“Beauty is not an escape from despair. It is the evidence that despair does not get the final word. It is the first act of resistance against the void. And this is the work of our time:
Not to shout at the darkness, but to stand still enough for light to touch us again.”
-Timothy Willard
We need it like we need air: to behold beauty.
I took a walk down a country road that cuts across the side of a hill. It overlooks fields and a few barns. A brick house and a long stone lane.
I followed the road down into the valley and stood looking down a narrow grassy strip that ran between the fields. The grass must have been mowed a couple days earlier and was just beginning to grow back green and lush.
I stood there, letting myself just breathe and admire. The grass was shaded by a field of corn standing straight and tall. Just then a breeze blew through the corn field making the half dry leaves rattle.
The sound reminded me of walks on my family’s farm growing up. After the fierceness of the summer heat had passed, I’d walk leisurely down the dirt road by our cornfields. They’d rattle their leaves and I’d pray and cry and sing and think and soak in the sweet reprieve that is early autumn.
“It’s beautiful view,” a biker said as he wizzed by me on the road. I jumped, surprised.
He was gone before I could reply, but I felt this was all the permission I needed: this was a beautiful spot worth enjoying. I decided to rest in the shade for a bit.
I lay down in the clover and soft grass and looked up at the towering cornstalks and the blue sky above them.
Swallowtails swooped through the air.
Grasshoppers began leaping nearby.
I exhaled deeply.
I cried unsurprised and unashamed.
I let goodness touch me again.
It broke me open in the most caring and tender way.
“I have asked one thing from the Lord; it is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the Lord and seeking him in his temple. ”
Psalms 27:4 CSB
The Worth Of Knowing 
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