{Snow} Scattered Beauty

It is snowing.

Not big fat flakes.

Not small shapeless flakes.

Flakes that are both tiny and perfect. Focus hard enough and you can see that each flake is like an impeccable, flawless spur, built of crystals and magic and perfect beauty. One flake is enough to make us marvel. One flake. One tiny little flake. And then, maybe, you realize that your eye is adjusting like a computerized miracle to be able to focus on that tiny flake, and then you let your eyes readjust and you see that the entire world is flurrying with millions of these self-same flakes; there are too many to inspect each one. Some of the beauty is going to be unnoticed by human eyes forever.

But it's still beauty.

It's fluffing down on us and blanketing the world in white. Large and broad and all-encompassing to show the purity of our God and how He views us through Christ's sacrifice. The snow is also tiny and small and not-a-one-is-identical to show that God cares enough to imagine each design and then create it. Does it matter to God that we won't see the flawless creation that is every single snowflake? Not really. The small ones pile on top of one another in a glorious display of perfection, salvation, mercy. Snowflakes are glory-screamers.

I wish we would take the time to realize that magic is real; that is, the magic of the fact that snow falls, or rain drops, or winds blow. They don't have to do that, you know. From a young age I always had a sneaking sense of living in a fairy-world when it came to creation. There was something about "the fragile beauties" that was extremely...thoughtful. Someone was conjuring these things out of pure pleasure. Someone was spreading beauty and it wasn't just because "that's what snow does." Then I read the essay on "fairyland" by Chesterton and understood:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” 

-G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Exulting in monotony. Who is patient and wise enough for that? But maybe the thing is, monotony--like snow--becomes more beautiful the stiller you are. That everyday grind you do? Have you tried adjusting your lens and seeing the fragile beauty of the day-to-day? To the casual observer, a world covered in snow might seem perfectly ordinary. (I hope not, but it could be) But to the person who knows we live in Fairyland with a Magician who breathes out every flake of snow to a form peculiarly His own fancy...that snow isn't a natural disaster that makes them late for work. That snow is a miracle and an allegory and a love-letter written from the heart of the Divine to His glory-displayers who are fuddy-dudding around like they weren't created for an incredible destiny.

Take a minute to look at the snow.

Remember the mercy.

Praise the One who imagines Beauty and scatters it over the land.

The Little Green Road

"Keep it secret; keep it safe."

-Gandalf

There's something precious about keeping secrets. I don't mean harmful secrets or things you really ought to tell other people, or prayer requests or your own faults or failings.

I mean things like modesty: keeping the secret of your body from everyone else but the one person God has ordained to be your spouse.

I mean beauty: "I gazed--and gazed--but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought. For oft when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude."

I mean the thousand quiet things that don't need to be told/shown/spoken in order to be enjoyed.

I mean the things that are most beautiful when kept silent:

The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.” 

-G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

It will seem to you that I've been in a reflective mood recently, what with the post on flirtation last time and now this, and perhaps I am. Or maybe I'm just finally finding time to write the things down that have been living in my brain, unrecognized for the longest period because my schedule has been so wacked. I'm not a huge SAVE THE EARTH person. Not at all. But in the same vein of keeping things secret, I found the perfect illustration:

I live in the countryside and there's this lovely bit of a triangle made from three different roads. The patch between the three is a secret patch of forest and I love it because it's so forgotten; nobody uses it for anything because it's too small to hunt on, it's too tangled to walk through, and I'm pretty much the only person who goes for a walk these days anyhow. On the opposite side of one of the roads, there was another patch of forest--this one rather large. And winding back into the forest was this lovely little green road that always looked like Ireland with the sun coming down, filtered through the leaves. I liked to think what sort of road it was: who took their ATV's down it to go hunting, or drove down it in their pick-ups to go fishing in one of the copperhead-infested ponds way back on Mr. Byrum's land. And someday, I told myself, I'd get brave enough to step past the No Trespassing sign and just set foot on that little green road. It was most beautiful to me because it was overlooked, unnoticed, and entirely mine. After all, when you're the only human being who cares to take walks in the country, you're bound to feel a little possessive.

The saddest thing happened...

