Beauty

I think I've forgotten about the importance of beauty in our lives. Not everything expensive or chic is beautiful. Sometimes less is better.As my healing continues, I realize there is beauty in the growth that is happening during and in spite of my pain. Circumstances are not painful but it is the hurt from the past that creates dread and fear inside us so that every little thing that seems bad feels so daunting and insoluble.

Now my view of beauty is deeper and more joyful. It's in proportion to the exaggerated hurt I have been feeling and now the joy is also multiplied. For the first time in a while, just swimming, seeing the cloudy sky (Hong Kong has been raining 90% of the time since the Spring), chatting with friends and music yes my music also stimulates a bigger feeling of excitement. Something good happening seems so great. My dumbness is gone.

That's why I chose the "Pass me not" song. The original is relatively calm and collected. But this choir makes it into a plea for life for love for newness. No matter what you believe, we all cry inside for those things.

Black Gospel music is fantastic. It's origin is in the pain of slavery and this deep wound somehow produced a type of music that has influenced all music for over 100 years: blues, country music, jazz, R&B, hip hop, rap, urban ... The main influence in mainstream popular music today. This is how powerfully people can overcome oppression. I am not saying the past was right because the wounds of racism and lording arbitrary power over someone just because you can is sin in it's ugliest form. But the African American culture is the definition of cool for the 2nd half of last century and has spread to all of the youthful world!

It begins with the cry of the heart for all those things that motivates us to live. If you haven't done so, listen to the song "Pass me not". I rediscovered it because my heart cries out. 

Beauty can result from the ugliest places as new life springs from the healing. And that is the essence of life.