The Young Aesthete

A Sunday Amen...

The kitchen table by a sunny window in our home :) - Image shot in Bushwick, while exploring The Bushwick Collective street art in Brooklyn, NYC

Humbled, eclectic in my thoughts and writings, I thought I would share this beautiful Sunday Amen.

---

Our grandchildren came to stay with us again last weekend and I haven’t been able to shake the words that came out of my five year old grandson’s mouth.

Children sitting at the breakfast table last Saturday morning, approximately 6:30 a.m., me busy pouring juice, John busy making pancakes, Asher says, “Nana, why do you like art? and why does your whole kitchen look like art?”

I can’t begin to tell you how my heart jumped and soared. In that precious moment a small child entered my world.

And again, “Your whole kitchen looks like art Nana.”

My first story of home received. “A story of dreamers, creators and homebodies interconnected on the journey home.”

People have come and gone. I have yearned, bit my lip, to tell them all about this home, the painstaking details, the surreal stories along the way that tied us to the original builders. A God-given art project that kept us working throughout the hardest season. Our visits always pleasant, food and drink abundant, joy running back and forth in the lanai and my heart planted at every turn. It’s just a home. Stay quiet.

What does it mean to be an “Aesthete?” .. a person highly sensitive to art and beauty? It’s a heavy gift that often brings tears of joy and carries with it an independent creative spirit that can jump in deeply. It is a great love of the arts.

Some might call us “Empaths.”

Passionate, thoughtful and uncompromising at times. Opinionated, spiritual, a happy place. How could suffering be a part of this? The world is full of beauty. The question of God, angels and death are painted on walls, sculpted in museums, sketched by Biblical poets. Songs play, kitchens come alive, a time and space are remembered. The bright colors, the painted cow with her crown of flowers staring, street art above the kitchen table, the neighbor’s bookcase I ran my fingers across, as a six year old, now perfectly placed in my home.

No, they cannot be carried to heaven, but for this Saturday morning gift, the passionate fight is not over, it has just begun. I imagine Jesus feels with us, weeps with us.

There is hope for tomorrow.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

—William Blake