Dear Reader:

In one of the last interviews Irish poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue, participated in… called ” “The Inner Landscape  of Beauty” (before his untimely death) he made the challenging statement and personal revelation that “beauty is a human calling and a defining aspect of God.”

(Source: Scripted Interview/ “The Inner Landscape of Beauty“- John O’Donohue and Krista Tippet.)

The Greek root for the word ‘beauty’ is related to the word for “calling.” (Kalon, Kalein)

O’Donohue, explained to the interviewer, Krista Tippet, that beauty is an active word…not a passive word to be admired from afar. He went on to say:

“ Beauty is not a neutral thing, but is a force that is actually calling you. You are being called, through it, to be yourself, and to transfigure what has hardened or been wounded within you.”

“In order to do this…our hearts must be open to creativity every single day because our calling…our beauty takes us to a new place of inner growth, each time we listen to it… If we follow the call of beauty…to the landscape it is intended for….we discover  that it is us.”

……………………………

Definitely this is initially pretty deep…but after I re-read it a couple of times I got it. Ever since I removed all the planters off the porch with the “emergency” porch sinking episode….everything quickly appeared to go into shock.

Slowly the morning glory vines and moon flower vines (that Anne and I flung over the back fence) began to acclimate and bloom again…amazingly. The planters, containing, the gerber daisies, however, appeared to be in a “comatose” state.

The leaves, eventually, got their old healthy green color back…but no buds, for weeks on end, appeared. Then last week…there was this one folded gerber daisy (as if in prayer) waiting to open.

And when it did…the beautiful orange/red daisy seemed to be shouting to the world that life goes on…in spite of abrupt changes in our lives…and life is filled with beauty.

When I stopped and looked deeply into the center of the daisy I felt like Alice in Wonderland…seconds before she fell down the hole….I wonder what it would be like to be able to climb into that beautiful flower and become a part of its living, breathing organism.

Haven’t we all been moved to tears by something so beautiful it literally touches our soul…. ( a piece of art or a beautiful dance or a composition of music.) I believe that is what O’Donohue was conveying with the idea that beauty is a calling….an extension of God letting us know that there is a whole another world around us where true beauty manifests itself from everyone’s heart and soul. Beauty lies within each of us waiting to be released to the world.

So until tomorrow…It is up to us to heed our God-given talents and  become the “voice” of the person we are intended to be.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*John O’Donohue believed that both the visible and invisible world existed along side each other…but were also interwoven into the human experience.

He placed the human experience, in this world, the visible world, as the first shoreline to the invisible world.

This thought brought back memories of my childhood running along the shoreline staring out at the vast ocean and seeing it in my imagination as a world where sea creatures ruled in their kingdom under the sea….maybe I was actually closer to reality then as an imaginative child than I am as an adult today.

Speaking of beaches…Ben had this photo of mother and him (as a baby) on the beach together at his home this past weekend…I had never seen it…and once again, was amazed at my mother’s beauty and calling to show others just what a human being is capable of accomplishing under God’s guidance.