Beside Aside

I’m better off with beauty beside me, rather than dead ahead. I have a limited threshold for temperance and circumspection, and know little of how to defend my honour, let alone my salvation, when faced with overwhelming beauty. Particularly when faced with a dread tedium, that will do little to amuse, puzzle or interest me, I fall prey to beauty. I search it out, for some affirmation that I’m alive, that the world is wondrous and there is purpose and play inherent in creation. We can be easily overwhelmed by a sense of tedium, a sense of futile noise, if we let too much of it in. But one should train the eye, with a diligent temperance (working on it), to see and appreciate beauty wherever we find it, to remind ourselves of His goodness, His love, His truths, that we were made for something that transcends our own fickle designs and intentions. Beauty can tilt us towards contemplation, like little else in the world. But it must be to one side, perhaps. Never dead ahead.