Beauty

If you have not yet seen the Extended Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, go watch it now. When you are through, watch the short film in the special edition about the young filmmaker that inspired the song "Into the West" that closes the movie. In particular, watch the first of the two fils he made which are included on this disk.

There is a line in that film about "Things so beautiful it makes you hurt to look at them." I had one such moment while visiting the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive. The link of the day took my breath away.

For me, beauty is an echo of a perfect world now shattered, a reminder of how it ought to be. Beauty reminds us that death and decay are not how things were meant to be. I love sunsets, not just because of the colors, but because of the brilliance of the sun peeking through the clouds that so often obscure our vision.

Sometimes to make it through the day I grit my teeth, stare at the ground before me and stagger forward one step at a time. And then, as for Sam on the slopes of Mount Doom, I spy "beauty that this darkness cannot touch." And while I long for the day when I need not view that from a distance, I am encouraged in the meantime just knowing it is there.