Beauty: elusively abundant refractions of glory

Pulchritude. Pleasing. Positively stimulating. Lovely. Delightful. Sensational ecstasy from mere exposure. Terrifying delight. Tsunami's of the senses. Spectres of a hidden Glory.

The object is subjectively determined as qualified or unqualified to evoke these universal sentiments within the human heart...often swelling to the point of causing a pain in the breast that is nearly unbearable.

Some have said we are created as hedonists, with much of life being a battle for the object of fulfillment. Self, sex, substances, success, simulated realities, sensational highs and a myriad of things compete for stage time. The ugly composite of things we allow to possess our hedonistic heart greatly shape the sources of experiences we associated with beauty. Yet, beauty cries out to something cosmically timeless, intrinsically ethereal, a vapor that in one sense is touchless and in another so weighty that it threatens to destroy us if fully experienced.

What things awaken you to the core of your being like an ancient echo in your ear?

What objects stir you to secretly want to abandon all pursuits and just...be?

What moments represent a bouquet of overwhelming beauty scents permanently embedded within your memory?

What makes up your hedonistic buffet line - because you are a hedonist...the question is what is supplying satisfaction to your engine of desire!

Blue: The Depth of Beauty

Ever heard of The Mariana Trench?

The Mariana Trench is this area in the North Pacific Ocean where the ocean floor just sort of opens up - almost the underwater inverse of a mountain. The ocean's deepest point is part of the Trench, the 36,201 foot deep "Challenger Deep". Challenger Deep is so deep that you could take the tallest peak in the world, Mount Everest, turn it upside down, and drop it into the trench...and still have 7,000 feet before you would have filled the trench to the surface.

36,000 feet is unfathomably deep to me. It is seven miles under water. It is the equivalent of a jetliner's cruising altitude - only it's underwater. It is really, really (really) deep.

And somehow, incredibly, there is life that far down in the ocean. The Mariana Trench sustains a healthy population of sole, shrimp, and flounder and Challenger Deep itself hosts at least 432 different types of creautures. Under 36,000 feet of the blackest blue, there is life.

Blue is the persistence of life.

Blue is the depth of creation.