THE BEAUTY

She has no heart, no idea of harm or benefit. She is the most powerful, the most destructive force on Earth. The tsunami, the hurricanes, the earthquakes of this past year are, for her, nothing new, merely further violence in an endless drama.

But she also is Earth’s consummate artist. From the evanescence of sunlit dew on a spider’s web to the awesome cathedrals of Denali and Everest, from the hundred hues and textures of spring unfolding across open land to the deep but fleeting stare of a lone wolf, she gives us transcendent beauty in uncountable ways, each with the touch of a goddess.

We call her Mother Nature. She remains forever savage and inspiring, fearsome and delightful. But is there a message in her madness, in her duality? Certainly it challenges us to pay attention, to see, and to consider. We never know what is next, what she will provide or deny. Yet how can we best absorb her beauty, be inspired by her finer moments? How can we best minimize the harm of her worst of times?

Is this discovery, in fact, a job for each of us as individuals? Or one for our leaders and our governments? Or our religions? Or our artists? And how does it inform our random acts and our greatest sacrifices? Will we consume our one blink of life with small thinking, as Father Time watches, as bloodless as his mate? Or will we yet find in the fresh, necessary breezes of our shared humanity that we are, indeed, one world, one community, and we must do a much stronger job of looking out for each other, no matter what Mother Nature might throw at us next.

Life Is Beautiful

Not until you realize that life itself is a beautiful thing will you really start to live. Although living combines tragedy with splendor, Life is Beautiful shows that even tragedies reflect something engaging. Even in a time of Nazi Germany, hope was still prevalent in the world and brought with it optimism. They struggled, they fought, they sacrificed, but they survived and were stronger because of it. Through the persecution and the hate that tormented men, it was love that overcame all evil and became something exalted. If you were simply to live, do more than that; live beautifully.

Through the sea of darkness, hope is the light that brings us comfort, faith, and reassurance. It guides our way if we are lost and gives us a foothold on our fears. If we have no hope, the direction through life’s path is darkened and we ourselves become an obscurity. Our struggles will present challenges that can only be overcome by hope but we must never give up. The moment we lose hope is the moment we surrender our will to live. Throughout Life is Beautiful, Guido only endured Nazi tortures because of his confidence in hope, and kept his son alive by showing him the hope in every situation. We live in a world that is disintegrating into a vicious hatred, where hope is needed more than ever but cannot be discerned. Finding that is rare while the world lives in fear, but the belief in something better, something bigger than this, is what keeps life worth living. Through the murders, theft, wars, famine, and corruption, to have hope in the goodness of mankind seems unreasonable. But then you hear a baby speaking her first word, you see seniors holding hands, you feel the first spring rain, or smell the pine tree at Christmas, and remember that no matter how awful it is, there is always hope. No matter how weak we are, we will always survive.

Our struggles are what define and strengthen a person, and survival through these becomes a b...