Welcome to Pushing Pause where we take a moment each week to explore faith, rest, and beauty in our everyday lives. In each week’s email you’ll find a short reflection, a resource, and a practice to go deeper with the week’s topic. I’m glad you’re here!
Each year by mid March the deep pink blooms begin to uncurl on the saucer magnolia tree outside my front door. I watch and wait knowing that the fullness of their beauty will be short lived, especially if a late season frost comes at the peak of their wonder. Before we moved here 10 years ago I had never noticed trees like this, or if I had I did so without a conscious awareness. However after I experienced the beauty in my own yard I began to pay attention to the presence of these trees while I was driving or walking around the neighborhood. It turns out there were a lot of these trees to see when I began to pay attention.
Last week I penned these words, “Beauty is the antidote to despair.” and began ruminating on this thought more. In the face of hardships and the news cycles that leave us weary, it’s hard to make space for an appreciation of beauty. Our hope begins to buckle under the weight of despair as we see and feel the brokenness of our world. It’s important to pay attention to the hurts and injustices of the world but without the beautiful moments we’d sink in a sea of despair. Beauty is the balance. Beauty has a power of restoration for us that we need!
Keeping our eyes alert to beauty helps us renew our strength to face the hardships. Beauty springs up from the cracks even in the most unexpected places, sometimes even as weeds. The appreciation of beauty is a holy practice. It’s like choosing love in the face of hate. Choosing worship despite doubt. Appreciating beauty is like a tie that tethers us to the Creator. It can serve as a reminder that redemption and life are possible and that God is still present. Admiring beauty doesn’t diminish the aches of our spirits but is like a balm to our brokenness. In a world bent towards pain, beauty connects us to healing. A kind gift of our Creator reminding us hope is not lost.
If research is correct, we’re more prone to remember negative moments than positive ones. People are more likely to write a negative review of a product or restaurant than a positive one. It seems we’re more conditioned to notice the negative than the positive. Maybe this makes the practice of noticing beauty even more important. It becomes like a spiritual discipline to tune our eyes to beauty and our hearts to appreciation when we’d more easily point out the things that need changing.
As I sat with these words and began this writing I realized I’ve actually written a similar piece in issue 25 last July called “Remember Beauty”. I started to hit delete and move onto another thought but the truth is I could use this reminder over and over again, and I thought perhaps maybe you could too. Our lives and our world are in a continual game of tug o’ war between good and hard moments. This is to say, being human is hard but ultimately I believe beauty, goodness, love, and God will prevail. Let’s bear witness to the beauty before us, not as an excuse to bury our heads in the sand and ignore pain but as an audacious act of hope.
A Resource
Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it. -Barbara Brown Taylor
A Practice
Cultivate the habit of noticing beauty:
Beauty is all around us but sometimes it takes some training to allow ourselves to slow and purposefully notice it.
Choose one activity this week where the sole purpose is to notice beauty. Take a walk, visit a community garden or park, chase the sunset, sit on your porch without distractions, or whatever stirs your heart towards appreciating beauty.
In your days make a conscious effort to let your eyes settle on something beautiful and offer a word of appreciation for it in the moment.
Where will you uncover beauty today?
Thank you for reading! I hope you find beautiful moments in your days this week.
- Lindsay