Today was a beautiful summer day, pleasantly cool and cloudy, with a vanilla overcast sky painted with wisps of cigar smoke colored clouds, sometimes gathering in purple shades, light and dark, their bellies filled with rain that never fell from the sky on my yard. The twinkling silver dew on the grass looked like Mother Nature had scattered handfuls of diamonds around my yard. The bird feeders were seated with cardinals and chickadees and yellow and raspberry colored finches, all happily singing or noisily arguing while enjoying their sunflower seeds and sips of water from the birdbaths.

A few Eurasian and mourning doves landed on the ground and bobbing around on their short stubby legs looked for seeds the cardinals had dropped from the feeders. I love to watch the doves, so beautifully dressed in their pale colored frocks of brown and grayish tan. I watched an Eurasian dove drink from the birdbath, her neck encircled with a black feathered necklace, her eyes so pretty with their ring of blue eyeshadow. When the dove bent down to drink, light touched her feathers and I could see God’s brush strokes of pink and purple watercolors on the plumage on her back. She was dressed for a Southern tea party, her feet ensconced in fuchsia high heels, perched tightly on the edge of the bird bath, her square tail held high, all dressed up in her Eurasian dove glory. She was trying to be a lady and not whistle her wings when she flew off.

Doves are considered spiritual messengers and symbolize love and peace. In the New Testament doves are symbols of the Holy Spirit and a dove descends on Jesus during his baptism. In scripture about Noah’s ark the dove represents peace and hope when it returns with an olive branch symbolizing the end of the Biblical flood. The Bible uses the dove’s mournful cooing to evoke feelings of sorrow in scripture about God’s people suffering. The mourning doves’ name comes from their sad and lonely cooing sound. I enjoy hearing them coo. It’s peaceful and calming. I don’t find it sad. Lots of people think they sound like owls. But if you have hoot owls in your yard, like I do, you know the dove’s cooing doesn’t really sound like an owl’s hoot.

At dusk I sat back down in the swing after walking Penelope to enjoy the twilights’ cardinals. The cardinals flock to the feeders each day at dusk, sent by my sweet husband, a goodnight kiss to another sunsetted day. I was trying to count the cardinals and this little juvenile cardinal flew over and perched on the porch banisters and looked right at me with his deep black quizzical eyes. I could tell he was just trying to learn his way in nature’s world. I’ve never seen such an interesting colored juvenile. He was dressed in his fledgling feathers, looking like he was wearing an old brownish/grayish tweed coat from his grandfather’s closet, patched and darned with red and orange scraps of cloth. He had a dark beak with a small white streak. With his feathers askew, he was a handsome patchwork of natural beauty, studying me as I studied him.

Confucius said, “Everything has beauty.” But sometimes it hard to see the beauty in God’s world as we are only looking at what we see on the outside, not taking the time to really see the inner beauty of God’s creations. We need to train ourselves to appreciate the beauty in all the wonders of this majestic world and its people. Scripture in 1 Peter 3:3 states, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornments…. it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.” There are no rules to what makes something beautiful. We don’t all see beauty the same way. Plato said, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Beauty is subjective and what one person finds beautiful another may not. “Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical,” Sophia Loren.

Physical beauty fades with time but a beautiful soul radiates a kind and giving nature for a lifetime. Omar Suleiman wrote, “The sign of a beautiful person is that they always see beauty in others.” Beauty pleases the aesthetic senses but when you see everything as it really is, without judgement, you’ll find beauty in the world’s natural perfection. We can see our own true beauty in this world by accepting who we are and trying to live a meaningful life.

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched — they must be felt with the heart.” — Helen Keller