BEAUTY Archives - Page 55 of 56 -

The Healing Power of Beauty

By Simone Lipscomb | February 18, 2013

I spent this chilly Gulf Coast morning and early afternoon at the beach. It was so amazingly beautiful. Clear water, clear skies with only one little issue….41 degrees when I arrived. But who cares?

Clyde Butcher is a sort of hero of mine. He began his photography career in answer to the death of his son. He poured his grief into capturing beautiful images, uniquely produced. His wife was a partner in his efforts and they created a most wondrous legacy of environmental stewardship.

After spending a couple hours walking at a beach in the National Seashore and then a couple hours sunning with friendly pelicans, I realized the best way to move forward in my life is to immerse myself in beauty. I’ve known this but today was an affirmation of this idea that has been brewing since the new year arrived. Clyde and his wife’s work inspires me and encourages me to fully commit to this work I feel called to.

Celebrating life, embracing beauty found in nature….I believe anything could be healed through connecting with wild places and wild creatures. I am so grateful for this reminder.

Fullness of spirit, laughter and the teaching of sunning meditation is what my pelican friends taught me. I semi-dozed and shot photographs of pelicans that were within arms reach. Bliss. Pure and simple….BLISS!

Until the middle school juvenile delinquent picked up his fishing rod and tried to hit the seven or so pelicans surrounding me….I made it clear he was acting inappropriately to him and the guys working on the pier. I found it very difficult to be soft spoken or touchy-feely. Quite honestly, abusing innocent animals pisses me off.

I stomped off the pier mumbling under my breath but it was okay because I needed to eat….but when I got home, eating had to wait until I uploaded the 1400 photos I took today…and by then it was dinner time.

Renewal, refocused intention and sunny energy fill me even with the jerky punk who thinks being cruel to animals is cool. Next time I hope a pelican poops on abusive kids heads. Now that would be something to photograph!

What Would You Do?

By Simone Lipscomb | February 15, 2013

None of us like to think about it but the truth is this: The moment we are born, we begin to die.

Mostly we live our lives without giving ‘it’ much thought. But if we’re faced with the possibility of death, what would we do?

What is important to us? What do we want to do before we leave our body behind and embark on the mysterious journey of whatever comes next? What would be our legacy left behind?

And who would we contact? Who would we reach out to say….I love you?

Such important questions. But facing them isn’t something any of us want to do…not for real anyway.

So what if we chose to face them, without the big “D” facing us but answered as if it was sitting on our shoulder, black hood and sickle at the ready.

My answers, you wonder?

Who is my person? The person knows because I reached out and made contact. It’s not important who it is, but simply that I made contact and shared my feelings.

What I would do? Dive more…spend more time underwater in the place I feel most at home communing with the sea and creatures of the vast ocean.

What else? I would let go of fear and move forward with the strength of a knight to share beauty with the world. I would let go of the grief that has wrapped me like a gray blanket and simply embrace beauty and live within it and express it at every opportunity.

I discovered this week that my greatest fear isn’t death…it is losing beauty. The beauty of our beautiful water planet, of trees, beaches, dolphins, whales, manatees….of clear water, clean air. While the loss and beauty of a lover’s embrace, support and encouragement can be devastating, losing the beauty of nature is ultimately my greatest fear.

Choosing to ask ourselves these questions can free us to live fully and completely and to embrace that which is important to us regardless of the outcome.

Rumi wrote, “Our task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Manatee...my heart opens to embrace these darlings — Manatee…my heart opens to embrace these darlings

And Leo Buscaglia said, “Love is always bestowed as a gift freely, willingly and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved. We love to love.”

No matter the destruction wildlife and wild places experience, I choose to love freely–refusing to hold back because I am afraid of them disappearing. No matter that human relationships may not last, I can choose to love because my heart feels love and expect absolutely nothing in return.

It isn’t complicated. It’s quite simple in fact.

I choose love. What will you choose?

Beauty

By Simone Lipscomb | February 15, 2013

Ft Morgan 122912 (19) — Winter beach at Fort Morgan, Alabama

The dictionary defines beauty as– “the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which spiritual qualities are manifest).”

Intense pleasure or deep satisfaction.

Virgin tulip tree in Great Smoky Mountain National Park

Can we experience beauty if we are not open to it?

What might keep us from being open to intense pleasure or deep satisfaction?

waterfall — Waterfall near Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina

For me it was trauma and grief due to environmental destruction….a “broken heart”….but it could be anything.

What keeps you from experiencing intense pleasure or deep satisfaction? What keeps you from being fully open to Beauty?

Wandering horse in desert. Bonaire, N.A.

It is worth exploring these questions. All of us could benefit from a daily practice of seeking Beauty and identifying our level Beauty Tolerance.

What fills your life with Beauty this day?

