[mudra]

“I walk in beauty.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to say this to ourselves continuously as we walk through our days? Wouldn’t it make a wonderful affirmation? There is a well-known Navajo chant that offers this affirmation quite powerfully.

Beauty is before me and Beauty behind me.
Above me and below me hovers the beautiful.
I am surrounded by it, I am immersed in it.
In my youth I am aware of it, and, in old age,
I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail.
In beauty, it is begun,
In beauty, it is ended.

I love this chant because for me it evokes the beauty of the Creative Spirit that pervades the beauty of the physical universe -- a beauty that is indeed above, below and all around us. Beauty is a great and sacred power. Its appeal upon us is direct and immediate. It can stop us in our tracks, take our breath away, render us speechless. Beauty can soothe us, ground us, heal us.

The ugliness which surrounds us, I believe, has its root in a certain kind of inner blindness. “If your eye is healthy, your body is full of light.”

f we look at the world through the eyes of fear, greed and delusion, we will come to see it in terms of our own self-interest, as this is most narrowly defined. We will be led to put our own comfort and security first, and ignore the impact we are having on the whole. We will see ugliness in the world around us, and, perhaps unwittingly, contribute to the ugliness as well.

We will not continuously and consistently walk in beauty, until we have recovered our inner, spiritual beauty.

Rev. Jonathan Mitchell

Love Always
mudra