I love the way Elizabeth Barrett Browning put words to it:
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware.
It is this "common bush" beauty that moves me most--the divinity at the core of all creation. Why do our restless eyes brush past the ordinary, anxious to find the "ideal"? Life needs no airbrush or facelift or whitening. The warm, ruddy tomato that I harvested in my suburban backyard tastes like sunshine and open space and summer. Spectacular. A tiny spider lives on my porch and creates a miniature masterpiece of spun silver overnight--then does it again after Maricella sweeps away his efforts with the flick of a brush. Gorgeous. I can sit silently, with a hand resting on someone I love, and pure communication passes between us. Wondrous. Ordinary human beings overcome fear with faith, forgive imperfections, stand up for principle in hard places, process pain and loss into patience and compassion, sacrifice for the sake of another. Miraculous.
Day by day I hope to live with my soul-eyes open to the perfectly imperfect beauty of life, The unlikely, the broken, the patched together, the belated, the almost, the feeble, the hopeful, the quiet, the undistinguished touch me. Who needs glossy and digitally enhanced? Give me unshapely grace and splendor without symmetry. I'll take life--beautiful, beautiful life. Barefoot, breathless I stand. I may never wear shoes again.
--Jerie Jacobs
http://windsunexpected.blogspot.com/
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