​​​Dear LCC Community,

I find myself heartened by the fall beauty everywhere I turn. 
In the best moments, I can feel bathed in it, and I can feel in relationship with the beauty, 
another name for which is the love of God. 
The gifted poet John O’Donohue helps me to integrate with beauty. Take these few 
remarks he made in a wonderful interview in 2008: “Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness. 
Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming. So I think beauty in that sense is about 
an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and 
also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life… 
“There are individuals holding out on frontlines, holding the humane tissue alive in 
areas of ultimate barbarity, where things are visible that the human eye should never see. 
And they’re able to sustain it because there is in them some kind of sense of beauty that 
knows the horizon that we are really called to in some way. 
“I love Pascal’s phrase that you should always keep something beautiful in your mind. 
I have often [found this]… like in times when it’s been really difficult for me. If you can keep 
some kind of little contour that you can glimpse sideways at, now and again, you can endure 
great bleakness.” 
This reminds me of Br. David Stendl-Rast’s statement: “We can’t be grateful for 
everything in life. We can’t be grateful for pain and loss. But there’s always something we can 
be grateful for.” 
Beauty and Gratitude. Two names for the Love of God, along with Courage and 
Wisdom and Joy. 
When I can connect with any of these or any of the other fruits of the spirit, I open to 
whatever life is bringing me. I am more open to relationship… with my own self, my soul, and 
the wonders of life flowing all around and through me. 
More and more, I feel the need to be attentive to these relationships. I recognize more 
and more that they are in me, and I am in them, and that they are essential to well-being. 
So many of our current hardships have to do with isolation and separation. We can do 
something about this. We can apply the salve of connecting to what we are given. 
At the heart of every wisdom tradition is the truth that we find salvation by 
surrendering to relationship…  with each other…  with the earth… with all life. This is how we 
discover we are part of the oneness of God, and so we never need to fear.

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Peace and blessings,

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​

 Lee

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