God’s handwriting
The waterfront at Bar Harbor, Maine, June 2012
“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting – a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.” —Charles Kingsley
Travel is one of my favorite ways of searching for lovely sights, but it’s not necessary to be in a gorgeous town such as Bar Harbor to catch glimpses of beauty. As Kingsley’s quote implies, it’s all around us if we welcome it.
Two practices have helped me feed my soul with beauty: walking, and taking photos. With the advent of digital photography, taking pictures is practically as inexpensive as walking. I hope you will welcome beauty wherever you find it, but today I especially encourage you to wander outdoors in search of “wayside sacraments” that are easy to miss in the rush of everyday life.
If you have a digital camera, try taking a few photos of what you find. You might be surprised how good a photographer you can be! But if you’d rather not take photos with a camera, take them with your eyes and memory. May we all cherish this “cup of blessing” that will lift our spirits, spark our creativity and energize our minds.
This post was originally published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: appreciation, awareness, beauty, blessings, flowers, gratitude, noticing, photography, scenic places, seeing, vision, walking
Defeat Despair 
Amazing
Thank you Kinny. I am sorry to be so late in posting this comment. For some reason (possibly because the comment is only one word) it ended up in my spam filter.
How generous of you !
Charles Kingsley’s quote echoes my sentiment! I love the Beauty God delivers every day! Finding joy is His Creation!
Yes, it’s like there are all sorts of little love notes hidden everywhere…
Good morning, Julia!
I’ve never been to “Bah Hahbah!” Sometimes when I was working in New Hampshire or Massachusetts, I’d get the notion that I should drive up there for a long weekend … but I never did. Even then, I wondered if I’d regret not taking advantage of my proximity to places that are much more difficult to get to, from Minnesota. Of course things look pretty bleak for travel at the moment, still hunkered down at home.
Instead of wishing I would have taken advantage of those less-expensive trips to Bar Harbor, Iceland, or any other points in Europe or along the east coast, I might consider what’s within my reach here in Minnesota, and not miss these opportunities (with mandatory vacation time every Friday due to Covid-19) for a long weekend trip somewhere.
And yes, I’ll bring my camera!
A trip up the Maine coast is a “must see” in my book. You can start in Portsmouth, NH which is a cute little town itself, and then take it slowly if you have time, stopping in wonderful places such as Kennebunkport and Camden and Rockport en route to Bar Harbor. Then, in addition to the town, you’ll need to allow plenty of time to explore Acadia National Park, which has (or at least used to have) a fabulous system of FREE public tour buses to take visitors to all the best parts of the park. No need to spring for the pricey tours which do the exact same thing while charging ripoff rates to the tourists who don’t know about the public bus system. Make time for the truly wonderful, unique public libraries of Maine, too. I don’t know enough about the MSP area to make recommendations there, but I’m sure there are many pretty and mostly unspoiled regions to explore closer to home. Your camera will find much to love, as will you!