When you call someone beautiful
you draw something out.
Something that may not have believed itself,
had it not been named.
When you name someone as beautiful
or some other quality of grace,
you stir the soil, and loosen the dirt
for a seedling to emerge.
When we call out beauty,
or kindness, or courage, or grace,
we are naming what might not have been
if we had not given it substance.
We’re to remember that everything that ever existed
was first a formless thing,
brought into being by a word
on the creator’s lips.
We are creatures of imagination and
bearers of vision,
everything we can perceive now
we can place into the future.
Let’s call each other beautiful,
though the evidence is not yet apparent.
The dry desert can bloom as a rose,
when we dig for a source of water.
As an instrument can only respond
to the hands and lips that bring it to life,
so we are charged with the task
of bearing forth one another’s song.
Ana Lisa de Jong
May 2018
‘Jesus said to him, “have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”’
John 20:29
Living Tree Poetry 