the foundation will not hold, that the walls will crumble and the roof will come crashing down on this place you call home, then look for something you can make beautiful. Maybe it’s something as small as taking a plate of home baked cookies to an elderly neighbor, staying to talk with her a while, even though she has dementia and asks you the same question at least ten times. Maybe it’s pledging a monthly commitment of money to an organization fighting to improve the lives of _____________. (There are many ways to fill in that blank.)

Maybe it’s even bigger, like teaching English as a second language, running for office in your community, volunteering your expertise in a disaster relief zone.

“When faced with evil we have two choices: we can build a wall or we can make something beautiful,” writes Sarah Clarkson in her book, This Beautiful Truth.

What I want to say to you is this: It all matters. It all counts. Because as Maggie Smith wrote in her poem: We can make this place beautiful.

A Moment's Notice: The Meaning of Beauty

“Beauty is so quietly woven through our ordinary days that we hardly notice it. Everywhere there is tenderness, care and kindness, there is beauty.”  ` John O’Donohue, Beauty, the Invisible Embrace

If we are to pay attention to Beauty, we want to know what it looks like. We are a practical people, we modern-agers. We need descriptions, we need Wikipedia entries, we need to look things up on Google. We are, as I’ve written, a people who look to measure and not to mean.  But Beauty is all about meaning - it’s something we see with our whole selves, body, mind and spirit.  And so, in order to really see it, we must put on a different pair of glasses.  

Beauty is an experience met through every one of our physical senses. Our eyes take in the sunrise, or our newborn baby’s sweet face and we are filled with wonder.  Our ears are awash with the sound of music; spirit wind whispers in the trees and calms our frazzled nerves. We are soothed by the feel of our dog’s soft fur under our palm. The caring touch of our lover’s hand comfort us. We smell flowers blooming and we breathe deeply to take it all inside us; we taste freshly baked bread and our hunger is sated. 

On the surface these are small, ordinary things that happen to someone somewhere nearly every minute of every day. But seen through a hopeful heart and the wide-open eyes of wonder? They are Beautiful.

Beauty is an experience, something we get inside of, or that gets inside of us.  But it is also a way of being in the world. A way we embody tenderness, care, and kindness in our relationships with ourselves, with one another, and with all creation. It’s taking time with our work and doing it with care. It’s making time to be quiet and listen for the voice of spirit rising within. It’s using our bodies to walk, to work, to dance and sing. It’s listening with close attention to the words of a friend. It’s offering comfort and care to someone who is ill. It’s refusing to give in to despair, even as it seems to be all around us. It’s standing up for what we believe is right in the ways that feel powerful to us.

I’m not going to tell you it’s always easy be in beauty. Right now, there are times when I feel so consumed with the sight of ugliness in this world that I can barely stand it. What’s left to be beautiful? But still, there it is. Your toddler brings you a fistful of flowers and plants a wet, sticky-mouthed kiss on your lips. You sink into a soft, warm bed after a cold, hard day. Someone you love forgives you unconditionally, even though you’ve betrayed them in a painful way.

Beauty exists, even in the midst of grief, anger, and fear. All of it accompanies us on this path of our precious lives. If you believe in holiness, you might recognize its presence when beauty appears in the midst of darkness. If you wonder what is grace? This would be it.

I often say I live at the intersection of bitter and sweet. Because I am by nature a melancholy person, my eyes tend to turn toward bitterness, toward what might go wrong with a situation instead of what might turn out to be alright. It wasn’t until my mother died that I realized how “bittersweet” is one word for a reason – it’s all one experience. My mother’s final illness and her death were truly the thing I had most dreaded ever since I was a tiny girl. You see, when I was four years old I watched my mother die right in front of me. Even though she did survive that experience (a dangerous allergic reaction to penicillin), for the rest of my life I was profoundly afraid of losing her.

It was 56 years later when she left her life on earth. And yes, it was horrible and terrible. I grieved mightily, and always will. But it was also beautiful and full of grace in a way I can barely describe because it still fills me with such awe and wonder. She assented to her death with intention, with quiet courage and thoughtful care for me. She was treated with respect and dignity by doctors and hospice caregivers. Afterwards, as I walked through days of missing her and grieving for her, at last I began to feel her spirit take up residence inside me. It was like nothing I’d felt before, but I knew this was beauty that could only come from something very holy. My life has never been the same, in a myriad of bittersweet ways.

Beauty then is a way of being, a way of seeing, a gift of holiness, or mystery. A grace.

