beauty – Page 6 – TheWisdomYears.org

How Beautiful It All Is –

August 5, 2016 Mary Elyn Bahlert

“…thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s
perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich
it is to love the world.” – “The Sweetness of Dogs,” by Mary Oliver

I’ve been thinking of how beautiful this world is, this world I see from my front window, the world I see as I walk under the branches of slender trees on city streets, this world of flowers that blow in the gentle summer wind as I pass, and as I acknowledge them, note their presence in my world.

This is a beautiful world. I note this fact with gratitude, joy and humility. I did not create this place, yet here it is, right before my eyes, these eyes that have seen many things, including death, and now, this singular beauty.

In my religious training, I did not hear much about beauty. Did I hear of beauty at all? Did beauty enter into the meanings of things, the value of things, the value of life, of my life, of all lives? I think not. And yet as I recall the words of the people of all faiths, I know there have been some among us, some ordinary human beings – like me, like you – who have searched, always, for the answers to life, and who have also witnessed to the beauty of the world.

A woman I admire greatly and I were speaking one day. I mentioned the beauty of things to her. She stopped short, reprimanded me, in a way, reminding me of the awful things that are present in the world. I agree. I know the suffering of this world, have known some small measure of it myself, have seen it in the eyes of those I love who were meeting death. I remember, often, the flow of refugees, people like me who have lost their homes to war that is not their own, people who set off into the night with a few belongings and those they love, to find a place where they will be welcomed. My heart grieves for them, also.

And so I witness to beauty on their behalf, and in my witness is a longing, also, for their time to witness this beauty.

My friend’s short response is a response we all know, very well. As soon as we grant ourselves the gift, the moment, the abundance to witness beauty, our mind clicks into gear: “how can you take this time, when there is so much important work to be done?” “Why notice beauty when others are suffering?” “And what will you do to make this a world where there is justice, where there is enough, for all?” My mind works that way. I’ll bet yours does, too. And so we set upon our important work, this work that will change the world. And we fail to see beauty, that ever-present gift that we are given, now, in this moment.

As I write, a single bird calls, frantically, outside my window. This, too, is beauty. I am grateful for this song. The voice of the bird brings me back, to this moment.

I am grateful for the poets, and for their trail of words that speak to beauty. I am so grateful for their words. Often in my life, their words have given me hope. And now, in my own witness to beauty, there is this hope.

Sometimes I think about the years I have lost, those years when beauty surrounded me, and I was too busy, too tired, too involved in matters of importance, to see that beauty, that gift, that creation, this creation. As for now, I have this beauty. I am grateful.

Uncategorized

for Her

June 2, 2016May 3, 2024 Mary Elyn Bahlert

Prayer chair and shawl, 06/16

In the sweet dawn
I sit on the wet earth.
The Holy One comes.
She sniffs the grass, the lighting day,
lays languid at my feet.
She turns,
turns toward me and all the galaxies.
She smiles,
lifts her head and laughs,
laughs into the sky, her eyes sparkling at the fading stars,
lifts her head and laughs into the whole day before us.
I breath, gentle.

Mary Elyn Bahlert, 6/1/16

Uncategorized

A Song in My Heart

February 25, 2016February 26, 2016 Mary Elyn Bahlert

I often wake these days with a song in my heart. I begin my day with my usual routines, and sometimes I don’t notice the song that is singing in me until later in the morning. Most days, I begin to hum the tune or sing the words of the song that is in my heart.

Through my life, I’ve taken to noticing the song in my heart. I listen to the words, singing them inside my head, or singing aloud into the house. The cat notices, and I think she smiles, a bit (who knows?). When I remember the words – I am known for the encyclopedia of words to songs I carry within me – I sing them out loud, enjoying my voice, enjoying the memory of the words, and calling to mind the memories and images that arise.

When I was a girl, my mother had a lovely china music box with a tune I cannot name. I can still sing the notes, and often do. When I stop and notice the tune, my mother comes to mind. I see her face, I remember her voice, I wonder about her and her life. What a wonderful bit of beauty that music box was, in our working class flat with its narrow windows and steep, dark stairway down to the street lined with wonderful maple trees that would disappear, killed by disease, in the years ahead.
That music box is gone, too. Sometimes my sister and I mention it. Where did it go? Which one of us ended its role in our lives? Where did it come from, an unusual player in the life of my mother?

And yet, that music box, with its unnamed melody, has not gone from our lives. We sing its song, its beautiful song, still.

We sing its holy song, the song that arrives from the depths, a gift to this day.

Sometimes the tune that plays in my head is from a later time in my life. I mimic Aretha Franklin, or John Lennon. My song takes on the cadence of some rock n’ roll song, and sometimes, I dance. I love to dance, and the song takes on movement, in my body, in my heart, in my house, in my life…

Every day has its theme, a theme decided in some deeper place within me, the place from which the melodies arise. I am grateful for these songs; in earlier years, when work and schedules and calendars and meeting the needs of others – and the anxiety of meeting those needs – was so important in my life, I awoke many days without a song in my heart. Did the songs go underground? Were the songs like plants and animals that disappear in the winter? Is this time of life a spring-time?

What is the melody for this time of life?