Beauty In Ugly Places

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir

Sarah took up a brush one day and coaxed her fingers to paint the beauty her eyes had noticed. Look to the right to view the lovely result.

Another friend, in response to a difficult  move, has listed in her journal,  “Five Places To Find Beauty Here,” and walks through an unfamiliar landscape choosing to look when she longs to lament.

Fellow blogger Rebecca posted about cultivating hope as she would a tiny garden, learning to find the unexpected beauty where, at first glance, there seems to be none. You can read Rebecca’s blogpost here.

They are beauty’s advocates.

A life time ago I was a music teacher. Then, as now, in the face of brutal budget cuts and indifferent parents, teachers of  the Fine Arts clung together for support. We argued for a child’s need to wrestle with Beethoven, to stand with pride before a clay pot well-shaped, a haiku carefully crafted. Good music, art, and literature remind us we are not machines, nor animals bound to brute instinct and mere survival.

Beauty teaches us to look beyond the obvious, to train our hearts to hope.

Beauty In Ugly Places

Ultimately, the desire for beauty beneath ugly’s smear is a hunger for God, and for a world finally made right. (Revelation 21-22) We are not, the world is not yet what it was designed to be, but there are signs of what is coming. By tending our tiny gardens, by cultivating beautiful, grace-filled, justice-serving, art-making, people-embracing lives we become for others the hint of a new dawn.

But not if we only have eyes for the ugly.

How does your life point to beauty? Where has ugliness blinded you?