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| Image by John Hain from Pixabay |
I recently ran
across the term “moral beauty.” As is
often the case with such terms, this expression refers to a battery of actions most
likely practiced by people ever since one human first looked into the face of
another—even without a formal name for those actions.
Moral beauty
refers to the ways in which we are good to ourselves and, most especially, how
we foster positive interchanges with others.
One way to attempt finding the threads of our own moral beauty is to
become mindful about ourselves, and if possible, about those around us. That is, each of us should haul in our
frantic lifestyle of doing-and-doing-and-doing and really look at ourselves as
a being—and study the nature of our being who we be. A deep look inside ourselves probably will
reveal more beauty than we ever imagined, will reveal at least some of the ways
we are good and humane, the ways in which we make life easier for others.
We also need to
extend this practice of moral beauty to both wild beings and to inanimate
objects, e.g., forests, prairies, mountains, oceans and rivers. But we may not fare so well when honestly exploring
our interactions with the non-human & inanimate features of Earth’s
crust.
We’ve all heard
of various categories of beauty:
natural, physical, artistic, musical, literary, architectural, maybe even
something mechanical or technical. But
moral beauty stems from a mind truly aware of the human condition. It is manifested by positive and soothing
actions or words or by sharing a stable and positive silence. Such actions can occur between two or more
people during times of triumph and joy, stress or grief, failure or
disillusionment. Even during times of
quiet mutual respect.
I suspect that
all therapists and counselors would argue that society always needs more people
who are active messengers of moral beauty, more people who are known as authors
of acts of kindness, those who offer words or actions that serve to stem the waves
of anger, aggression, greed, me-ism, depression and loneliness that currently are
infecting our entire world society.
Those who offer words or actions that serve to dilute the toxic
workplace and that do-more-than-yesterday attitude of pressure that fills its
hours.
Paradoxically,
the motivation to look deep inside ourselves is often stimulated by a deep
immersion in some corner of the outdoors.
Consider the following thoughts from various authors:
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| Image by Kanenori from Pixabay |
Steve Callahan
once wrote, “I am not a religious man per se.
My own cosmology is convoluted and not in line with any particular
church or philosophy. But for me, to go
to sea is to glimpse the face of God.
At sea, I am reminded of my insignificance—of all men’s
insignificance. It is a wonderful
feeling to be so humbled.” Jacques Cousteau
once remarked, “For most of history, man has had to fight nature to
survive. In this century (20th
Century), he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect
it. “
Dave Berry once
wrote, “When you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you’ve
been missing the whole point of the ocean.
Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and
staring at the outside of the tent.”
And I might add
that if you’ve never looked closely at that stratum of Earth’s crust made up of
the vegetation up to two feet above the soil and the soil and plant roots to
two feet into the ground, you’ve missed much of the significance of forests, prairies,
deserts and swamps.
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| Image by GUDE PAVAN from Pixabay |
Emily Hunter
says, “Climate change alone is probably the greatest challenge we humans have
ever faced throughout our entire existence.
The challenge is so great because the battle is not with external
enemies but a war within ourselves.”
Thomas Berry
wrote, “The time has come . . . to resist the impulse to control, to command,
to force, to oppress, and to begin quite humbly to follow the guidance of the
larger community on which all life depends.
Our fulfillment is not in our isolated human grandeur, but in our
intimacy with the larger earth community, for this is also the larger dimension
of our being.”
Former national
poet laureate, Leslie Marmon Silko, had these thoughts: “All places and all beings of earth are
sacred. It is dangerous to designate
some places sacred when all are sacred. Such compromises imply that there is a hierarchy of value,
with some places and some living beings not as important as others. No part of the earth is expendable; the earth
is a whole that cannot be fragmented, as it has been by the destroyers’
mentality of the Industrial Age.”
And oceanographer
Rachel Carson, in her famous book, The Sea Around Us, wrote, “For the
sea lies all about us . . . The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the
sea, in grain after grain of eroded land.
So the rains that rose from it (the oceans) return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it (seawater) encompasses
all the dim origins of life and receives in the end . . . the dead husks of
that same life. For all at last return
to the sea.”
Submitted by Nathan Bolls (Elder RiverSoul)
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