Creator of Beauty

While making coffee this morning, I glanced out the window, then did a doubletake. A light dusting of snow covered our deck, its railings and the fields below. That in itself remains a strange and lovely sight for this native Californian, but what I saw made me open the back door and check to make sure it wasn't a trick caused by the window glass. I even blinked to clear my vision, but when I opened them my eyes reported the same scene of unimaginable beauty. There, on the deck before me, a fine mist of what looked like glitter danced in the air, sparkling with all the colors of the rainbow. I watched it for a time, remembering yesterday's joy in discovering a tiny star of frozen lace in my hair.

I am told my descriptive prose reads like poetry, but I could not have created such beauty as lay before me now. Even these words are but clumsy tools to describe the indescribable. I thank God He has given me a gift of creativity, and I take my hat off to the Master Creator. The strange beauty of my fantastic landscapes can't hold a candle to the wonder of a single snowflake.

Why My Life is Like Bilbo's

Just as Tolkein's Bilbo Baggins ventured from the Shire on a quest through a land of trial and discovery, weighted by care, so have I journeyed. And, like Bilbo, along the way I lost naivety and found my life and myself changed forever. I, too, have faced outer and inner "dragons," and now endure an odd restlessness so I cannot settle again to what was once. Perhaps that is why, also like Bilbo, I find solace in writing. We have both been "there and back again." May I live my life out with as much grace as did he.