Beauty Barrage
Beauty of the Earth
We recently had some flooding here in Middle Tennessee. The river near my house swelled and its banks disappeared for a little while and so did the sidewalk that is my normal pathway in the park. As the water receded, it left a trail of mud behind on the sidewalk. Over the next couple days, I noticed a pattern being created in the mud. To my surprise, it made these beautiful tessellations. It started out on the fringes; tiny patches of mud in low lying areas with small cracks. I snapped a couple shots. When I returned two days later, the surface area of tessellations had exponentially expanded and that’s when I took these photos, after a wild gasp upon seeing them.
Water. Just water. It has the power to give life and take it. It has the power to devastate, both by its presence and by the absent of it. It also can facilitate beauty, such as these drying clay and mud formations. It is also transient and doesn’t stay in one place for long, at least in its existing form. Water seems intelligent, like it has memory. It knows where to go and what to do. Just like air. How does oxygen know what to do once it is inhaled into a living thing? I don’t know, but it does!
I know this is egocentric, but I feel like these formations were meant for my eyes to see. It gives me such comfort to know that creativity and beauty show up everywhere. Both the flood waters and the crackled mud are gone now, but something of it stayed and seeped into my being. It is the reminder of hope; no matter the impact of present devastation, consolation will come again, and maybe, even as a result of some uncontrollable element moving beyond the natural boundaries it has been given. It changes everything it comes in contact with and we BECOME what we’re meant to be.
Home
Why in the world is this dilapidated, old house that is falling apart making it on my Beauty Barrage page?? I’m hoping by the end of this writing excursion, I’ll understand why. Right now, I just think this place is really beautiful. Perhaps it has to do with my obsession with old, abandoned houses. Perhaps it’s because the narrative around it feels mysterious. Clearly, people inhabited this place for some amount of time. There were memories, events, ideas, emotions that germinated within its walls. People were cared for, nurtured here. Food was prepared and consumed. Stories were lived, told, shared. And it ended with a scattering, a leaving, perhaps abruptly, or gradually, over time; things just fell apart. Is this structure so far gone that it has been condemned? There’s no indication, just a No Trespassing sign. I know nothing about this house, except that I went past it on a run in my friend’s neighborhood and I had to stop. Yes, I trespassed! No, I did not go in! But I lingered a bit, wondering and imagining its most pristine days, the ordinary days, and the days when things began to deconstruct.
I live in a 30’s bungalow in a 30’s neighborhood. I love the house and I am grateful to be a transient resident while I can. It meets all my nuanced needs: it has room for myself and my daughter who lives with me and another daughter who comes home from college on breaks, the whole upstairs is a studio space, the basement is a wood shop, my dog can play outside with the safety and confines of a sturdy fence, and it is almost a hundred years old. I’m one of several souls that have inhabited the space I call home.
Home.
What we call home.
We call many things home: our bodies, our houses, some relationships, an emotion that evokes welcome, our jobs or careers, our city, our state, our country, the earth, the galaxy, the universe. What happens when something we call home begins to deteriorate? Our home, whatever that word encapsulates, has to some degree, constructed our identity. What do we do? Demolish? Rebuild? Do nothing?
My neighborhood has gone through some changes and honestly, it breaks my heart. I’ve seen people come in, purchase an old home for an obscene amount of money and level the existing old bungalow and rebuild a new home upon its ruins. The new home is ok; nothing special, and it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the period homes, but it sure has all the comforts of modernity. It looks and feels convenient.
The Ryman Auditorium, located in Nashville, TN, “came perilously close to being demolished but was saved at the last hour thanks to a team of musicians and Nashville locals who banded together to preserve the historic site.” ~ Ryman.com Today, the Ryman is one of my favorite places to experience a live show. What if the answer to deterioration for the Ryman was to destroy it?
Sometimes destruction is necessary for reconstruction. And sometimes the original form just needs some tending and care. I find myself rooting for the care of the existing storyline. I don’t know about this particular house in the photos above. There may not be much to salvage. Maybe an era has passed, whatever story has been told is coming to its final chapter. But that place, those materials will go on to live in some other iteration, creating and building some other identity and narrative.
The hope is that we can curate our homes, however we find them. What do you call home? How are those homes functioning? Do you need to tend to your homes? Your literal home? Your garden? Your body? Your family and friends? The earth? Your neighbors? The stranger? The pilgrim? The sojourner?