They cleared that piece of land this past week--harvested all the pines and other trees--and my bit of Ireland is gone. Entirely gone. There's nothing secret and sacred about it. It's not even green anymore since all the equipment dragged brown pine-needles and covered its beauty over in a pall of Business. It's almost enough to make me feel like crying which is entirely silly, I know. I mean, if they planted the pines on purpose to harvest later and took the care to thin them as they were growing, then they've a right to do anything they want with them; in fact, that's good business. That's what it means to work and live in an agrarian society.

But it's not secret anymore. Someone exposed the bit of green road. It's not innocent, but ravaged. It looks like a war-zone. And worse yet, it's not mine. I don't know that piece of land anymore. It looks rakish and wretched and like the difference in Fantine between "At the End of the Day" and "I Dreamed a Dream" in Les Miserables. I hate the new look and I'm trying not to be upset and making myself drive that way and stare at the barrenness and think, "Someday it'll be secret again." Even the Triangle Bit across the road looks different because now the sun stares right in like a nosy neighbor, ferreting out any secretness it used to possess.

I guess this post doesn't have any point except that I think we're way too obsessed with moving forward and telling everything. We over-share the secret, beautiful bits about our lives and Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and even on our blogs. I love to share the beauty with you. I love it so much. I'm a huge fan of taking pictures and helping other people see the fragile beauties. It's a small way I can minister. And yet I never want to lose the wonder of knowing things not everyone in the world knows. I was the only one who cared about the little green road and so it was mine. Now it's gone and no one else will know and that's kind of a really special feeling.

Keep your innocent, pretty special-secrets; they're never going to lose value by being yours. 

The Fragile Beauties

I am sorry I've been so silent of late, but if you saw my hypothetical calender which has included a good friend's wedding and 5 family birthdays in one month, the launching of my literary-themed online shop called The Warren, a re-inspiration for my writing, lots of reading, and the cranking-up of the family school-year, you'd realize there really has been very little time to devote to blogging. Along with this craziness has been lots of thinking, on my part. I don't know why, but I've been in a thoughtful frame of mind recently; such spasms strike me now and again and I think Plato himself would be rather proud of my philosophizing abilities now and then. ;)

From the thinking has sprung a little thing that I am Being Aware Of that I call The Fragile Beauties. I guess you could say that this Thing is like 1,000 Gifts, or even the book Sarah got for her birthday: Cold Tangerines. But The Fragile Beauties trend began for me when I would find certain pictures on Pinterest that had no place on any of the rest of my boards, but that I could not ignore. Pins that captured the little pieces of everyday life that I try to remember to notice. Or things that I've always wished I had a macro-lense to be able to photograph. Things like this:

 

 I haven't read Cold Tangerines , but I know that my Fragile Beauties are a bit less broad a list than 1,000 Gifts. Where the latter paints a broader picture to be grateful for, The Fragile Beauties are the strictly aesthetic blessings. I'm a visual, touchy, feeling, all-five-senses-roaring girl. So I love to notice the beautiful things here on earth that we've been given in abundance. The beauties that are gifts but oh so fragile because they won't last. (Perhaps we'll have even better ones in Heaven?)

Psalm 103:15 says:

"As for man, his days are like grass;

as the flower of the field, so he flourishes

for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

and its place remembers it no more."

Fragility. Humanity. Earth-ness. It's all passing, and little of it will last, huh? But when I cared to think about the fragility a bit deeper, I saw a thing I usually pass over when reading those verses. Over in Mattew 6:28-29:

"...Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

So you see, man's existence on earth might be a little blinkity-thing, but it's still a thing, for a while at least, we flourish as those self-same lilies, and Jesus acknowledges the lilies are beautiful. We're also told that "Every good and perfect gift is from above", and that everything God does is to His glory. So I'm sitting here thinking:

"Gosh; The Fragile Beauties. One life to find them in. My Lover who delights to watch me notice: ...um...game on."

 I'm finding The Fragile Beauties, and I'm marking them mentally, posting them on Instagram (username: heirloomrosebud) with the hashtag: #thefragilebeauties, pinning them on Pinterest, and gathering in the beauty strewn about that so many people pass by. I'm pointing it out to other people, smiling over it myself, thanking God whenever I catch one of those fleeting, fading, lovely things, and enjoying every moment.

I hope you'll join me in this. 1,000 Gifts, Cold Tangerines, The Fragile Beauties; whatever you call them, let's go searching.