whether or not there is love at home. Whether we truly love our families and others; or whether we valiantly try but fail to do so; or for that matter, whether we simply don’t care. Or anything else we do, really. <\/p>\n
The beauty remains. <\/p>\n
Our ability to see it, to feel it, to appreciate it, to savor it, to draw strength from it — those may differ from day to day, or hour to hour, or year to year, depending on a thousand different things. Our own feelings — distraction or sadness, guilt or confusion or grief, anger or callousness — may interfere sometimes, may prevent us from seeing or appreciating the beauty. <\/p>\n
But even when we fail to see it, the beauty is no less present and no less real. The diamond-cut edges of afternoon clouds spread across the Cerulean sky are no less dazzling; the flavors of cheese and strawberries on the tongue are no less piquant and vibrant; the melodies and harmonies of beloved songs are no less glorious. The beauty remains, whether or not we see it. <\/p>\n
Sometimes the sun rises behind morning clouds. But even when it is obscured by a gray haze, the sunrise is no less real. The sky lights up all around; the morning birds chirp and whistle; the day advances. Even when the clouds are low, the sunrise goes on; only our ability to see it changes.<\/p>\n
Whatever we do, whoever we are, we cannot change the sunrise. We may drop clouds in front of it, but the sun will still rise. We may sleep through the dawn, or refuse to look out the window, but the sun will still rise. Whether or not we allow ourselves to see beauty, or even wish to see it; whether we think ourselves good or bad, faithful or adrift, saints or sinners or sinning saints; whether we are loved or liked or hated or unknown; whether we are strong or weak or undecided; whether we open our eyes to see beauty or whether we close them tightly — whatever we do, whatever we are, nothing will change the wonderful reality. <\/p>\n
There is beauty all around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
whether or not there is love at home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}