Several years ago, when I was preparing to leave home and go to college, I was feeling very down. I knew that there would be many talented people at the college where I was going and I did not feel like I fit that mold at all.
I didn’t feel like I had any talents. I was just a plain jane. I prayed and asked God to help me to discover my talents. It was a slow process but over the years since then I have slowly come to know more of myself and develop talents that I didn’t know I had. I still have a lot to learn, discover, and develop. As I have been immersed in Well Educated Heart over the past few years something that has grown in me is a love of beauty. I notice it more. I am inspired by it more. I feel awe and wonder more. I am drawn closer to God more frequently and more deeply. Paying attention to beauty has blessed my life so immensely. I often feel a desire to capture a smidgen of the beauty so I can have something tangible to keep and to share. I guess that is what art is. Well Educated Heart is turning me into an artist. That almost feels pretentious to say out loud. In fact, I second guessed myself in posting this because I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m no Michelangelo or Bach. Far from it. But I am allowing myself to claim this attribute more and more. I am allowing myself to accept that I am becoming an artist in multiple artistic mediums. And that feels so exciting and deeply fulfilling. My Heavenly Father is an artist, THE creator. And I am my Father’s daughter. He has been answering my prayer from all those years ago and I want to recognize that.
Each of us is an artist, in many different forms. But sometimes that quality is dormant until the seed has the right conditions to sprout and grow. WEH has been like organic fertilizer for my artistic seed. I know I’m not the only one. There is just something about being immersed in beauty that changes you. It’s like when Marlene Peterson talks about how a rose blooms from an inner fullness. As Marianne Williamson says, “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
I have been impacted so deeply, in life changing ways, by the beauty that other artists throughout time and place have captured, created, and shared. And that inspires me to capture, create, and share as well. I was reminded of this when I read this poem by Nelle D. Bradley that my friend Haley shared:
Hold high the torch of beauty, truth, and love!
You did not light its glow–
‘Twas given you by other hands, you know.
‘Tis yours to keep it burning bright,
Yours to pass on when you no more need light;
For there are other feet that we must guide,
And other forms go marching by our side;
Their eyes are watching every year and smile,
And efforts which we think are not worthwhile,
Are sometimes just the very helps they need,
Actions to which their souls would give most heed;
So that in turn they’ll hold it high and say,
“I watched someone else carry it this way.”
If brighter paths should beckon you to choose,
Would your small gain compare with all you’d lose?
Hold high the torch of beauty, truth and love!
You did not light its glow–
‘Twas given you by other hands, you know.
I think it started down its pathway bright,
The day the Maker said: “Let there be light.”
And He once said, who hung on Calvary’s tree–
“Ye are the light of the world.”… Go!… Shine–for me.Nelle D. Bradley
So with that, I thought I would share this smidgen of beauty that I tried to capture a few days ago. I woke up to a misty morning, one of my favorite things. It just feels so magical and and it reminds me of when I visited my ancestral land of Sweden.
Another big highlight to this morning was a shepherdess one. I became the owner of a sheep last summer that is extremely skittish because she had had very little human interaction on the farm where she was born. She is pretty difficult to work with because of this but I have a soft spot in my heart for her. At one point, on this misty morning a few days ago, I was in our pasture and the ewes and lambs came over to me (like normal) and wanted me to pet them. I was SO shocked when Cecelia (the skittish ewe) voluntarily came over with the others and actually *wanted* me to pet her for a few seconds. She has never done that before and it felt like such a big win and made my shepherdess heart melt. I just happened to capture it on camera, although it’s so subtle that no one but myself would know.
I finished off my early morning beauty walk by walking through the “secret forest”, a tiny wooded patch of brush and trees on the edge of our land. This has become a favorite spot for me. On this particular morning I loved noticing the bright, freshly rain-watered moss on the trees and several delicate and intricate spiderwebs.
