Yes, it's been a few days. I took some time off for Christmas Eve, family meals and gatherings, and preparing for worship this morning.
Beauty is everywhere if we're willing to see it. I once wrote a theological piece on beauty according to Thomas Aquinas, for a church history/philosophy class. I'm not sure I still have that piece but the gist of it was that beauty is more than what we make it to be. It's createdness. It's about God calling creation good. Very, very good.
Beauty isn't just about the physical. I think I most often see beauty in emotions and sharing and incarnation. Today I saw beauty in invitation. We read Christmas stories in worship and the woman who read a story started to weep as she read The Winter's Tale and the part where the mare dies. Her husband died this summer. Then I got up to read the Pearl S. Buck story, Christmas Day in the Morning. It's about a man who gave his father a gift when he was a teenager. They lived on a farm and Christmas morning he got up and did all the chores before his father awoke. The man was now an adult and his father had died, but he still woke at 4a.m. and remembered the love and the gift that he shared. I choked because it reminded me of my father who died two years ago. He worked on the farm and woke early each morning to feed and water the livestock. I had read and rehearsed the story several times and did not make the connection. It was not until I was standing before the congregation, a community, the people I love and who (mostly) love me, that I had the revelation. To me, that is beauty.
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