She is from God’s world -- a direct disciple, I think, sent down to brighten our lives and teach us of higher things.To me she is beauty itself—the word came after her presence.Each time she smiles, I can only cry, and I think of something I read about the sadness of beauty: just to find it is not hard, but to bear it, that is impossible.If she were totally aware of the beauty she was creating, she would stop in awe of herself.She somehow makes life so much more than it is.
Once I enter wilderness, I am more honest with myself. The lure is less what I can tally or photograph than what I can sense: the quiet, intangible qualities of desert, mountain and forest. Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of the wilderness have always been its spiritual values -- silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude -- able to be harvested by any traveler who visits. Prayers in the wilderness were like streams in the desert for me -- something unanticipated and unchronicled welling up, and because of that surprise, appreciated all the more. Not until I actually left the wilderness was I conscious what had been the extent of my thirst.