I went for a walk yesterday morning, as I usually do, and found myself distracted by the needs of others. No one was with me, but the pain and challenges of the people I love came along anyway. My mind kept wandering to what they might need, how I might be able to offer help and support, and to a general longing that things would get better for them. I started to realize that this was occupying most of my mental and emotional energy as I walked, and my thoughts turned toward wondering what I needed. I drew my attention to what my body was feeling, what the terrain of my emotions was like, and the things that I was longing for myself.
I noticed that as I did this, I started to really see what was around me. I became increasingly aware of the fresh breeze, the sun dappling the trees, the wildflowers clamoring along the path, the birds swooping with joyous busyness. And it came to me that this is what I needed, this is what I was longing for— to be in the presence of beauty. Being in the presence of beauty is only partly about being in a beautiful place. It can certainly help if beauty smacks you in the face so that you can’t help but pay attention. But as the beginning of my walk showed me, I can be surrounded by beauty but not truly be in the presence of beauty.
I began my walk in the presence of the struggles of people I care about, which is not a bad place to be, but at the moment it was beside the point. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about those struggles, and worrying over them wasn’t going to help me or them. But despite the beauty of the morning that surrounded me, I wasn’t engaged with the world around me. I wasn’t even engaged in the world of my own body or my emotions. And I think it is no accident that as I started to dial in to one of those worlds, my eyes were opened to the presence of the other.
What I was really needing that morning was space— the expansiveness and newness, the companionship of the beautiful that being out in nature often offers me. There was a lot that I was feeling as I walked, both physically and emotionally, and plenty of my own worries and burdens that I was distracting myself from by focusing on the needs of others. What I needed the most wasn’t to dwell on any of those things, but to bring all of those things with me into the presence of beauty.
We bring our pain into the presence of beauty so that we may know it is not the only thing. Beauty doesn’t fix our suffering or make it go away. Sometimes it doesn’t even lighten it or make it easier to bear. But what I have found that it consistently does for me is remind me that there are more things in the world than my pain. Beauty draws me out of myself, connecting me more deeply to God and to the world around me.
When I walked into the park yesterday morning, I wasn’t suffering acutely, but my pain was limiting my vision. When I began to attend to it, to draw it into the presence of beauty and the presence of God, it shifted for me. Nothing was solved, or fixed, or changed. But I was reminded that there was more. My field of vision expanded. Space was made for me to imagine something different. Beauty didn’t make sense of the things I was struggling with, but it did remind me that those weren’t the only things. Beauty lifted my eyes to see more, and to consider the possibility of hope.
Wellspring 