“It was when I stopped searching for home within others and lifted the foundations of home within myself, I found there were no more roots more intimate than those between a mind and body that have decided to be whole.” ~ Rupi Kaur
Galaxies
Forgive Reality. Love Reality
I happened upon these phrases in a meditation I did this morning. They shimmered. They were both challenging and loving at the same time. I am noticing that I have spent energy gathering tools and habits that have created an escape hatch for when the real becomes intolerable. And, I am not alone. So, when our nervous system heads into overwhelm, what tools and habits can we access to bring ourselves back into a homeostatic range? Some of our movement needs to be felt in the heart.
Escaping the real is different than self-care. For sanity’s sake at any given moment, maybe we care for ourselves by turning off the constant feed of bad news and take the dog for a brisk walk to stay connected to the earth, and to what it means to be human. Even though mindfulness and staying present might feel counterintuitive to our mental health, we choose the next good thing. The small act of movement in the form of a 5 minute walk around the block can change one’s perspective and, sometimes it might be exactly what is needed.
The image above was taken by NASA, I believe. It is a small portion of the universe. Within this frame is estimated to be however many galaxies (scientists think there are around 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe). Our galaxy, The Milky Way, contains at least 100 billion stars! If every galaxy in the observable universe (who knows what’s beyond what’s observable) is similar in size, housing 100 billion stars, give or take a few, that means means 10,000 billion billion (10 sextillion)stars….. endless stardust! And there are estimated to be at least one planet for every star system and maybe as many as 10.
“…the matter, energy and everything in the universe (including space itself) was more compact last Saturday than it is today. The same can be said about any time in the past — last year, a million years ago, a billion years ago. But the past doesn’t go on forever. By measuring the speed of galaxies and their distances from us, scientists have found that if we could go back far enough, before galaxies formed or stars began fusing hydrogen into helium, things were so close together and hot that atoms couldn’t form and photons had nowhere to go. A bit farther back in time, everything was in the same spot. Or really the entire universe (not just the matter in it) was one spot.” ~ NASA Website
I think we might be small, walking metaphors of the universe. In our earliest history, we were tiny, microscopic cells housed within another universe of cells and synapses. We began to expand and take up more space as we grew and finally became autonomous, an individual apart from our maternal home. Just like the universe, we continue to expand and grow and create and change our perspective as we make beautiful movements of transformation.
This REALITY is a beautiful truth that I can rest in. Things are so much bigger than what is right in front of me. If LOVE is holding this breathtaking expanse of universe together, than I can hold my life loosely with non-attachment to a desired outcome and all that matters is sprinkling love, kindness, goodness in my corner while I inhabit this tiny sphere and hope it sticks for a while.
There are many things in life that didn’t “go my way”. When I get into that thought loop, I can easily rage out and rage against reality. That is one perspective.
I was sitting across the table involved in a lovely conversation last week. I was painting a picture of some of the things that I dream of doing in the near future and what I’m working toward. I admit I felt a little foolish given my age and season of life. I was feeling the shame and weight of not having arrived at some of those places already. Her response had an immediate impact on my perspective. She said that now that the kids were out of the house, she’s been asking herself what’s next. And the answer was as open ended as the expanding universe. She helped me realize that even though it’s late, there is a vision and a dream for this next stretch of road; much of the work has been done. Now, it’s just filling the form. Tiny little perspective shift.
How might you be able to shift your attention? Where is there a place in your reality that you are at odds with? In what way do you wish it was different? Is it in your power to change it? If not, can you accept it, or forgive it? How can you convert that energy into love? What is something you could love about this reality? Where is there a new pathway that wasn’t there before? Energy follows attention. What could you place your attention on as a way to either change your reality or love it?
I’ll leave you with this beautiful, timeless classic:
The Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
~ Reinhold Niebuhr
I snapped this photo on my run yesterday. I had to stop when this hydrant came into my view. I had just been thinking about how the world is on fire, in some places, literally, and then, there it was. I was on backroads, in the middle of nowhere, homes, here and there. I thought it was a strange location for it. It looks like it’s been living on the side of the road since at least the 60’s.
It struck me as beautiful for some reason and I paused, took a picture, and inquired as to why it drew my attention.
It’s a tap. It symbolizes access to resources. I think it caught my attention because I needed some outer reminder of the inner resources that are always available to me. Whatever is happening in my small world, I can always tap my resources, such as my breath, my emotions, my body, my mental and creative energy. Just as a fire hydrant is a tap to life-giving, life-saving water, the inner resources I possess help me to self-regulate and return to homeostasis after perceived threat, whether that threat is emotional, physical, or mental. The practice of turning inward is an important one. And it’s pretty simple. All it requires is a shift of attention. Just a shift of attention. And those inner gifts are always there, just as the water is there, just under the surface. Perhaps we have everything we need after all, as we tap into the deep and stay aware of our connection to the source of LOVE.