I want to invite you into a tiny practice of Beauty. Get yourself a little notebook or some index cards. Every night before you go to bed, see if you can recall something  Beautiful in your day, something that fit those descriptions I’ve shared with you. Something that made your heart soar, or tears come to your eyes. Maybe you felt a spontaneous smile, one wider than you’ve felt in a long time.

Write it down. If there was more than one, write them all down. After a week, go back and read what you’ve written. You will begin to see where patterns of beauty arise. You will begin to know what beauty looks like for you.

Because here’s something else that’s Beautiful about Beauty.

It’s different for everyone, it has unique meaning for everyone. The way you experience beauty may not be the same as the way I experience it. The way you express it in how you live and move and have your being may be different from the way I express it.

And that in itself is something so Beautiful, isn’t it? Seeing beauty, Being beauty, is as different as every person on this planet.

Behold that. And rejoice in it. For there is strength and power in all that beauty weaving its way through the universe in big and small ways.

 “Each of us is responsible for how we see,” O’Donohue writes. “How we see determines what we see. The heart of vision is shaped by the state of the soul. When the soul is alive to beauty, we begin to see life in a fresh and vital way. If our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary.”

May you find joy and sanctuary in moments of beauty today, and every day.

A Moment's Notice: Beauty Abounds

We feel most alive in the presence of the beautiful, for it meets the needs of our soul. John O’Donohue, Beauty, the Invisible Embrace

To allow ourselves to be taken by the beauty of a thing allows goodness to take up space that’s often denied in our interior worlds. Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us

The past ten years have been a time of spiritual growth and becoming for me. A time of learning to notice and name the things that feed my soul. As our world situation seemed ever more plunged into darkness, I felt myself noticing moments in daily life that became luminous with beauty. Like morning light streaming through a window in my living room, filling a vase I inherited from my mother with a fiery glow. My little dog tucking her head under my palm with such endearment, asking me to scratch behind her ears. Bringing my husband coffee in bed each morning, his gentle smile and quiet words of thanks. Watching a doe step gracefully out of the woods behind the house, our eyes meeting and I barely breathing as we connect in a long pause of utter stillness.

Within these fleeting moments, a feeling of calm and fulfillment washed over me, a feeling I can only call peace. Like a gentle holy breeze blowing across my face that relieves and refreshes at the same time.

I have learned to name these moments as Beauty. I believe they occur for all of us, all the time. I also believe these moments can heal us, enrich us, and call us into a wholeness of living that makes life on earth a little bit more like heaven.

So it seemed like a natural evolution to choose Beauty as a concept to explore during this year 2025. Because I write as a way to understand myself and my place in creation, it is also natural for me to write about it. I want to tell you that I’m writing a book about it, a book titled A Moment’s Notice, An Invitation to Pay Attention to Extraordinary Moment’s of Beauty in Your Ordinary Life.

In this online space I want to share what I notice about Beauty in my life during this writing process. I want to invite you into noticing those moments of Beauty in your life. I want us to make space for them, to find comfort and hope within them, to create them for ourselves and the good of the world.

*******************************************************

Why pay attention to moments of beauty in a world that’s so badly broken? Why should I care what’s beautiful around me when nations and forests are on fire?  When epidemics of addiction and loneliness abound? When truth is relative and intelligence is artificial? Even if we ourselves are fine in the present moment, we are confronted with disasters in our families, our communities, our wider world.

How much of it can a human heart hold before it collapses in despair?

But, what if, as author Sarah Clarkson writes in her book This Beautiful Truth, “God’s hand reaches out to us, clothed in Beauty, and by grasping it and trusting it, we may learn to walk through the darkness in hope.”

The everyday things I name as beauty are sometimes so small the modern world teaches us they don’t qualify for holiness. They are too small to matter. Modern thinking teaches us that the things of earth are to be measured, not to bear meaning. Yet meaning is what we so desperately crave, whether we know it or not.

There is a pervasive coarseness to our times in this moment: in our entertainment, our landscapes, our language, our ways of being with one another. What if we found the courage to resist? What if we decided to pay exquisite attention to all that is beautiful? Not because we deny the heartbreak and horror that exists around us. But because we see it all too clearly and repudiate it with every fiber of our being. Beauty is the antidote, and when we turn toward it we allow it to enliven our bodies, mind, and spirit.

In his book Life After Doom, Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, author and activist Brian McLaren calls us into this “inward migration,” into a “sovereignty of mind,” where we “withdraw from the ugliness around us and cultivate beauty within...seeing it, creating is, savoring it. Savoring beauty within will lead to beautiful outward action,” he writes.

