Saw this lavender beauty on walk home, birds chirping in a clear blue sky, and knew it's going to be a good day... Bliss. I was fortunate to witness this gentle giant across the street from where I live (in Florida) at a vacated plant store. Lucky us, I thought, that we get to inhabit this wondrous planet... Lavender happens to be my favorite color, too. Here's a little ditty I wrote where I honor it:
First, saints are brown
like everything around
then blue, from trying
the art of dying
At last, they're lavender
the color of surrender.
Contemplating natural beauty, I think of two quotes by mystic poets I admire. The first is a rendition of the Sufi poet, Hafez, by Daniel Ladinsky:
The heart suffers when it cannot see and touch beauty, but beauty is not shy it is synonymous with existence.
I am fortunate to live only five minutes away from the beach, in Fort Lauderdale, so have the opportunity to contemplate sky, trees and ocean:
The other reflection, which comes to mind by association, is by Lebanese artist/philosopher, Khalil Gibran:
We live only to discover beauty. The rest is a form of waiting.
I believe this to be true, on many levels. To begin with, beauty takes many forms, from tender flower petals or winged creatures to the rough skin and scales of iguanas climbing trees. Furthermore, on a moral or spiritual level, if we abide by the laws of Beauty --in thought, word and deed -- we elevate our existence. While talking a stroll, try to imagine a new religion where small-minded bickering—say, over whose god was better—was not permitted.
Likewise, murderous ignorance, where you might lose your life or liberty because how you lived did not suit the hateful interpretation of a so-called believer. Where self-righteousness was banned, since all your time and energy were consumed sorting yourself out, too busy to accuse, point elsewhere, or wag that finger. What if you were not allowed to utter that Unutterable Name until you’d actually earned it, perhaps, as the last word on your deathbed? What might such a religion look like . . .
This, of course, is the old religion, covered in dust, disinterest and
misinterpretation. What if we were to approach it, fresh, with Beauty, Attention, Love and Awe as the pillars of the new-old religion. By, prayerfully,
admiring the rose of existence, we would stand to be made finer morally,
and spiritually, as we practice the ethics of aesthetics. A holy curiosity and
wonder would help us to better appreciate, and experience, Emerson’s definition of prayer as: “the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul.”
Adherents of this new, Nameless faith would be required, as artist mystics, to submit their private lives in the service of intensifying consciousness, through fasts, silence and odes to joy. Their entire lives could be carefully arranged around the conditions most conducive to the ripening of gratitude. We might begin to practice the art of living and sanctify our days with a humble walking meditation, such as this:
Try and leave everything in your path in slightly better shape than you
found it: the home in disarray, the neglected pet, the lonely neighbor, the
homeless person on the bench, the hungry birds in the parking lot, the despondent stranger in the elevator, the overworked elder at the checkout, the trash-littered sidewalk, the overturned shopping carts...
© Yahia Lababidi, author of Learning to Pray