The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life. Frank Lloyd Wright
Don't you like this pic? I love it. To me, this albatross is investing his/her life in a lot of beauty. Now that's what I call a "bird's eye view!"
Mark Twain, in Ch 12 of "Innocents Abroad" finds himself traveling by train in of the most beautiful of all countries, France. And as he speeds through the countryside, he muses about how the magnificently impeccable countryside might have come to be.
What a bewitching land it is! What a garden! Surely the leagues of bright green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their grasses trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped and measured and their symmetry preserved by the most architectural of gardeners. Surely the long straight rows of stately poplars that divide the beautiful landscape like the squares of a checker-board are set with line and plummet, and their uniform height determined with a spirit level. Surely the straight, smooth, pure white turnpikes are jack-planed and sandpapered every day. How else are these marvels of symmetry, cleanliness, and order attained? It is wonderful. There are no unsightly stone walls and never a fence of any kind. There is no dirt, no decay, no rubbish anywhere--nothing that even hints at untidiness-- nothing that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly and beautiful--every thing is charming to the eye.
[Tip: I'd be doing well to make the tile floor in my 5' by 5' studio apartment pass a beauty inspection.]
[Technical Stuff, no I mean REALLY Technical Stuff: According to Floriculture and Nursery Crops Yearbook September 2007 , "Total [U.S.] sales of greenhouse and nursery crops in 2006 increased by $52 million from 2005, a marginal gain over almost $17 billion in gross receipts. Of this amount, floriculture sales from 15 major (program) States were nearly $4 billion."... Now I'll say that's a lot of green being spent on greenery!]
Back in France, Twain makes an interesting transition away from France to reflecting upon a previous trip he had made across the Wild West in a stagecoach.
Once I crossed the plains and deserts and mountains of the West in a stagecoach, from the Missouri line to California, and since then all my pleasure trips must be measured to that rare holiday frolic. Two thousand miles of ceaseless rush and rattle and clatter, by night and by day, and never a weary moment, never a lapse of interest! The first seven hundred miles a level continent, its grassy carpet greener and softer and smoother than any sea and figured with designs fitted to its magnitude--the shadows of the clouds. Here were no scenes but summer scenes [...]; to scan the blue distances of a world that knew no lords but us; [...] Then thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes; of limitless panoramas of bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of pinnacled cathedrals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the eternal rocks and splendid with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of dizzy altitudes among fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where thunders and lightnings and tempests warred magnificently at our feet and the storm clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces!
Awesome! For other than the obvious thrill of the rollercoasterish stagecoach ride itself, a great deal of what inspired Twain was the pure untouched-by-the-hands-of-man beauty of God's inimitable creation. Thousands of miles of beauty created in a fraction of a day. Isn't it funny how many scurries and hurries and moils and toils for hours and days and weeks which man undertakes when attempting to beautify, while it takes God but a snap of a finger or two to accomplish as much or more. Man's efforts are burdensome in comparison.
Man can also be so very inept while tending to the beauty that God has given him.
Titikum is an awesome Orca created by God. At two-years old he was taken by man from Icelandic waters to a life-long captivity and since has been made to live under man's expectations of what a Killer Whale should be. Tragedy and chaos have ensued from his captivity with not only the death of more than one handler, but also with seemingly endless and not easily-answerable debates over what should be done with this free-spirit. On two different trips to my dad's home in WA I have had the breath-taking and never-to-be-forgotten privilege of seeing an Orca pod (family) swim not too far from the deck of his home on the Haro Strait. Yet I don't pretend to know the answers to whether or not Sea World and other Marine Parks should keep these awesome creations captive for show and conservation. I do know that God's ineffable creation does not easily fit into man's tiny little box.
And how easily man can crush the beauty that God has given us.
Just two days ago in my home county of San Diego CA, the body of a bright and beautiful young high school student , Chelsea King, was found buried in a shallow grave near Lake Hodges, a place where Bret & I have spent time fishing. This beautiful young "Angel", as her dad calls her, was known to brighten the lives of those she knew. Her vivacity, humor and giving spirit sparkled into the lives of those around her.
The man who has been arrested in suspicion of her murder is a convicted sex offender, had attempted to abduct another girl jogger last December in the same area where Chelsea disappeared and is a possible suspect in the disappearance of a yet another girl, 14-year old Amber Dubois. Amber mysteriously vanished from neighboring Escondido last year while on her way to school. Even with the understanding that this man has not had his day in court and may or may not be guilty of some or all of these horrific crimes, the fact remains that this type of situation is all to common in man's world. Even if this particular predator did not do it, someone this week did irrevocable take Chelsea from this earth. In man's eyes, this was shockingly all too easy to do and it was much too soon for her to go from us. She had so much yet to live for and to continue to give to others.
The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness of it, the world and they who dwell in it. Psalm 24:1
Genesis 1:26-31: Then God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.
So God created human beings in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day."
So, there we have it. God made this awesomely complex, resplendent world we call "Earth". Not only did He do this in the blink of an eye (God-time) but He then gave it into our hands to take care of. It is an overwhelming responsibility and one we cannot take lightly. We do not on our own know how to tend to His creation. So we just keep looking up. Not inwardly lest we become prideful. Not at each other, lest we become stymied and lest we stay, well, fairly stupid. So we look up. Someday this might all make sense to us. It doesn't to me now, but I am daily grateful for His beauty around me. It is a gift beyond human words.
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