Our last several mornings have been blessed with fog, which always makes the photographer in me leap for joy: most everything becomes extraordinary in the mystical light of fog. So yesterday found me out in the yard, snapping pictures of all sorts of familiar things; things I rarely notice any more but which take on such beauty when the light is distributed evenly. Which tells me something about equanimity, I think: if I could be like the Dalai Lama, welcoming everything, appreciating everything, not judging one to have more value than another; if I could spread my regard evenly over the world as fog distributes the light -- wouldn't absolutely everything be beautiful? Wouldn't absolutely everything have value?
But then, of course, my argumentative mind skips ahead -- to Cleveland, to Sandy Hook, to Columbine, to Kosovo, to Darfur, to the Holocaust -- and surely the analogy falls down. How DO we keep our hearts open in the face of such unfathomable evil? I have no answer for that. I only know that a taste of beauty can provide at least a little balm for souls wounded by the horror.
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