Beauty is a Practice
On bird, Earth, and empathy
October workshops have landed. If you’re in NYC, sign up for next week’s workshops. I’ll be guiding a Suminagashi session on Sunday, October 6 in Sunnyside, another on Wednesday, October 9 in Fort Greene, and another on Thursday, October 10 in Greenpoint. New to this month is an outdoor meditation and journaling session. Full calendar can be found here. Paid Subscribers, another Seasonal Session landed for you, along with the September Colorway, a riff on figs. If you’re looking for more 1:1 mindful, creative support, you may enjoy my 1:1 sessions — let’s connect.
The smallest bird sound calls out and carries across the morning sky. Listen closely. Notice the birds’ Spring songs lulled to a chip, followed with the fast flap of wings. Pausing to watch the birds as they make their way to their new season we awe and call and whisper our own celebrations into the blue of the morning. We stand, breathe, silent, watching until wing catches some glimpse across sight lines — then spark! of attention. Awe and beauty ripple out on the forces of resonance and we murmur, coo, and cry out in collective joy. Leaves raining down in a kaleidoscope of tones, painting copper-yellow-green across the ground as we continue.
I travel through life guided by the force of beauty. The amount of times I have expressed tears of whole-bodied awe, and appreciation over the beauty of food, of birdsong, of flower, and each other, seems to grow in direct proportion and relation to witnessing the full capacity of this planet: death, destruction, life, and all. Raindrops dotting the growing edges of roses as beautiful as the strength and resilience of humans, animals, and nature working together. The more I travel through life, and the more I turn toward the felt sense of beauty, the more I learn to root into the wonder of resonance with living.
Despite decay, immense heartbreak, seemingly ceaseless forces of destruction, the beauty of the Earth continues and I turn toward it as inspiration, as ingredient, with devotion, and as an antidote. Beauty is a beam of light, an impulse to exist, and the beauty I seek is of awe and appreciation, in language, color, sound, taste, expression, connection, and nature, and in the tone of living. Peak beauty arrives one early morning: a pair of two blue-headed vireos perch on the whisper-thin edge of a branch, their plumage yellow-green-gray and gray blue-seen through the clear view of the binocular lens. These birds are small and stunning, and what I find most beautiful, and awesome, to the root of the word, is understanding how far each bird may travel, guided by an inner sense and as they fly crossing hundred of miles-wide land masses through the days and nights.
Resonance with awe, wonder, and beauty prompt us onward and are necessary ingredients for continuity. In perceiving beauty, there is often intrigue and delight, and it brings us forward. In On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry makes the case for beauty, and challenges the idea that beauty is a frivolous distraction, illustrating the ways in which beauty is a necessary motivator in the continuations of movements and making progress forward toward fairness and justice. Beauty confers a channel for care, and infuses an inherent insistence for continuity into life through the impressions of resonance. “What is the felt experience of cognition at the moment one stands in the presence of a beautiful boy or flower or bird?” she asks. Then later: “The first flash of the bird incites the desire to duplicate not by translating the glimpsed image into a drawing or a poem or a photograph but simply by continuing to see her five seconds, twenty-five seconds, forty-five seconds later—as long as the bird is there to be beheld. People follow the paths of migrating birds, moving strangers, and lost manuscripts, trying to keep the thing sensorily present to them.”
I wind through the streets and turn toward that sense of beauty: the smell of butter and flour and burnt sugar from early morning bakeries; the optimistic glow of the first hints of daylight; peach-pink dahlias arranged in rows on rain-drenched sidewalks; two strangers turning toward each other to offer care instead of a cold-city-shouldered turning away, or the awe in understanding more of how monarchs and warblers mate and fly, following their innate wisdom as they bridge the long journey across seasons and between continents. The pull of beauty can be so strong, at times; it feels necessary, involuntary, innate, and reviving. Honoring the pull of beauty is a practice in remembering why we’re alive.
