Beautiful Again ~ Kate Mapother, Carved.
I can’t wait for things to be beautiful again.
I mostly believe they will, but I don’t think they’ll be the same kind of beautiful as before.
I think the new beautiful will have deeper lines in her face.
A topography of the badlands we just traversed etched into it.
Every glance will be a kind of homage to the blows we took, and the people we lost. The map will run north to south, from her eyes to her feet, and wherever we find beauty standing now, will be home.
I’m not sure how the senses return, how the heart begins to feel anything beyond a dark and lifeless void, yet somehow it does. The deep valleys that have been carved out have asked to not be filled too soon, which becomes the temptation when meaning is trying to be found, a container perhaps in which to hold that which burns and stings if held too long.
Ten months after Douglas shed his earth suit, my husband and I traveled to Maui. It was our first time to the island and we had no idea of what to expect, how to BE with one another, yet what we both did was we invited Douglas to come along. That simple invitation shifted and changed our adventure and the energy felt gentle, intentional and palpable.
I do know that I have a sense of appreciation for the simplest happenings that life offers. One piece that slowly found me was noticing the still of the morning and how the first light begins to illuminate the sleepy sky with its soft pink hues as if a stroke of paint was splashed against the clouds. The cardinals are some of the first birds to begin singing and soon a chorus has chimed in with mockingbirds, mynas just to name a few.
One never knows how seeing beauty may land again within our shaky hearts. A common thread that weaves many of us together is feeling sometimes a bit unsettled when these glimpses of beauty return. Am I worthy of this when my beloved is not? Is it okay to notice it or does that mean that I am forgetting them in some way? Many of these questions are the spin cycle we can often live within and I’ll never forget the relief that I felt when I asked other who were a few steps further along on the path if they had experienced it too and I received a huge, YES.
Jennifer Pastiloff, the author of Being Human, calls it Beauty Hunting. She shares that it is not alway easy to find beauty in the midst of pain and crisis, yet it’s possible if we look deeply. She states that we can change our minds and even reprogram them in regard to what it is we think we know about what is beautiful. I find her thoughts on this to be life giving and hopeful.
Kate’s words, “I can’t wait for things to be beautiful again. I mostly believe they will, but I don’t think they’ll be the same kind of beautiful as before.” I sense that I’m noticing and observing for two now and that beautiful is ours to share.
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