Has beauty ever scared you?

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What you describe has not happened to me in the fearful sense that you described, but I thought I'd tell you about a funny thing that occurred to me in response to your question.

I once needed to clear part of a piece of land. There was a large dead tree that was not in the way, but that I figured I would cut down anyway, since it was very obviously dead. It occurred to me that the tree, even though long dead, was still beautiful. Foolishly, I cut it down anyway. Halfway through the trunk, the rotted wood collapsed, and the very large tree almost killed me. It collapsed in a heap all around me, then three flying squirrels jumped out of the wreckage and ended up in another tree. The whole thing was very beautiful, but I recognized only part of the beauty - the tree and not the nest of flying squirrels. Now I suppose natural beauty scares me a little because I wonder how much more beauty I am failing even to recognize, and because even beautiful things clearly can be dangerous if not dealt with properly.

I am Roman Catholic.
Peace be with you.



EDIT: I feel like a bit of a rockhead for answering your question from such a concrete perspective. I don't remember when I answered it, but perhaps I was a bit sleepy... or perhaps I tend to be a bit too concrete.

I have experienced the sort of thing you described many times. One of the most surprising times was when I first saw the Arizona desert. I expected a drab and boring view, and to some degree, in a technical sense, it really was about what I had imagined. It was brown and dull green, with a bright blue absolutely cloudless sky. The thing that made it awesome, though, was the serenity of such a vast amount of quiet land with no humans in sight. There might have been some birds in the sky, but I don't recall that. The only life I saw was in the form of a few insects on the ground, and on cactus if I looked closely.

That cactus has any life associated with it truly dazzles me, and even the different kinds of cactus themselves are awesome in their calm display of life. You'd have to know as a matter of fact, though, that cactus is even alive. It certainly does not look alive, except for about three weeks in the springtime. I never have seen that in person, and I'd like to see it. May Dad saw the desert in bloom in New Mexico around 1950. He said it is indescribably amazing, especially if you are accustomed to seeing the desert when it is not in bloom. I've seen only photos of the desert in bloom.

The peace and serenity of the Arizona desert reminded of what would seem like the exact opposite - the ocean. The similarity is great. The desert and the ocean, at least a calm ocean, both are overwhelmingly peaceful and vast. It is impossible to feel large, or even significant, in the desert or next to the ocean. I felt not only smaller and less important, but also that my problems were less important.

With a half-way decent reason, I can briefly forget my troubles, and the hot, mostly empty vast desert was enough reason for me to forget all else for a bit of time. The desert is awesome to me. Part of the reason is that I know as a matter of fact that there is a lot of life in the desert. To know that fact, then to see the actual desert in person was dazzling to me. The physical beauty alone occupied my attention very well. It is silent, calm, and seemingly endless. To remember while looking around the desert that there is vast life out there is one of the many things that has delighted me about God. He actually created and sustains life in what appears to be a nearly sterile environment. That really does amaze me. It amazed me enough that upon seeing the desert for my first time, and thinking about God's activity in the desert, I was lost in the astonishing beauty of the situation.

Another natural setting that I find breathtaking is a Northern Pine forest with heavy snow on the ground. Even if it's bitter cold, there still will be birds in sight someplace. Rabbits might also move a bit, and if you get too close to a deer, it will surely move.

All sorts of wildlife will hide under a pine tree that has living branches all the way to the ground. Such trees hold lots of wildlife in good weather, and in the winter, with heavy snow on the ground and on the trees, rabbits, birds, foxes, and even mature deer will get under the trees for shelter. A mature pine woods, with trees that keep living branches at ground level, is great shelter from snow, wind and even rain. The base of such a pine tree is likely to be bone-dry during a rainstorm. Snow has no chance of getting under there.

Such pine woods are visually dazzling - even awesome sometimes, but the sound is what makes it amazing to me. If there is no wind, it is utterly silent. The snow makes it acoustically like a sound booth. If you are with another person, you can easily converse in a normal talking voice even if you are 20 - 30 yards apart, as long as you can see each other. If there are many snow covered trees between you, the trees and snow will absorb your voices. To talk as if you are right next to each other, when you're separated by 30 yards or more, is almost surreal - but in an entirely good and peaceful way. It can be truly beautiful. The first time I experienced it I was dazzled to the point of being like an awestruck little kid. I just looked around, spoke to the people I was with - fairly far away from me, and listened to their brief words. I think a pine woods like this would dazzle just about anyone, at least for the first time, and maybe every time.

I hope this is a better response. Even if it still does not respond to your question in the way you were seeking, I hope you get a chance to experience both things - a hot dry desert, and a northern pine woods after heavy snow has fallen. They each are a delight.








EDIT
EDIT: I'm pretty sure that a beautiful event or stimulus of the power you described would leave me focussed entirely on the stimulus. I'd likely be too lost in that stimulus to have any immediate self-reflection, even to the degree that I'd be at least temporarily freed of any knowledge that I, myself, exist.

I don't suspect you are willfully being unduly evasive in your question, but I offer for your consideration a potential problem. Perhaps you have already considered this.

A question might be so severely indirect that any response to it is not really a response to the question the asker has in mind. In an attempt to conceal one's intent, even if the attempt is legitimate and of no ill intent, the words one uses can give rise to ideas on the part of the recipient of the question that are in fact not at all significantly related to the secret substance of the inquiry.

From your comments, I gather that my answers just didn't hit your question. Had I responded in a way that satisfied your need for a particular type of answer, I am not certain that my response could reasonably be considered a response to the question you actually had in mind. I realize that for your purposes, that might not matter. If, however, you ever ask of anyone a question that is structured to very effectively conceal the sort of information you actually are seeking, it seems to me that even a genuine response could reasonably be regarded by you only as something the respondent said, and not necessarily as a response in any meaningful way related to the secret meaning of your question.

The particular words you assemble and put forth as a question could be so severely unlike what the target audience would recognize as being the meaning of your intended inquiry that your question might as well be expressed in a language foreign to the listener. It seems to me that anything an intended respondent says in reaction to such a question really could be related to the question only by accident or happenstance.

In my opinion your question was a good one as it was, hardly a waste, but perhaps of little desired effect. Maybe you just wondered how much a total stranger would write in response to a fairly open-ended question. If so, now you know. Congratulations.

Peace to you, Mike. Joe...Show more

When a person is like that, they become too into themselves they don't noticed themselves so that they can slow down. At least, that's my opinion....Show more