On Beauty, a Reminder from John Muir, and Seeing God in Nature

A Note from Me

Most days I step outside to tend the flowers in our hanging baskets and pots. It’s not much—trimming here, watering there—but it gets me out into the sunshine, or the wind, or even the rain when it comes. Each moment carries its own kind of beauty. Just this morning, turning the corner of our house, I noticed the long stretch of Saint Augustine grass lit up in dappled light, the blades in different shades of green, moving slightly with the breeze.

That simple scene stopped me.

Beauty has a way of doing that—slowing us down and reminding us that the world is more than errands and responsibilities. And for me, that moment of beauty opened into gratitude, a prayer without words. I thought of the one who made such beauty possible. The One who thought up light and shadow and the way green grass shifts between them.

Moments like that don’t last long. But they change me a little. They stir a small devotion, a longing for the source of all of this beauty. Such moments never fully satisfy. But they grow in me a greater hunger for the God of beauty.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National parks—the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc.—Nature’s sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world.”

—John Muir, The Yosemite

A Question to Carry

Where could you slip away today to catch a little beauty?

Grateful for glimpses,

—Jon