We were born into beauty.Beauty is our birthright. Have you ever, while walking in nature, felt all of your senses come alive? Have you noticed a widening state of wonder, an expanding appreciation, and a state of pure presence? Such encounters with sounds, scents, and scenery awaken awe and appreciation, and often fill us with delight. Why are there so few books on the affects of Beauty itself and its expansive vibration? Clearly, we’ve all noticed how palpable and deeply transformative it is when we encounter and notice beauty in our daily rounds and relationships, through music and poetry and the arts. Three years ago, widowed for the second time at eighty, l found myself stepping onto the threshold of the completion of my life. My curiosity came alive, and so began a passage of awakening. Why should I stay in a home I didn’t love, be a steward and a prisoner of all my old stuff? Might I set myself free to begin a new adventure? Was it possible for me to become a joyful gypsy? Could I embark on a road trip to surrender? These thoughts were enlivening. The only precious belongings I had previously packed to take in case of fire or earthquake disaster were a stack of notebooks I called my Illuminated Journals. Over the years I had used colored pens, snapshots and cherished quotes, pasting snippets into the pages, to memorialize times of discovery of meaning. My family would want to have those and would realize how deeply I’d appreciated certain experiences, savored our relationships, celebrated how we’d participated in each other’s lives. Looking back, those moments of memorialized beauty and shared love have meant the most. In this newsletter, I am choosing to create a conversation among soulful women about curating and experiencing a beautiful life. What if we adopt as our sacred duty to stop and notice beauty wherever we find it? Such a practice may be cultivated and cultured. All we need do is to acknowledge and to purposely praise beauty, and to preserve beauty in whichever ways call to us. Are there words you find in poetry that light you up? Have you a collection of quotes that make you smile, feel hopeful, that awaken to send endorphins running through your system? Might you invite a friend you are with to write a fun memory or a simple note to you? How might you use our own unique inborn creativity to bring more beauty into the world and share it with others? How might doing so become a work of art, and your legacy?
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