Sink deeply enough into the waves of life and you will experience beauty. Beauty is getting bigger as I travel the world. How I defined beauty is akin to a blowing up a balloon. The balloon of beauty now includes something new. Suffering. Contradiction. Paradox. Emotion. And something beyond emotion. Landscape. People. Beauty is big. It has to be bigger than what I thought it was. Because the small slice of beauty that we are served up in our culture just ain't gonna cut it, quite honestly. The more deeply I sink into the anchor of my heart, in movement, in stillness, in breath and body, mind, spirit and heart, the wider I am becoming. My heart is expanding to new places. I hurt. I weep. I laugh. I look into a man's eyes and see a grief that I hope I never know. I look into a child's eyes and hear them scream mother. I dance connection in the middle of a Cambodian plaza with my brothers and sisters from around the globe.  I sing to a child's rocking body and for split second, feel starvation and want to run away. And know that I can. I can run away. And then I feel guilty, then gratitude. I walk outside and I cry. And I throw a football to a child who cannot walk. And see them smile. And I smile. I hear stories of horror from a man named Soka, the Khmer word for happiness. We share the same birthday month and year. Same, same. But different. I hear that a lot here. There are even t-shirts made "Same, same, but different."  I see the sun shine through barbed wire that once held people against their will because of their occupation. I see flowers bloom next to a prison and a shrine that hold thousands of skulls of a genocide people. And I see my son, who after learning children in this genocide had their heads shaved before they were killed, left the museum and went straight to a tree. Straight to a tree. He needed roots. We all do. And those roots lead right back into this big beautiful mother earth. Straight into the dirt. We long for beauty rooted in something sustainable.

Something bigger is holding us. It is no longer just ethereal. It is right here on earth. It has to hold it all. It just has to. Because we can't. God is gritty out here. We don't have a common verbal language. It comes right down to the body. Hear a story and understand it from the heart, not the head. Because that is the only choice we have in that moment. Hold a hand. Smile. Cry. Laugh. Love. Sing. Rock. Dance. The world suffers. It laughs. And something that I call God holds it. I am alive. And because of that simple fact, life is beautiful. I get to be here. We get to be here. We are the hands and feet of God. What is beauty? Being alive to experience it all. Being alive to experience it all. God be with us. I know You are.

I am not I
I am not I.

I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,

And whom at other times I forget;

The one who remains silence when I talk,

The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,

The one who takes a walk where I am not,

The one who will remain standing when I die.
Juan Ramon Jimenez/Robert Bly