Prompts…Song…Why do we hunger for beauty..Steve Bell

Beauty is God’s handwriting…God’s shadow on the earth

My Piece

So where do we find beauty, why do we hunger for it, why do I have thousands of photographs, digital ones on this lap top.

I find beauty the rich afternoon colors,

I find beauty in small moments and in small encounters,

I find beauty in purple saxifrax flowers, minute purple springing in a mound to conserve the heat and capture the arctic light from every angle.

I find beauty in advancing frost patterns on my office window, snaking like spidery fingers

I find beauty in an elderly patient, who with crippled over bent hunched back walking on his cane, tells me stories of his mother who was teacher and post mistress in a small northern Alberta town, one of the first ones where the province granted plots of land to be farmed and homesteaded,

I find beauty in my dogs digging furiously with snow and grass flying tails in the airand digging furiously to capture the escaping mouse.

I find beauty in the moments of silence when I pause in my day to stop in at the hospital chapel and consider the Lenten readings,

I find beauty in the pink spouting blooms of my Christmas cactus, multi-strands and beads that have emerged in time for Easter and the newly formed red bracket on the poinsettia plant. so out of sync with the season but signs of life and beauty,

I find beauty in a friend’s call when I am tired and worn down to suggest we get out on the bikes and encouragement despite my fears of slipping again on the ice,

I find beauty in this group of women writers, who faithfully meet and greet and share their foibles, jokes remembered and forgotten, love of the body’s movement in dance, nourishing each other with food and words,

I struggle to find beauty in an off-handed critical remark from a co-worker or family member that hits me in the wrong way,

I struggle to find beauty or compassion in some of the political diatribes of the current election dialogues.

But beauty in small moments and kind acts are the sustenance and fodder for the larger world journey.

And the new day and new sunrise and as the words of an old hymn cite, “New every morning is new, the love of God for me is wonderfully new!”