"How are you doing?" A business acquaintance ask on a call. "Beautiful", I
respond . A few days later, finishing a transaction with a clerk, my
purchase in hand and my parting word, there it is again, -- beautiful!
What is going on?
While my experience recently of being graced by this word has very little
to do with anything that I have willfully or intentionally created, I am
nevertheless very grateful. It feels good and by the responses and
reactions it has been a bit of a light for others also. This got me
thinking about the classic Christian virtues of the good, the true, and,
yes, the beautiful! What does beauty have to do with health and wellness?
In these interactions, this flow of spirits gives the example of hope to
each other and therefore affect each others wellness journey. How might
this be? Apparently the health choices, attitudes, moods, and behavior of
the five people one is closest to affect motivation and current and future
state of health and well being more than just about anything!
Give beauty back, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote. This internal
movement flows from us with greater ease when we are in the presence of the
beautiful. Maybe more accurately it happens when we allow what is
to wash through us and over us.. And maybe to a certain degree this process is always
happening deep in us and looking for ways to a least seep or peak out,
if not burst out! We take in beauty in art and in the design of a well
done building which invites this opening of our soul to fill those places
that are so regularly marinating in the lie of anxiety and fear.
And when the anxiety gives way, we notice more easily the desire for health
and our conscious willingness is strengthened and positive behaviors happen.
These behaviors then become habits as the brain in its miraculous neuroplasisity
rewires and mylinates( perhaps with greater power if we are consuming an
adequate amount of right kind of fats). And we dance a bit more deeply into the mystery and perhaps in the words
of Meister Eckhart, " Our soul is as young as the day we were born...even
younger!"
