Summer Road Trip 2023, Part 2: In Beauty We Walk

We can travel around the world to see its beauty. Or we can look right in our own backyard.

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Tuesday, August 22, 2023

In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again

         I have always found these words from the Navajo Blessing Way ceremony to be lovely and evocative. At one level, they invite me to be aware of all the beauty around me. And, indeed, there is much beauty around us.

         Many of my friends — yours, too, I bet — are returning from trips to France, or Italy, or Southern California (pre-Hilary), or Maine, or New York City. They share photos and stories of the beauty they have experienced in those faraway places. And they evoke the beauty of those places for me to enjoy vicariously.

         I have been drenched in beauty the last couple weeks, starting with a visit with El Paso friends I wrote about last week to a big meander counterclockwise through New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, to end with visiting more friends in Ruidoso.

         All of that beauty, just waiting for me to discover and acknowledge it. That is the deep wisdom of the Blessing Way: the beauty exists in and of itself, but it only becomes real to us when we choose to participate in it:

Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me
I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.
I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me.

         Beauty is an interaction between the world around us and our minds and spirits. The proper attitude is one of awareness, attention and gratitude. And so, I have been submersing myself in beauty these last weeks. From a summer storm in Gallup:

         … to the stunning Canyon de Chelly in Arizona:

         … to the magnificent Mesa Verde rising from the desert in southwestern Colorado:

         … to the vales and mountains of Colorado north of Durango:

         … to the historic spirituality of Taos and Taos Pueblo:

         … to the rainswept desert plateau north of Santa Rosa, New Mexico:

         To be honest, I did not always bring the proper attitude to my interactions with beauty. I was distracted by getting from Point A to Points B, or how much gas was in Big Red, or taking the perfect picture to share with you. I tried to discipline myself to just enjoy, just be, but I was not always successful.

         In beauty I walk. And drive. And mosey. And I am very lucky to do so. Soon I will be back in Texas and, not long after that, in Austin. There the beauty will be more familiar and the challenge – for all of us – will be to notice, experience and celebrate that beauty. Right here, right now, wherever we are. And it is a lifelong challenge:

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.