Did you notice it where you live too, the beauty in the dying of the day, day after day?
Have you observed that it’s been an exceptionally sunset-glorious summer? Or was it just me?
I mean, did I just take note of the glory because like the Little Prince, in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s book by the same name, “for a long time (I) found (my) only entertainment in the quiet pleasure of looking at a sunset…”
so maybe what I mean is wonders easily overlooked due to their frequency,
the common daily stuff.
Like sunsets.
If sunsets happened only once a year, what a media splash we’d see; oh, the effort we would exert to “be there.”
How is it we fail to notice this recurrent turning of the world, when the sun slips beyond the edge of the known, at a slightly different time, every. single. day, a wildly changing color palette combining with ten general cloud types for an infinite variety of sky displays?
This summer, I noticed more often, and in the noticing I discovered that the Little Prince was right when he said, “You know, one loves the sunset when one is so sad..."
Life is like that -
hard followed by harder,
maybe even the hardest stretch of the journey you've walked.
(So far.)
May I recommend to you the quiet pleasure of looking at a sunset?
the world of dawn and sunset and starlight,
the world of soil and sunshine,
of meadow and woodland,
of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests,
of wildlife dwelling around us,
of the river and its wellbeing--
all of this [is] the integral community in which we live. -Thomas Berry
The day is past and gone;
The woodman's axe lies free,
And the reaper's work is done.
-John Milton
every day can end beautifully.
-Kristen Butler
The heavens are telling the glory of God
and the skies display His craftsmanship
(Psalm 19:1)
I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset now.
-the Little Prince...(and HumminB.)
Please, won't you join us?