It’s no wonder that profound moments of awe, beauty, and joy arise often in nature. A landscape stuns in its grandeur, a river astounds in its immensity, a sunset rippling out across horizons so vibrant we are compelled to sit, watch, and wonder. We may be moved by the bright flash of bird wing, tender flower petal, or swooned by sweet berry. Like drumbeat and heartbeat and season urging song, body, landscape, the relationship between our senses and the beauty of the Earth, and the resonant connection it creates is what has led to our continuation as a species — the diminishment of which is witnessed in present chaos of climates change and destruction.
The beauty of nature can be a profound connector in the direction of empathy for the planet. If we care for something, we don’t want to see it wounded. If we care for something, we feel a sense of curiosity, connection, and care, and in that resonance, want to celebrate it. We want to tend the wounds, encourage it onward, and ensure that it continues. “A connection with nature creates a sense of belonging to the wider natural world as part of a larger community of nature,” one study shares. Connecting to the beauty of nature is a necessary ingredient in nourishing our lives with the planet and each other.
When I talk about beauty I mean beauty to the core of living. Beyond forward momentum and aesthetic resonance, beauty is at its strongest when it reminds us of our humanity. When I talk about beauty I mean the smell of pine trees, the surface of the water, the depth of our emotions, the songs we make, the sunlight across a day, shoulder, page. Rage can be beautiful, as can love, as can a plate of food, a conversation, or the resonance of silence, as can dedication, and tenacity toward visions and goals, that there is beauty in perseverance.
Beauty rises and falls like the breath, or the sigh of relief of as things working out, found also in the creases of the sides of smile from of a life well-lived worn, in attempts to imagine the immensity of the cosmos and the midnight blue unknowns of the oceans, and in smallest plumage and call of night flying warblers. Beauty exists within us, and falls in the the simple-yet-sometimes-forgotten experience of our bodies producing breath after breath dancing between atmosphere and oxygen — another constant contact with the environment.
I have been moved toward the edges of canyons despite a fear of heights to witness the immensity of mountains and the awe they ensue, and have been moved to the ripple of chills and tears by a bright rose, tomato, plate of olives, sip of coffee, a film, a friend, song’s feeling. Beauty is an onward driver, like a drumbeat, a motivating force, reminding us through color, texture, line, sound, taste, feeling, smell about the nature of the Earth and our humanness. Wake up! The roses call out in their brightness, the sweet dripping juice of the summer peach. Staring up at the trees, eyes and mind toward the sky, eyes scanning skyline for flashes of wing, song, and day in the oaks, pine, and London planes, I feel this momentum onward. In my brightest moments and worst days, I find some spark of my own life in resonance with nature. Continue, nature whispers.
Perception follows our attention, and looking through the lens of beauty, I find that which is sensed as beautiful compounds; suddenly, because I aim to see it, I feel gratitude, finding it everywhere. The language of Earth seems to be berry, birdsong, sunlight, rainstorm. A friend, once, asked so beautifully: “What does the Earth do to get our attention?”
On the impacts of climate change, Thich Nhat Hanh writes,
“We can all experience a feeling of deep admiration and love when we see the great harmony, elegance and beauty of the Earth. A simple branch of cherry blossom, the shell of a snail or the wing of a bat – all bear witness to the Earth’s masterful creativity. Every advance in our scientific understanding deepens our admiration and love for this wondrous planet. When we can truly see and understand the Earth, love is born in our hearts. We feel connected. That is the meaning of love: to be at one.
Only when we’ve truly fallen back in love with the Earth will our actions spring from reverence and the insight of our interconnectedness. Yet many of us have become alienated from the Earth. We are lost, isolated and lonely. We work too hard, our lives are too busy, and we are restless and distracted, losing ourselves in consumption. But the Earth is always there for us, offering us everything we need for our nourishment and healing: the miraculous grain of corn, the refreshing stream, the fragrant forest, the majestic snow-capped mountain peak, and the joyful birdsong at dawn.”
Break focus with the screen, for a single glimpse, a minute, and start to notice life and meditate on the moment: sound, shape, color, texture of life vibrating in time, frequency, and tone. In your immediate environment, what is present and beautiful? Can you count out, seek, or see the colors you love? Whether bright red flower, sweet picked fruit, flash of fire or skylight or birdsong, or stunning view, Earth calls out to us — listen.
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