If You Look Softly Enough

Yes, this builds a bit on yesterday’s post, “If You Look Closely Enough.” The photo is from a daytime walk on campus at University of Texas Arlington. I was drawn to the red. I was drawn to the carpet of greenery on the grounds surrounding it. I was drawn to look softly. To let the image blur slightly before me, to see the flowered eyes show themselves in the meadow.

Soft eyes are also part of the invitation that I’m interested in as I work with groups. To look for what only can be seen with welcome of beauty. This too is the kind of work that interests me. Beneath the surface and beneath the patterned reductive habit that so many of us adopt, there lays an essential place for artistry, for poetry, and for mystery.

For me there is no doubt that such invitation to see, to look softly, brings forward images and movies that are at the core of the crisp solutions that we so seek and need. It’s a bit of the common phrase, “slow down to speed up.” It’s also, more deeply, invitation to practice, “commit to beauty — inner and outer will guide — from that unique and good things can show themselves.”

One Reply to “If You Look Softly Enough”

  1. “commit to beauty — inner and outer will guide — from that unique and good things can show themselves.”

    I’m in the midst of a decision and struggling to find the way that is “right.”

    My mind argues both ways. And my heart is uncertain. Because of your writing here, I am going out to the labyrinth to settle my heart and find the answer.

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