“The Beauty Way”

I’m working on an essay about my newest and most favorite place to write: a two-seater wooden bench that sits under the shade of a tall River Birch and looks out onto a small garden of blooming  yellow, red, and purple flowers.

Best of all, the bench and the Birch and the garden are, for the most part, all mine, and for most of the times I go there to sit and scribble away.  It is the solitude and the silence, but especially the natural beauty surrounding me that inspires much of what ends up on the page.

And so lately, I’ve been thinking—and scribbling—a lot about beauty, including why it puts me in such a calm, receptive, and creative frame of mind.

Part of that thinking and scribbling drew me back to my studies of American Indian literature during my grad school days, especially to the following Navajo traditional prayer. Personally, a prayer dedicated to beauty is just what I need some days, whether to walk in it or write about it.

The Beauty Way

In beauty I walk.

With beauty before me I walk.

With beauty behind me I walk.

With beauty above me I walk.

With beauty around me I walk.

It has become beauty again.

It has become beauty again.

It has become beauty again.

It has become beauty again.