Beauty and Work-Life Balance
I managed to finish several books on my recent week off, and at one point I felt surrounded by beauty. First, Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate devotes an entire chapter to beauty: Beauty Counts.
At the same time I’m reading the novel Three Junes (for my June book club). The protagonist wants to go home after a long day with his sister-in-law, but she wants to make one final stop at a garden, scolding him: “There is always time for beauty, would you not say?”
Fast forward a few days. I am reading Alice Walker’s Revolutionary Petunias and she has this epigraph from Camus:
Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.
In her book Belonging: A Culture of Place (read earlier in June), bell hooks talks about her grandmother’s quilting: “Fundamentally in Baba’s mind quiltmaking was women’s work, an activity that gave harmony and balance to the psyche.” Each quilt had a story, that “began from the moment she considered making a particular quilt. The story was rooted in the quilt’s history, why it was made, why a particular pattern was chosen.” Beauty.
As all this beauty kept pushing itself to the top of my awareness, I was seeing some beautiful things outside, too. The columbine blossomed. I saw (and heard) my first Western Meadowlark.
As a result of all this reading and experiencing and blogging, I’m realizing the importance of beauty. And even, perhaps, the ubiquitousness of beauty, if one would simply pay attention.
Today I saw a ripening raspberry. A singing wren. My neighbor gave me a pint of organic strawberries.
What would a community of beauty look like? What beautiful thing have you seen today? Please tell.
