Oh, To Live Beautifully

In the aftermath of a dear friend's death, decades-old memories have re-emerged. My friend, a gifted writer and a deeply compassionate woman, once asked in a poem: "What if happiness traveled like light from the stars? What if that happiness emitted toward me so long ago finally reached me? Small particles of spontaneous luminosity settled into my very being. I begin to give off light, am clothed in color. What if not only the world is beautiful (so beautiful that the scent of a small piece of sage can save you), but what if, at last, my life achieved a kind of beauty?"

At my friend's memorial, her husband and children explained how she began to "talk to angels" in the months before her death from brain cancer. They believed this to be due the effects of medicines and changes in her brain chemistry. But they had no explanation for the glow, the golden aura that she radiated during her final week of life. She was in a coma, but became more beautiful with each passing day. On her dying day, she was at her most radiant.

In a spell of grieving, I recalled some lines from a song sung in grade school choir. I'd hoped to find the actual song from an internet search -- it had such an exquisite, but melancholy, melody. What I found instead was the poem on which the song was based:

Oh, to live beautifully
For my brief hour
As does a wayside flower,
Unperturbed by the strange brevity
Of time allotted me;
Undisturbed by the overshadowing shine
Of tree and climbing vine;
Bravely stemming the wind and the beating rain.
Bowing and lifting again;
Within me some strong inner force as bright
As a poppy filled with light;
My feet firm-rooted in the earth’s good sod.
My face turned toward God
Yielding some fragrance down the paths I know
A little while . . . then go
As a flower goes, its petals seeking the ground
Without a cry or sound.
But leaving behind some gold seed lightly thinned
To blow upon the wind.

—Grace Noll Crowell

May the wind catch and spread the gold of our grace-infused lives.