Category: good for the soul

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a different kind of beautiful

On Friday I went on a little adventure to a local state park, Stone Mountain, and took a hike. I spent some time by myself, sat in the shade, thought, prayed a little, and wrote a little. This is the companion piece to Friday’s post:


Besides the beautiful and life-affirming daisies that I encountered on my walk, there were a number of very beautiful damaged trees — trees that had evidently been hit by lightning strikes, or perhaps other things within the environment. Bugs, soil erosion, who knows, had affected them. Some of the trees, in clusters, had to “learn” to grow around the obstacles and get a stronghold in whatever way was possible.

More than the daisies, my eyes were drawn to these trees. They stood out, and the casual passersby might think they were eyesores, and even wonder why the park didn’t remove them in order to restore the vista to a postcard scene.

I am thankful for their testimony. It’s easy to be green and lush when all the conditions are perfect — but what is that perfection? Are not all the trees in the cluster exposed to the same conditions? Yet one gets singled out for the lightning strike, and that changes everything.

It damages the tree, certainly, but then something happens — the tree adapts. And in adapting it becomes something else. Because of its strength it survives and changes — perhaps subtly, perhaps more dramatically. The result, though, is usually the same. The tree stands out — its scars are beautiful because they are present. It stands out — not because it is an eyesore but because it has a character that separates it from the sameness of the other trees. Each scar, each broken branch, each exposed root has character, and depth, and a history of suffering … and strength. And still, in spite of its crooked form, it stands among the others.

To me, those are the most beautiful trees of all.

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Look, Mom! I’m not here today…

I’m playing in Dulcinea’s sandbox today. I’m talking about the night that Linda and I made some really ugly rosaries and burned our fingers with nylon twine. We were new to the whole process and made a lot of mistakes, but it had a happy ending. I promise!

I have a rosary that my bestest ever BFF, Linda, made for me many years ago. One evening we found ourselves sitting at my kitchen table drinking wine and making all-twine rosaries for Rosary Army. We were just learning how to make these rosaries, and to be honest, they were turning out … well … not very pretty. [read the rest here]

The delightfully charming Sarah Reinhard has once again opened up her very merry and very Mary blog, Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering, to guest posts, and guess what? I sent her football-shaped little Oreos to bribe her for a slot.

She’s so easy that way.

Of course, it might have been that I held her cowboy hat hostage for a month, but she’s the one that left it behind (I just want to set that record straight, especially now that my post has gone live).

So run, don’t walk on over there and see what else is cookin’ at her blog.

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“Don’t you think daisies are the friendliest flower?”

Today I did something a little out of the ordinary for a Friday morning — I went to Stone Mountain and took a leisurely hike up the mountain trail.

Leisurely is code for I had to stop a couple of times because it was pretty steep at the end and I kinda appreciate staying alive.

Anyway, thoroughly delightful. I wandered around and took pictures while catching my breath and continuing up up up.

As far as hikes go, it’s pretty short … about a mile. But the terrain is uneven, and rocky, and there are places where it’s sandy and slippery, and others where water is running down, so for a middle-aged out of shape broad, that mile was a hike. Of course, it’s a lot faster coming down.

The morning was fairly cool and there was quite a breeze blowing, especially at the top.  In fact, I couldn’t have asked for a lovelier day for my little excursion. It gave me a lot of time to think, when I was inclined to think, but mostly, I let my mind go blank and just be. Kind of nice not to think about anything at all.

Of course, that just usually leads to more thinking, and I noticed a couple of things.  I went with the intent of photographing the Stone Mountain Daisies, which are still blooming even though it’s a little late already. As it happens, there were plenty, overgrown, even, but my favorites are the ones that just kind of sprout out of nowhere.

As I would crouch down to get close for a couple of the shots, I realized that they were facing the morning sun, straining, almost yearning for the light. I looked carefully at the next batch, and sure enough, they were facing the sun. It’s hard not to see the obvious there, right? We can learn much from the natural world, and those pretty little daisies, simple, sweet, and so cheerful and carefree (indulge my personification) taught me a lovely little lesson.

“Learn from the way the wild flowers grow.  They do not work or spin.  But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.”(Matthew 6:28-29)

The pretty little daisies were showing me the way — to look up, brightly, into the Son.

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