Beauty in the Moods of a Creek

"The world did not have to be beautiful to work. But it is."
--Mary Oliver

I liked Mary Oliver's statement about beauty not being exactly necessary when I first heard it on NPR, and I still do. But what she's also saying is that human beings find the world beautiful. We may find it beautiful because we're created by it and embedded in it. So it resonates through us strongly enough to strike us with awe. And the more we realize we aren't really separate from it, the more we appreciate it.  

To find beauty, pay attention. It's all around, in your backyard, in the eyes of a friend, in the passing clouds. Look into a wild place, even a small one. You can see there what billions of years of evolution have prepared you to see. 

It's safe to say that at any time, somewhere in the world, rain is falling on the surface of a stream. And rain makes life possible, makes our blue-green home a living thing. We're don't just live in that home. We're part of it. 

My much-watched creek has moods. It doesn't fall into the emotional states we call moods, but it evokes them in those who watch it. The moods are affected by the light, the extent and color of surrounding vegetation, water levels that run from dry to flood. Changing seasons influence all of these elements. The tilt of the earth in relation to sunlight, then, shapes the sensations that enter my mind and body when I look on this tiny patch of earth. And the sensations shape my mood. A late-evening mood, a springtime mood, a winter mood. A mood very similar to those of others, but in the last analysis, one all my own.

I am not separate from all these mood-molding elements. My existence takes its shape and form from them. Why would I not find them beautiful? 

The ivy in the foreground above hints at something unseen, whatever supported its climb to the level it holds here. The picture is partial, but suggests something beyond it--everything else it's connected to. 

Beauty enters awareness, too, when we see these interconnections in the world, the links that tell us we aren't isolated, that we're part of a great unity. It often takes years of reflection to realize this. We are, after all, " . . . only ourselves, and that promise." But the promise is so very rich.