Fat Tuesday

By Simone Lipscomb | February 14, 2013

I was standing at Lulu’s Homeport in Gulf Shores, Alabama, listening to a band play a traditional Mardi Gras tune and felt a subtle, inner shift. A small glimmer of something started to awaken within me and it made me smile.

When embarking on a course of action it’s not necessarily easy because you (finally) found your path–your direction. When I answered an inner call to document the Gulf Oil Spill in my home state, I never imagined the emotional wreckage that would occur within me. I remember days before the oil began washing up on the Alabama beaches fervently trying to photograph as much of the Gulf beaches and marshes as possibly and while doing so sobbing, sometimes uncontrollably. Then when it began coming ashore and coating animals, beaches and filling the air with toxic fumes I was in a state of near exhaustion from anger, sadness, grief and the physical challenge of exposure to the toxic soup in the water and air.

It changed me. I remember going back to my mountain home for a few weeks each month and finding it very difficult to connect with anything pleasurable. I was numb from what I was seeing. Traumatized. And in some sort of cosmic disbelief that humans could destroy our planet…not just by an oil spill…but by endless sins committed against this beautiful planet and its inhabitants. Nothing touched me. Beauty was painful to see. Yet I couldn’t look away from the environmental destruction because finally I felt I was doing my legacy work.

Sometimes the cost of that commitment is high.

There was healing during the many weeks spent along the coast. Realizations, moments of inspiration but it was a week spent with Joanna Macy, in a Work That Reconnects workshop that truly helped me understand and process what I had been going through. And healing continues since my move back to the Gulf Coast.

Yes, I enjoy SUP boarding and walking the beaches and diving in the Caribbean. I’m not walking around in a constant state of gloom and doom. Yet finding a space for personal pleasure….just the inkling of fun for no particular reason…has continued to be challenging for me. The burden of our planet’s plight is heavy.

But yesterday, while riding my sea turtle volunteer team’s float in the Gulf Shores Mardi Gras parade and hanging out at Lulu’s with my friend and her family provided a little spark of fun for the sake of fun….with the intention of fun. Imagine that.

Gratitude for a day of fun runs deep within me. It helps to balance the deep grief that fuels my work to share the beauty of our planet…in the hope that people will realize the beauty of Earth and will do everything they can to help heal it. And heal the human relationship to it…and each other.

Communion

By Simone Lipscomb | January 30, 2013

Curious about the SUP board, the juvenile says hello.

It is no secret to anyone who knows me that my best friends are finned or flippered, feathered or furred. My heart is touched by an encounter with wild dolphins or a gentle nuzzle of a manatee in ways that surpass any human connection. Maybe that’s why men I’ve shared my life with have moved on…never content to come second after my love of wild animals. Connection with all creatures wild is my Communion, a way to rise above the mundane and connect deeper, more fully with beings more evolved than humans. (Personal bias).

Today I received an early-morning call from a friend and she tearfully expressed her love of the woods surrounding her home was about to be logged, destroyed so the landowner could purchase a vehicle for his son. How can you put a price like that on a sacred woodland? When will humans learn that the planet is not a commodity to be pillaged, a land to rape for spoils but rather a sacred cathedral?

The mentality of profit at any cost is not a luxury we can afford any longer.

Joanna Macy’s teachings come to mind. She explains the necessary evolution from a life-taking society to a life-sustaining society. We are in a time of moving from a profit-at-any-cost world to a life-sustaining world. We are in the middle of the dissolution of the old way and are awakening to the reality of the mess we’re in economically, socially, environmentally. And within the mess, within the reality of how we have treated the planet and each other, we find positive change occurring. Many, many people are choosing to act from a place of responsibility, a place of compassion and love. We are waking up to the idea that it is possible to live in balance with respect for all life.

Wildlife reminds me of the connection we have to the whole. The manatees scarred by propellers remind me that humans still have a huge impact on fragile species, that we have done great harm to our planet. And when I see volunteers paddling their kayaks, overseeing interactions with these gentle beings and acting as protectors, hope is refueled.

While snorkeling recently, a juvenile manatee came to me and demanded my attention. My goal is passive observation, in or out of the water, but while filming them, one insisted on connecting face-to-face and drew me out from behind the camera. He swam in front of me, stopped and I felt his gentle spirit guiding me to remove the camera from between us and commune, one wild heart to another. I gently placed my hand aside his face and channeled as much love as I could to him and his kind. And I listened in silence to him.

In those moments we were one with each other. There was no me, no him. In that neutral stillness was birthed understanding. Deep, profound understanding.

As we parted, sobs wracked my body and soul for the trust demonstrated by a species so abused and wounded by humans. The future of this planet is in our hands. That is both frightening and empowering. What will we do to create a better world? Will we do anything?

It can start with daily communion with the natural world. Let it show us our next step each day.

He checked out my dry suit, my fins, my snorkel, my camera...always learning more about humans, these little ones. — He checked out my dry suit, my fins, my snorkel, my camera…always learning more about humans, these little ones.