Beauty

The other day I was driving to the airport early enough to see the sunrise. The rays that beat the sun over the horizon shot through the trees on the side of the road and got snatched by the morning mist and fog in a way that made it possible to see light in a solid form. It looked like a series of horizontal strips, like gold finish-line tape in front of my car. Normally my writing limitations don’t bother me but in this case they do, I wish you could see what I saw but I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about.

Later in the drive I was thinking about a friendgirl and I thought “ she is pretty” I don’t have feelings for this girl other than the same love I have for other friends but I just kinda stumbled upon the realization that to me she is pretty.

Then I started to try and figure out something that is way out of my intelligence league so I thought I would bring it to all you (4-5 people). How do we know what is beautiful and what isn’t. I suppose I think a girl with certain features is pretty because I have been taught what I should think is visually appealing and what I should think is not. I’m pretty sure in the 1500’s men thought fat women were attractive ( of coarse they did also think the earth was flat and other crazy stuff), but anyway that would be enough evidence to show that what we like to look at is taught to us. But what about stuff like sunlight on a golf course in the early mourning? Or wind going through trees? Or an orange and purple and blue sunset? Or a flower? (or navy blue and burnt orange). Is all that taught to us too? And I guess you can’t ask why do some things look good, without asking why some things don’t look good? And God made all the stuff. So I guess we should think everything is great looking.

Last Friday a couple buddies and I were in a neighborhood off of Dean Road with some young friends. We were playing wall ball against someone’s house and kinda out of no where a girl who had to this point maintained a policy of only saying obnoxious things, instead shouted “heaven’s here, heaven’s here” a couple times and pointed. The sun was coming through one of the big trees in the neighborhood and similar to my car experience was getting caught in the afternoon, post-rain mist. It really was beauty. That’s my best guess as to why we can see things and them have such an impact on us. For me seeing “heaven” is what it took for me to realize that heaven was there. I pray and sing a lot for heaven to come here, and in that field with those unlikely friends it was present, and I think I would have missed it if I hadn’t seen it.