Immersed in Beauty

The spring of 2024 may well go down in Texas history as the most beautiful and bountiful season of bluebonnet wildflowers in decades. Though bluebonnets reliably appear each spring sometime between late March and mid-April, the lush colors and thick drifts of this year’s bluebonnets were jaw-dropping.  On our hilltop, the bluebonnet “babies” that I wrote about in early spring (See Tender Places Blog March 9, 2024) flourished into a daily marvel, a panorama of plentitude.  During a morning walk in early April, even I, a veteran of many bluebonnet springs, was stunned into silence as I left the paved portion of our county road for the dirt and gravel lane that borders a neighbor’s front yard and then dead ends into a green metal ranch gate.  Down one entire side of the road, an ocean appeared- an ocean of bluebonnets.  The chalk-colored road was the beach and shoreline. The mounds of bluebonnets were the waters’ swells and swirls.  

I lingered there for as long as I could, drinking in the sight, inhaling the flowers’ unique fragrance that as a single bloom is barely discernable.  At the edge of the bluebonnet ocean, the subtle floral scent was intensified, a heady reminder of beauty’s multi-sensory appeal.  For it was not just the sight of the 1000s of blooms, it was not merely a whiff of their scent, it was not even the ways that the waves of blossoms rippled and moved in response to a gentle breeze.  It was an experience that  could only be called immersive.  And isn’t that the perfect word for an ordinary morning walk that was suddenly and completely transformed into splendor? Immersive. Submerged in wonder.  Drowned in delight.

It is a fine, fine thing to give myself over completely to something wholly positive, something divinely designed to evoke wonder.  It is a fine, fine thing to stand in the presence of something much larger than I, to succumb to beauty, to willingly immerse myself in the miracle of our intricately created world. Too often, I am full to the brim with other kinds of oceans- oceans of emotions, waves of worry, swirls of schedules and depths of duties.  Too often, I focus my energies on putting one foot in front of the other, trudging away, barely lifting my head.  Not that day, however.  That day, the steps that unfolded one after the other were bathed in a dust that I easily imagined was sparkling sand.  I squinted my eyes, and the blue colors morphed into deeply refreshing waters. It was not the salty tang of a sea breeze, but the essence of small petaled miracles that refreshed my soul and soothed the jagged edges of my mind. Suddenly, I was floating, swimming, gliding in a blue embrace. 

One morning in April on a country road, I encountered an ocean. It was my role, not to create it, as if I ever could, but to witness, to pause, to behold, to tremble at the visible sight of the invisible hand of God. Peace and awe, wonder and joy washed over me in waves. The Creator’s Spirit joined me there, enveloped in hues of navy and cerulean blue, embodied in flowery spikes, and distilled into a sweet fragrance.   Immersed in beauty,  

Poet Mary Oliver perfectly captures that moment, and I share this brief excerpt from her poem Six Recognitions of the Lord²

O feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with

The fragrance of the field and the

Freshness of the oceans which you have made…

1 Bosque County Bluebonnets. Photo by author, April 2024.

2 You can find the complete poem Six Recognitions of the Lord in the collection, Thirst by Mary Oliver, 2006.  Available from Beacon Press, Boston.