Tell Me Something Beautiful

I've been doing heaps of thinking (what else is new?) of late.... this time I've been thinking a bit about beauty. For those of you who were around last summer, you may have met and hung out with a friendly dude named Buzz. Buzz was awesome. What happened to him, sadly I cannot say. He left several marks on our hearts, for sure, but for me the most notable was his often made request to "tell me something beautiful...tell me something that'll last me a lifetime."

Why? I think beauty is tied to hope. As someone who has been frustrated quite a bit recently, I've been searching hard and wide for things to remove my mind from the abyss of dark thoughts that continuously haunt me. I can't think my way out of these thought patterns, but what seems to snap me back to God's goodness is when I am confronted by something beautiful. It seems to wash the dark cloud of tension from my forehead, pulls on my aorta like a string and lifts my heart and with it my chest into a full breath of a sweet aroma of God's grace.

I watched one of the "bracelet" videos put out by the Invisible Children yesterday. It talked about a the rehabilitation program for the children that had been forced to serve in the LRA. In it the narrator of the video, who does music therapy with children, brings her talents and skills to the children of Uganda, and slowly begins the process of helping children, traumatized and withdrawn in response to the war, to express themselves. They have trained their hearts to feel no emotion, no pain, no joy...nothing. So to use music which is accessible, fun, and by nature expressive to allow the kids the freedom to tap into a sealed off well of feeling is...brilliant. Anyways, in the video the narrator befriends a 16 year old girl who tragically, over the course of her three years in the LRA, was repeatedly raped by a 50 year old Commander in the army, and from this she becomes pregnant. Many of the babies born in the war serve as disconcerting reminders of the war, and are given names that mean things like "orphan" or "unwanted". Now in the video, it shows the transformation that this child, her name is Grace, undergoes, and how through the friendship and love of the narrator, she feels the joy and freedom of expressing herself (and she is VERY expressive), and knows beauty again through love and music. When her baby is born, she names it "Thank God".

I believe Buzz wanted to hear of beauty, whether simple or profound, because it is glimpses of beauty that remind us of God's goodness, that remind us of hope, that remove us from the destructive thought patterns that plague our hearts, the haunting memories of things we have done or seen or are afraid of doing in the future. I know this was true for Buzz, he often looked at me with half crazed eyes and said, "Kris, you don't know what I've done. I could tell you things, Kris, that would curdle your blood." And then grief and sorrow would wash over his face, and the soft Buzz that we know and love would return. He needed beauty to forget and to believe in himself, that he was a good man, which he was. We live in a beautiful world, and often we do not claim that and call it so.

So I would LOVE to hear and see and experience what you find beautiful. I think for next week at the "last week at the Outhouse celebration" I think people should be FOOD, and Jess if you bring Funfetti cake I promise not to smash it in your face (unless you get me first...), and if you would like to bring something...anything...that you see as beautiful, I would love that. Something written, a picture, a story, a song, a DANCE (gweniie), a smell, a memory, a video, a friend. Anything. Call beauty what it is...and share it, so we can all know beauty. I think this is such an incredible way to worship God. That's my piece...I shared some stories that I see as beautiful... here are some rad picture by an adventure photographer..especially check out the "Essays" tab and select the "Lost Coast"...basically check it all out. www.coreyrich.com

Cheers!
Filak