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BEAUTY By Eugene H Peterson
“He had no form or comeliness
that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.” -Isaiah 53:2
A whiff. A beagle for beauty I sniffed Monet’s haystacks, Van Gogh’s sunflowers,
Devoutly meditated Marilyn’s breasts,
Watched kingfishers -- lost the scent.
Kiss the lepers wound: taste honey. Touch the blind eye: learn Braille. Keep vigil at the cradle: change diapers. Drink tears from the chalice: live Eucharist.
Happened on found things, found in gutters,
Found on across, found under a stone,
Heard in the rustling grass, heard in
A tongue stammering sabacthani.
Found when I wasn’t looking, heard
When I wasn’t listening. Found beauty.
Welcome friends, I am so delighted to have you join me here in my little cyber space part of the world! I've always been a bit of a collector, a magpie of sparkly intrigues, and I've always loved to share things I'm excited about so I'm very much looking forward to sharing the beautiful and interesting treasures I'm discovering. The Beagle For Beauty newsletter has been birthed!
You can see in the above where my eager beagle image derives its name in this wonderful poem of Eugene Peterson's. This image of a beagle getting latched onto a scent and hunting down it's origins until the source is discovered struck me and has stuck with me ever since reading it, it has pursued me throughout my creative journey and served as a core thought as to what it is that drives me - to sniff out and track down the beauty in life, and often this comes from the most broken places.
So here are my ten offerings this month:--
1. Creating: my still life 'Autumn Harvest' (above) featuring some wonderfully foraged fruit from the Bluecrown Passion flower. It's fruit is beautiful to look at but quite bland to taste, I did try it. These gorgeous deep red seeds remind me of a pomegranate. The flower on this fruitful lovely is stunning also.
2. Listening to: Valses Poeticos: Vales Sentimental by Albert Guinovart, so cinematic and uplifting. This album, The Sacred Veil by Eric Whitacre was one of those which stopped me in my tracks of passive streaming and caused me to down tools and just drink, very beautiful and haunting and a powerful story behind it. This track was the arresting piece.
3. Watching: I found myself quite emotional during the Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher. So many thoughts from this not least that we can rejoin the rhythms of our world if we'll take the time to go diving.
4. Watching: David Attenborough's latest documentary A Life On Our Planet, his witness statement as he calls it, a testimony to the changes he's seen on this planet in the span of his 70+ year career. This went hand-in-hand I found with My Octopus Teacher and although I can't agree with all of David's beliefs about our origins or the solutions to our ills his witness statement is powerful picture of the way we have exploited this gift of a planet and an undeniable warning to turn the ship before it's too late.