Beauty is the harmonizing of the contrasts of life.

In photography, I - like so many - tend to view beauty as a "harmony of contrasting things."  In this case, I was drawn to the contrast between the wintry blowing snow in the background, and the Wild Geranium leaf (a leftover from summer and autumn) protruding out of the snow in the foreground.  Of course, the challenge here was to get the leaf to remain still enough (for just a split second) while the wind was circulating vigorously a little ways in front of me.  There is also a harmony of contrasts here between the austerity of the crag in the background and the intimacy of the leaf in the foreground.  And, of course, between the colors of blue, white and red that make their appearance within this mountain setting.

For me, this definition of beauty applies as well to other realms of life.  For example, we often find a person most attractive when he or she combines seemingly opposing traits - like tranquility and a rebellious spirit, earthiness and spirituality, humility and self-confidence, or innate goodness and a playful sort of "badness."

As a student of world religions, I value the diversity of theological views that run across our amazing world.  Is Buddhism correct in taking a non-personal view of Ultimate Reality, or is the Judeo-Christian tradition correct in viewing It in terms of a personal God?  I enjoy seeing these two opposites as different aspects of the Whole, and I love working to see how such contrasts might fit together.  Or, we might think of the Eastern traditions' tendency to view this world as an illusion, versus the Western way of seeing it as quite real.  Again, do these have to be seen as mutually exclusive opposites? Perhaps the more we view phenomena as illusory (like an echo), the more they are suddenly able to shapeshift and manifest themselves as real and solid.  This happens all the time when seemingly solid objects appear suddenly out of the vastness of transparent, spacious awareness, and then disappear back into this vastness once again, revealing their true identity (speaking mythologically) as seemingly-real echoes with no original sounds.

I wonder why we can't take the same sort of approach with politics?  Rather than seeing "our" side as all good, and the "other" side as all bad, what if we began to realize that there is a mixture of good and bad on BOTH sides?  And what if we understood that each side needs the other to help keep it from becoming unbalanced?  Would we then have the opportunity to truly LEARN from one another, and to take a more humble stance toward our own position?

Photo: Gem Lake Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; October 26, 2012