Beauty: Opening Our Eyes to the Beauty That Surrounds Us
Have you purchased your Gratitude Journal yet?
I’ve picked mine… take a look. I love the colors.
It has these little gold embellishments sewn to it as well as other gold stitching.
It has lined pages, although I did not care either way.
Check out the journal area at your local Barnes and Noble. They have a really nice selection. In store of course.
Isn’t it a BEAUTY?
‘While the Simple Abundance path is gentle, its lessons are powerful. First of all, we learn to be grateful no matter what our circumstances may be. In offering gratitude for our real lives, we discover that less is truly more. This freedom encourages us to bring order or our affairs and cultivate harmony in our inner world. Going at our own pace, learning to recognize our limitations, appreciating our progress, we weave the lesson into the fabric of our daily moments until they become part of us.
Suddenly one day we feel very much alive and desire more beauty in our personal quest. We come to a deep awareness that creating a beautiful life is our highest calling. “It was as if I had worked for years on the wrong side of the tapestry, learning accurately all its lines and figures, yet always missing its color and sheen,” the journalist Anna Louise String confessed in 1935. We understand her sentiments as life’s color and sheen and beauty call to us.
Today, explore ways to see your world differently. Let your eyes drink in the beauty that surrounds you. Walk to a gallery on your lunch hour and catch that “certain Slant of light” that so enthralled Emily Dickinson. Gaze into the faces of those you love, set the table with care, and relish the preparations you make for dinner, delighting in the presentation of the meal. Light the candles, pour wine or sparkling water in your prettiest goblets, and celebrate this new awareness. It is in the details of life that beauty is revealed, sustained, and nurtured.
Outside, winter’s darkness closes in. Inside, you have found your own Light.’ -Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Some days, oh wait we are being honest, most days, it is all business here at Crystal & Co.
We have so many children, and I know I am outnumbered. To keep everyone in line, I must keep it ‘all business’.
When Garrett was little, I remember enjoying the innocents of his childhood in a way that I probably overlook with Anthony, Nick, Luke and Matthew, because it is all business.
The very thought of letting the kids drink sparkling apple juice out of fancy b.r.e.a.k.a.b.l.e. goblets tonight at dinner, just sends me into a panic attack. What a mess!
And eating dinner by candle-light with these five guys will for sure end in a house fire.
Don’t get me wrong I can be fun.
I am the aunt that loves to show up to our family Christmas gathering with something special for the kids like hot chocolate with marshmallows and candy canes.
I brought a gingerbread house to my sister’s New Year’s Eve celebration for the kids to assemble. We had fun.
But, I certainly know I am absolutely guilty in letting the beauty of everyday things pass me by. I know the “lines and figures” of each of my children, but I do miss out on their “color and sheen”.
Now, it is time to see the beauty, take it in, and teach it to my children.
I suppose they do make plastic goblets somewhere….
Don’t they?
‘You agree- I’m sure you agree, that beauty is the only thing worth living for.’ – Agatha Christie