Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty

John Keats, as you might well know, wrote the above lines at the end of his poem, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," a poem I've liked since I first encountered it.

I understand that, for many, definitions of truth and beauty may differ from mine. That doesn't mean truth isn't truth and, once you know it and it becomes beautiful to you, you are not able to turn your back on it--even if it really hurts. I can't choose darkness, even though it might seem easier, when I know light.

I know I'm being cryptic. It's just that kind of day.

Truth--real truth--is the ultimate beauty. I believe that much more than I believe some of the false definitions out there.

Are you beautiful? My answer, no matter who you are, is this: yes! Not because of who you are, but because of who God is.

You are loved. That is truth. It's beautiful--even when it hurts.

Unusual Beauty

This water lily stands at the edge of a pond in Middletown, Maryland, at Surreybrooke, a collection of garden rooms and nurseries. I was taken with the lily's unusual shape (though there were other water lilies, as you can see in the background here, most of the plants in the gardens were of the also-lovely and still-flowering kind). This one, along with some of the other lilies, had already begun its preparation for next season's seeds and next year's plants.

Iowa Savanna

Last month, I visited my birthplace, Iowa, and I learned that Iowa's pre-agricultural land was not just prairie, but also bona fide savanna.

I usually think of savanna as a place in Africa where you'd find lions, not pigs, but I can't deny that Iowa's savanna, its grasslands punctuated by bur oaks and, this time of year, black-eyed Susans, has a beauty all its own.

I've thought this before: growing up in a place that's not the splashiest tourist attraction in the world can help you learn to see loveliness wherever you are.

And, yes, there are more pigs than people in Iowa. A story appeared in the Washington Post to this effect while I was in graduate school, and a mischievous coworker from Boston teased me unmercifully about it. I checked it out today, and it's still true that pigs come in first by a longshot: people number just under 3 million, while pigs top 15 million, according to the Iowa Pork Newsroom.