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I recently read All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley and I think a lot of you would like it. It's about his job as a guard at the Met in the time after his brother passed away, and the ways the beauty of the art around him helped him feel his grief and heal from it. There's also a scene that was moving to me, when his brother is dying and says he thinks he has been a good person. It drove home that when I die, I want to be able to say that.

I have been collecting memes and pictures that are comforting to me to look at when things are hard. Klimt is really beautiful.

The first time I was physically moved by art was seeing Winged Victory at the Louvre. My husband got me a reproduction for Christmas and we have it in our room now. I love it.

HikingOut - what are you planting? I agree that being in nature and gardening can bring you closer to God. We were originally made to be gardeners, after all :) Gardening is something I wish I could do, but I've had a few spectacularly bad experiences. During the pandemic I tried to gently transplant the raspberry vines growing at the front of our property near the street to a sunny place in the border of the backyard where the deer wouldn't eat them. I put a bit of miracle gro at the bottom of every little hole I dug and I believe I might have prayed over them. It took a few days of nasty rashes to realize that I had carefully cultivated and propogated poison ivy. In my defense, it can look EXACTLY like raspberry vines in the spring. And I made a little garden bed in our yard, dumped in several bags of miracle gro, and planted I think seven tiny little zucchini plants. If you've ever planted a zucchini you are laughing at me right now. It looked like the little shop of horrors by mid-summer - my children were mildly afraid of that part of the yard, and the wild bunnies and groundhogs were delighted. No gardening for me. But will you put some photos?

somanyyears, thank you for your kind comments. It is a tremendous gift when someone reads your story with sympathy. I read your profile story. INCREDIBLE!! The dates matching . . . CS Lewis says there is no such thing as coincidence and I absolutely believe that. I love your revenge! But what a horrible double betrayal. I am so, so sorry. Thank you for sharing your original Tony Kew. Oddly a bit like the pieta in composition, no? I hope your wife sometimes puts on a long flowy dress and pretends to be asleep for you :)

PleaseBeFixable, a friend gave me that book! I'm going to put it at the top of my book list on your recommendation, thank you! Can I ask why Winged Victory made such an impression on you? And I love Klimt as well, and especially this one.

I'm now going to write about something that is beautiful, but not art. It's something my son did when he was 14 years old.

He has always been drawn to classical music. My husband trained as a pianist (though it's not his profession) and my husband's father was a pianist, and my son is naturally talented. Many years ago, when my son was 3 and his sisters were 5 and 8, the piano teacher who came to our home said she wouldn't teach him until he was a bit older. We were standing in the hallway talking after my 5 year old's lesson, and the teacher paused for a minute, listening to the piano, and said, "she sounds better already!" and I said that's not the 5 year old, that's my son, the 3 year old. He goes in and plays whatever you were working on after you leave." So of course she took him on!

Through camps and precollege conservatory, he made friends with some boys whose families includes some very famous classical musicians. Conductors and solo instrumental performers and so on. One of these families was having a private recital to prepare their two teen boys for an important audition. My husband and I were there, and when it was over, he quietly whispered, "those two boys are pretty good and they are well prepared, but our son is light years better." And it was true. Our son knew many of the same pieces they did, and he was much better.

After the recital, there was a reception. Not many people, maybe 40. There were several teenage boys hanging around the piano, fooling around, showing off. Our son was in the group but he wasn't playing, he was laughing with the other boys. I was DYING for him to play something! I wanted him to show all those famous musicians that he was AMAZING. I kept waiting for him to play. He didn't. A few minutes later he came over to his father and me, and I said why aren't you playing something! Play that toccata, it's short and you are so good at it!. And he replied, "it's not my night mom, it's their night."

Which was . . . a level of sensitivity and self restraint that I do not naturally have. It was beautiful.

Whenever I recite the beatitudes to myself and I come to "blessed are the meek," I remember this moment. Meek does not always mean powerless. Sometimes it means powerful, but refusing to use that power if it will harm others. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

[This message edited by Pippin at 11:24 PM, Thursday, April 24th]