Beauty in a Rock

photograph by Christie Barrack

Monday's are our library day. We drive to the library in Camarillo. It is about 20 minutes from our home in Ventura. On the way there we pass beautiful fields of produce with giant mountains behind them. There is a beautiful old barn. I will stop someday and take a picture. It is a giant red barn that has old California palm trees surrounding it. Everything a barn represents brings me comfort: work, harvest, security, warmth, shade, shelter. The barn always seems to be the heart of a farm. Someday I'd like to travel across the country and take pictures of old barns: The living ones that still have active life in them and the old ones that tell a story of a full life once lived.

Melissa and I were in the car on our way to the library two Monday's ago and as we drove by that particular barn I mentioned again how beautiful it was to me. And Melissa said "Why is it so hard for some people to see beauty?" And I said "I wasn't sure. Maybe they just weren't looking for it." Then Melissa went on to tell me all the things she thought were beautiful and ended with "even a rock is beautiful." She started telling me about her rock collection and how she could see an owl in a certain rock or a heart or just beauty. She also said that you could take simple pebbles and arrange them to make art.

I e-mailed my friend, Christie, about the rock story and she sent me pictures of rocks she had found in Hawaii. I'm attaching the one with the moss on it that has a heart at the top left. We talked about finding beauty in unexpected places. How you can make a point to seek it out in your daily life.

William Blake wrote:

"Too see the world in a grain of sand

and a heaven in a wildflower

hold infinity in the palm of your hand

and eternity in an hour."

Sometimes a raindrop rolling down the window is beautiful. Clouds are often stunningly beautiful. A simple flower, a powerful ocean, a serene lake, deep green trees, brilliant Fall color, ripe apples hanging from a tree...it is clearly everywhere. But to find beauty in a rock is to really look. It is too see hidden beauty right before your eyes.

Here is to finding both the obvious as well as the hidden beauty in today.