~ awake in this moment, at home in the world ~

She Walked In Beauty

April 1, 2019

She walked in beauty, though she hardly knew it. Mostly she marched through life with her eyes averted, and her head filled with alternating currents of fury and of angst.

Only when her life was stripped bare through despair did she lift her eyes. The particular flavor of grief doesn't matter. It may have been a broken relationship, a broken body, a broken spirit. Whatever it was, it left her shattered. There was almost nothing left to cling to. No space for even a hapless inhalation to make its home.

And then one damp morning in early spring, not even yet out of bed, she chose to lift her eyes. She glanced past her bed and noticed the rain streaking down the windows. The raindrops startled her. They looked like fingers, she noticed, long and thin and possible even graceful.

A few more raindrops smacked against the glass, the grey sky holding no promise whatsoever. Still she sat up, her mind captured by the beauty of the rain, inevitable and unstoppable. She watched in a trance, as this one small spectacle that she did nothing to earn or even deserve, fell into her gaze. And then she heard the rain upon the roof, creating its own music of a sort.

She sighed. She smiled. You could say she woke up.

Life remained, broken and uncatchable, filled with heartache and the certainty of loss. But the inevitable beauties that wrapped themselves around her held her tight, giving her comfort and possibly even hope. She felt the mingling of the two. The heaviness seasoned the beauty, giving it gravity and heft. And the beauty offered comfort that allowed her manage life's harshest pains with openness and grace.

It is possible to walk in beauty, she thought, to be carried by small moments of simple amazement and delight, even in a broken world.