Happy end of 2024 and beginning of 2025, friends! As this year comes to a close, I am thinking about how I want to curate the small corner of the world in which I have proximity in the next 12 months. This includes how I might participate with you, the beautiful, tired, perhaps even a bit tattered, artist. Or, maybe you’re not tired, but energized and full of hope and anticipation toward the future.
Ellie, at the top of Tennessee
However I find you, whatever questions remain unanswered into the new year, I hope you continue to put your inner process into creating things that are beautiful. I’m convinced that Beauty has saved the world before and Beauty is a powerful, salve for the soul that can save it again.
So friends, I’m going to muster up the courage to put this question before us and ask, What actually IS beauty? I LOVE open-ended questions and I think I will leave this one the way we found it, since philosophers have been debating the answer for centuries! I do think it is important to be curious about your experience with what you perceive as beauty. How have you responded when you brushed up against something beautiful? Did it take your breath away? Did it make you angry? Did you want to possess whatever it was? Did it make you weep? Long? Laugh? Gasp? Did you want to change? Did you want it to change? Did you feel joy? Gratitude? Or was there an ineffability to your experience?
I remember taking a philosophy class on beauty when I was working on my art degree. It was the first time I encountered such polarized ideas of what beauty is, or what the ideal is considered to be, though we mistake idealism for beauty all the time. It became clear that all these notions and philosophical ideas about what beauty is are as countless as there are people on the planet. What is the common denominator for beauty? There didn’t seem to be one. What I thought was grotesque, someone else saw as beautiful. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; perhaps that’s true. I am still looking for a common denominator. Please keep me company as I share some ongoing thoughts this year around the beautiful.
Along with these perusings, I hope to bring some shimmers of beauty in the world that is close up. It has been a spiritual practice of mine to look for the beautiful. At times, it seems elusive and scarce, but that is an illusion. Beauty is as close to me as my own body, recreating itself, regenerating, without me even asking. It just knows what to do, like a bee knows how to do her part in making honey. That is really beautiful. Yup, so I’m going to be coming at you with a barrage of beauty. I’m going to call it Beauty Barrage (and it has nothing to do with skincare or fashion;). Its intent is to remind you that as Fyodor Dostoevsky said, “Beauty will save the world”. And, I don’t think this is naive, or understated, because every act of kindness and movement toward connectedness and loving, generative healing is deeply beautiful and will, collectively, save the world.
My daughter took the above photo early one sunrise along a Tennessee canyon. She was there with her sister, who, if you look closely on the left, she is sitting on that clifftop. I find them, and this captured moment, stunning, not to mention that gorgeous fog!
Be well, and look below for some upcoming opportunities to connect with beautiful, fellow creatives. We need each other, and while Zoom is a life saver, it’s not a great substitute for being in one another’s atmosphere, looking into eyes and smelling the mod podge around a table!
Love and Beauty,
Jennie
STUDENT WATERCOLOR PAINTING
Hi friends!
How are you doing with scanning for beauty in your world? Beauty connects my mind, heart and body to abundance and gratitude in a way that nothing else really can. When I brush up against beauty, my faith is integrated into my lived experience. I remember that there is something bigger and brighter and more loving holding the universe together. It is ineffable.
This watercolor painting was made today by my 11 year old student. I’ve been teaching and sharing creative space with her for almost two years. Today, we had an Artist Choice day. It’s an opportunity for artists to choose the project they want to work on rather than a structured lesson. I watched her as she leaned in to her own creative process, moving into the flow and trusting herself to make decisions that solved the questions she was asking. I watched joy emanating from her being through the process of making without filters. In the space of less than 2 hours, she made three of these figural pieces. I could sense that she never thought to ask herself if she belonged. There was an intrinsic knowing that she was included and that the act of making was natural and human.
Somewhere, along the way, we can lose contact with that intrinsic knowing and avoid the creative process because of shame, fear, loss and self-forgetting. The beauty of witnessing a little human create something because they hadn’t lost contact with that part of themselves, stirred a longing in me to absorb that energy back into my being and create from that place of freedom. Perhaps I’ll watch that freedom in me grow today and take up more space as I allow room for it.
What are you observing of beauty in your world today, and how is it informing you? Beauty is such a transforming force… let’s pause and notice where we find it. We might learn that it’s more abundant than we think…
Love and Beauty,
Jennie
