beautiful – EVERYDAY MIRACLES: An Occasional Journal of a Life Lived in Wonder

ILLUSTRATE

A Word Like Light: ILLUSTRATE

Like a well-designed book, the life I am part of is beautifully illustrated. Every single moment today will be artistically decorated with wonderful scenes. Living through the hours of this day will be like reading a magically illuminated book. Entering each of the approximately 58,000 moments of my awake hours, I will be turning to a new page in a book in which beauty has no boundaries. Each new moment will be embellished with pristine, state-of-the-art panoramas. I might be sitting with Delycia in a cafe, taking a sip of tea, and every flawless instant there will be made memorable by a brand-new graphic design – the perfect, newborn ways people are sitting at other tables, the unblemished shine of sunlight outside, the immaculate words we are speaking at that special, stylish moment. Today I will turn countless pages in the majestic book of life, and each of them will be illustrated in ways never seen before. It should make for some breathtaking reading!

Special Crayons

Friday, April 29, 2022

Some days, I feel like my pockets are full of enchanted crayons that can color the world in beautiful ways. Of course, it doesn’t really need coloring, since all things, even the smallest stick in the grass or the faintest shred of a cloud in the sky, shine with assorted hues of color, but sometimes it’s fun to feel like a kid again and color my days like they’re pages in a coloring book. Most days can be made to seem vivid and vibrant, and I take pleasure in pretending that I’m the artist. I swish my crayons across hours of gray rain, and what I see then is hours of softness and freedom for me. I color a tedious chore with various shades, and suddenly there’s something stirring in the actions I’m performing. I use ‘sky blue’ and ‘melon’ on some especially strenuous duties, and step back and see the secret rewards in them. It sometimes takes just a second to swipe some colors across a person or a situation and notice, however faint, something beautiful. It doesn’t always work, but in a world that often seems stained with sorrow and darkness, it’s worth a try.

Here are some scenes from today ..

on a hike, seeing the Mystic River from a bluff

WORDS LIKE LIGHT

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

GOOD-LOOKING

I hope to keep in mind today that I am always surrounded and softly held by our pretty-as-a-picture universe. Even just sitting at my desk in the early morning, doing my daily writing, I see the striking patterns in the wood of the desk, my moderately graceful handwriting on post-it notes, and the silver shine of my small pencil sharpener in the lamplight. Even if I were in a hospital bed, being treated for a serious illness, I hope I would notice perhaps the appealing patterns in the woodwork, or the way clouds curl and slowly flow across the sky outside the window, or even just the elderly elegance of the hairs on my arms. There is some pleasing splendor in even the saddest situations – the delicate tears of sorrow, the bowed-down beauty of friends consoling friends, the sublime service freely given by first-responders. For sure, this is a bewitching world I’m lucky to be living in, where there’s something stunning in even the simplest moment.

SINGING ALL NIGHT

One night a woman heard voices 
singing
 inside her. 
She couldn't seem to stop them.
It was as if her mind was spilling songbirds
all over her bedroom. The brightness she saw
as she walked the floor was the brightness
of the suspended stars, the understanding
that all she ever needed 
was with her
at this very moment. 
The voices she heard
 inside her 
were the voices of forests
 on the sides of mountains, 
and schools of fish celebrating in infinite rivers. 
They were
 the songs of minutes 
made in heaven,
of sunglasses so happy on a sunny day.

And here’s a slideshow of some scenes from recent days …