The space between…

She came butterfly-floating in on tip tip tippy toes, a breath of air.

“Mama, I found this bee-ooo-tiful flower for you! I love you!”, she said. And just as fast as my girl had alighted, she was gone again, her laughter following her as she ran again to the epic pile of leaves she had been raking. (To jump in, of course. Don’t you?)

The beauty of it, this perfect, late Fall rose, settled among the detritus of a busy day piled all over my desk- took my breath away and nearly brought me to tears.

My girl has a way of doing that. She sees beauty and shares it, beautiful herself, and returns to her endevours with nary a thought as to what she’s just done- she’s only six after all. Her eyes are open to beauty. She breathes it in, shares it, emanates it. It’s the joy of a little girl.

And then something happens. Somewhere along the way, perhaps a little girl shares beauty with someone and they do not notice it; or worse, scorn it- and a note is taken by that young girl- and they don’t share the beauty they see the next time. Little by little, the vision of beauty becomes dimmed and shaded, fogged and cracked.

I couldn’t help but think as I eyed the rose upon my desk- ‘would I have noticed this had I been in her place?’ I would have been furiously and hurriedly raking the leaves (an unfavored chore), eyeing the long spaces of yard still untouched and piled over. I would not have glanced down the long garden wall where the rose bushes are, and I wouldn’t have stopped long enough to notice the bloom low on the vine. I’d like to believe I would have picked it had I saw it- but would I have shared it?

She teaches me, you see.

The rose is still on my desk today, fresh as Monday’s bloom, tucked into a small slate-blue tea cup.

I eye it as I work through my to-do list, as the news rolls in, as I try to balance in the precarious, as the ink bleeds more red than black in the pocketbook, as the wind howls around the eaves. Uncertainty. Confusion. Frustration.

Beauty.

And I’m coming to a manifesto of sorts, a clarion call in my heart. The world goes crazy, yes, and I? I will show you the roses. I will tell of unfailing love and glorious hope. As much as I am able, I will breathe peace. We have plenty plenty wordsmiths, artisans, polticians who can show the reality, the surreal, the absurd. We need far more willing to find the beauty and bring it to the harried desks of our workaday lives, the truth-tellers, the peace-givers in a world gone mad, who make us stop and breathe beauty, and maybe in so doing, consider the God of the rose, and the thorn. Yes, this is it. Beauty-bringer. This is what I wish to be.