There is Beauty waiting. It’s right in front of you.  “It is transformed by our deliberate intention,” writes Katherine May in her book Enchanted, Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age. “It becomes meaningful when we invest it with meaning.”

It’s there in a summer breeze and the night sky. In a lover’s hand and a child’s peaceful sleep. In the fragrance of hot tea in a delicate china cup, the one your mother drank from each morning of her long and beautiful life.

I’m writing to invite you to notice Beauty in your life. You don’t have to buy anything, go anywhere, do anything special. All you need do is pay attention.  Put down your phone. Turn off the TV.  “Put on a different pair of glasses,” writer Anne Lamott says. Take a long look at around you.

I’m writing to remind you there is extraordinary beauty in the small moments of your ordinary life and how your order your day.

I’m writing about beauty as a counterweight to all the ways we’ve become disconnected from meaning.

I’m writing to assure you that noticing the Beautiful in the midst of darkness will give you courage and be a balm to your spirit.

I’m writing to encourage you to be the Beauty you want to see in the world.

I’m writing in the hope that paying attention to Beauty can help us heal ourselves, one another, and all of creation.

Here I Am

Allow the ground of

your being to be the

ground you will

stand on going forward.

~ Inner Map, a poem by Noelle Rollins, from her book Ten Thousand Acorns

Here I am. Ecce adsum, as the Latins would say.

It feels right and good to have a quiet corner of the internet to call my home.

I haven’t been posting much online these days. There seemed no good reason to add to the cacophony of voices swirling around me since the election and inaguration. I needed some time to to reflect and craft a thoughtful response based on what I know about myself, my way of being in the world, and what is mine to do as I continue walking this path into what is largely unknown.

And I needed a quiet place in which to write it. Hence, my return to this space, to drawing a boundary around the place I write about who I am becoming in this new world we’re living in.

Clearly, the months and years ahead are going to be challenging and marked by change. In the weeks before and after the election, weary of all the feelings that assaulted me, I retreated into my home and repeated these words like a mantra:  Guard me and guide me; protect and defend me; grant me wisdom and courage for the living of these days.

 Now, warily emerging from my sanctuary, I wonder: Where will I find wisdom and courage? What will be my sword and shield as I set out on this path into the unknown? What tools will not only protect and defend me, but also empower me to do what is mine to do in a world that feels so precarious?

In these last few weeks I’ve found strength in stillness, smallness, and quiet where  I can compose my thoughts, connect with my inner wisdom, and hear the sound of my soul. It feels powerful to turn off all the TV and online news, to retreat from social media. Instead, I read poetry, nonfiction, or a mystery novel. I choose inspirational podcasts instead of political commentary. I write pages and pages in my Notebook, and wait for the right time and place to share my words.

I’ve been spending time (in real life and online) with a community of family, friends, and spiritual companions. There is wisdom there, and courage in the company of loved ones: In celebrating a birthday with a precious grandson and rejoicing in the goodness he brings to the world; in bringing the gift of music to a seriously ill friend; in weekly gatherings to check in with one another, to notice and name the goodness we see around us. I made a pilgrimage to the labyrinth, and put one foot in front of the other, simply trusting the path wherever it leads.

There is satisfaction in seeking solidarity with others: In taking groceries to the food bank in our community and committing to doing so on a regular basis; in shopping at local businesses instead of big box stores or online; in offering financial support to a local organization that provides free legal assistance to immigrants; in supporting a national group that protects women’s reproductive freedom.

This way of being feels deeply authentic – coming from the truest, realest me there is, showing up in the world as a small and gentle voice of love and care. That part of me I like to affectionately call, “my bright and shining self,” This is my orientation point, my solid ground. Like I’m right where I need to be, even in a world that feels wrong.

I wonder – what might that place look like for you? How might it feel? Every one of us is unique in our human being-ness and I believe there is great wisdom and strength in those differences. We all must find our own wisdom and courage for facing the reality of life.

Something I know for sure about myself is that I carry a strong need for action, especially when things go wrong. I think a lot about what is mine to do in the world. What can I do to fix things?

Lately, in the face of so much that’s broken, I wonder if a better question is this -

Who am I to be in this world?

Maybe if each one of us begins from the center point of our most fully human selves, if we allow the ground of our being/to be the ground we stand on, perhaps we can go forward together on paths of strength and love.

That feels like solid ground for the living of these days.

I am here. Standing on it.