ORDERED BEAUTY

Peter of Damascus (1156-?) Byzantine monk wrote:
“By contemplating the beauty and use of each thing, a man is filled with love for the Creator. He surveys all visible things: the sky, the sun, moon, stars and clouds, rain, snow and hail … the four-legged animals, the wild beasts and animals and reptiles, all the birds, the springs and rivers, the many varieties of plants and herbs, both wild and cultivated. He sees in all things the order, the equilibrium, the proportion, the beauty, the rhythm, the union, the harmony, the usefulness, the variety, the motion, the colors, the shapes, the reversion of things to their source, permanence in the midst of corruption. Contemplating thus all created realities, he is filled with wonder.”
I don’t know of any other possible way to know about spiritual order without carefully observing natural order. The harmony and unity of all things are necessary in both orders. When they are lacking… there is fracture and upheaval. When observed and valued there is the joy of ordered beauty.
“Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Jesus