A Small Beauty

The sanctuary- which does double duty as our pastor's house- was hushed. Skirts rustled. A shoe scraped. Two throats were cleared. It was the 'prayer' part of the service, where we share concerns, and then take some time for everyone to pray as/if they feel moved. We were all waiting, in the throes of an awkward pause, for SOMEONE to feel moved- begging the silence to break. Then Mr. King stood up in the back of the room. He said:

"We thank You, Lord, for this 'small beauty' we live in. We thank You for showing us a small beauty, so that we can conceive of a bigger one. We thank You for Your promise that one day, there will be no more 'small beauty', or pieces of beauty, but only Your great Beauty transforming all."

I love that thought, and that wording. It's true- we live in 'a small beauty'. Sometimes, I just feel so drained and weighed down by the ugliness surrounding me- by the ugliness WITHIN me, for that matter, that I forget there is ANY beauty in the world! At other times, (and it happens often in Spring!) I'm so carried away into ecstacy by the beauty burgeoning and blossoming everywhere that I can hardly conceive of anything superior, nor feel strongly enough my need of it.

But we live in 'a small beauty'. Not a complete one. Beauty in patches. And it would be as terrible to not see it at all as it would be to see nothing else. Only the recollection that fractions of an infinite beauty are the most- and least- that we are able to see can guard us from either extreme.

So I just content myself with writing poetry about it in math class... :-)


I watched the rippling fires
Of rumpled grass; flame tumbling over flame.
The wind blows up a silver blaze, whirls higher,
Extinguishes in green; begins the game
A second time; goes dancing through the trees
And meadow, painting with a silvery sheen
The ruffled leaves, then swiftly as it came
Is leaping back; advances and retires
And spreads the fields in sighing green again.

The breeze falls slack-
Drifts in shaded hollows of the wood.
The sun begins to shine in earnest- heats
The meadows with a flood-
Of heavily rippling warmth- a skylark sings
Above the panting field; a lone bird beats
A path into the glaring sky, its wings
A whir of silence. She and I, we stood
Welded to noon-stillness of sluggish blood
Limp fingers linked in drowsy wondering
At Summer burning through a veil of Spring.