EverydayBliss: Beauty Defeats Fear

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

Listening to right now: Marchio Bossa

Today's Happiness Formula: The first cluster on flowers on our dwarf apple tree since we planted it two summers ago!

When I planned this post, I didn't realize that I would be writing part of the answer to the fear issues of yesterday's post. I just thought I would be writing a little something about a book I loved. Synchronicity, I guess.

The Blood of Flowers (website for the book which includes readers' guides) is set in 17th century Persia. The unnamed female protagonist is an artist, a talented rug maker and designer in a time when women's lives were restricted and ... oh, right, it's still that way in much of that part of the world.

But Persia! An amazing culture. And the author captures it.

When we went to see Niyaz, Azam Ali was in tears talking about the beauty of her culture and how politics and power has all but killed it -- or is at least trying to.

But then that is what fundamentalists do, isn't it? Whether they be Islamic or Christian, of the Middle East or the U.S. They fear that which does not fit into their narrow idea of life and then they set out to destroy it.

Interestingly, there is a European in the book and he is depicted as a beast of sorts. And when you think about it, you realize that Persians were living lives of abundance and creativity while Europeans were just surviving. Persia had great cities and poetry and art while Europe was still nomadic and tribal and barely scratching a life out of the dirt.

In that context, you realize that those of us who are of European descent are mere toddlers. (And we certainly often act like children of two, wanting and grabbing and throwing tantrums when things don't go our way.)

Out of this entire book of amazing and meaningful words, though, there was one paragraph in particular that I had to copy out:

"...Even after that calamity, do you think the rug makers knotted death, destruction, and chaos into their rugs? ... Never, not once! ... If anything, the designers created images of even more perfect beauty. This is how we, the rug makers, protest all that is evil. Our response to cruelty, suffering, and sorrow is to remind the world of the face of beauty, which can best restore a man's tranquility, cleanse his heart of evil, and lead him to the path of truth."

I once had a woman tell me that people shouldn't be wasting their time making art but should be growing their own food (why they were mutually exclusive in her mind, I'll never know).

That is fear. That is gripping. That is saying "Life is scary and I don't trust anything."

What makes us human? I asked. She didn't respond, realizing she was with two artists.

But certainly, that is the point, is it not? What makes us human? What separates us from the chaos, from the people who destroy, from the people who live in fear?

It is our love of and respect for the beautiful. And I do not mean beauty in mass media terms.

Beauty is simplicity taken to the extreme. Who said that?

Those first flowers on our apple tree. The whisper of a loved one. Time taken to make bread without a machine.

Beauty is anything that uplifts us, grows us, and it is nothing that destroys or breaks down or makes us small.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
--William Butler Yeats, Irish, 1865-1939

Yes, indeed.

What is beautiful in your life? How could you increase your experience of the beautiful?

Cultivate the beauty and protest the fear.