the beautiful

Tonight on our sunset walk, Emerson exerted his will. He would not walk, would not ride in the stroller. He screamed until he was carried, even if I walked around the corner and out of sight for five minutes. Even when I went inside the house and watched from the front window to make sure that his screams of, "I'm going to get kidnapped!" didn't turn out to be prophecy. When I was tucking him in bed, he wanted me to pray. I asked that he would be able to use the strength of his will to bless this world, to bring about good. After the prayer, subdued, he said, "Do you know that I love to go to Church?" Beautiful.

A few minutes ago, I laid Oliver down in a pile of socks I was folding. He softly cried for a second until I put the pacifier in his mouth. Then he sighed, a deep baby sigh, closed his eyes and relaxed, one hand cradling his cheek, the other raised as high above his little head as he could manage. Beautiful.

While her brothers slept, Lydia sat at the computer playing Zoombinis, singing at the top of her lungs. Beautiful. A few minutes ago, she asked Julie, "Do you know how to sign 'shrimp'?" She wiggled her index finger. Radiant. Just now, as I typed, she crawled up on the bed next to me and whispered in my ear, "Dad, whenever I stumble, I want you to get my back." We read a children's book version of Will Smith's "Just the Two of Us" the other day. I laughed. She smiled that four-year-old smile. Exquisite.

I know a girl who gave birth to a boy who broke her nose with his wrecking-ball head. (It's a good head--round and solid--well-built.) Tonight she made that boy dinner. Nurture. Communion. Sustaining. Sacramental. Lovely. My wife--beautiful.

The scriptures talk of "the beauty of holiness." It seems that there's a connection between the word "beautiful" and the Latin "beatus"--blessed. If that's not true, it ought to be. Beauty is a manifestation of our blessedness, a synonym. Ecclesiastes says of God, "He hath made everything beautiful in his time." This time is beautiful, quiet, holy beauty. The holiness of the everyday. The beauty of this life.

--Robbie Taggart