Beauty around us: Take 1 — Sunlight
Introduction to the series
This introduces a series of experiences that attempt to capture beauty, at least as I see it. Some will be visual, some aural, some may use other senses or even ideas to share the many shining forths of beauty among us. All will be mercifully short, more like snapshots than fully developed essays.
Often, we expect beauty to be rare, precious, or so startling as to completely absorb our attention. We stand transfixed. We cannot miss it. But beauty can also be found in the insignificant, the overlooked, the unseen and unheard — in short the mundane. And that too can make us stop in absolute astonishment — if we take notice.
My first choice to manifest beauty in my series is sunlight.
Sunlight surrounds us but we see through it, seldom noticing the light itself. As Socrates claimed in Plato’s Republic, the sun illuminates everything around us and makes the world visible but we do not focus on the sun itself. Indeed, we would be unwise to do so as it can burn out our retina, even though it is 91 million miles away from our planet. From Plato onward through the philosopher Plotinus in the third century, the metaphor of light as signaling truth, beauty, and goodness persists. The power of sunlight is harnessed in the painting of halos in Renaissance and Medieval art to signify the blessed, those who “are awake to the presence of god.” But even in cartoons, the lightbulb appears over the head of someone who has understood. Eureka! While we enjoy false suns that prolong our day due to candles, oil lamps and now the power of electricity, none of these substitutes quite speak to the beauty of sunlight itself.
In our day to day world, we can discover its power of being both beautiful and beautifying. We notice it more in its absence. A grey day leaves everything flat, almost one dimensional, and dull. Our mood sinks a bit. Or maybe a lot. The further north on this planet you live, the more you become aware of its absence in the dark winter months. Even an autumn day during the full glory of tree color can be muted without its presence and fail to delight. But if the sun peeks out from behind the cloud or we wake up to a day of full sun, then the world glows, literally but also figuratively. On a winter day it can remind us of spring and summer’s warmth and we turn our face towards it, absorbing its warming rays as our eyelids glow red. But in the summer it glares down on us and we run and hide from its penetrating wave. (Or else we bravely bake in its presence and regret that choice later in life as our skin reminds us of our folly.)
Flowers turn to follow the sun, but so do animals. They measure time and activities by the slant of its rays as much as the temperatures around them. We are captivated by a beam of sunlight which reveals a universe of dust floating gently downward or perhaps a cloud of insects rising up to meet the sky. But in my small world I see the power of the sun in my dog’s desire to bask in its presence. She follows its flow around my house, joined occasionally by the cat — less of a sun appreciator than the creature of darkness, the cat.
So, note sunlight. And how it illuminates your mind, heart, and very being with hope…and the promise of beauty. Be awake.
