It Has To Be Beautiful Before I Will Go

You are not lazy about this. You are waiting for it to be worth doing.

There is a version of an evening walk that you can picture exactly. Low sun through the trees at the end of the road. The air doing that thing it does in early October. You in the right coat, with the right amount of time, not rushed, and the whole thing being lovely.

That evening happens about eleven times a year and you go on nine of them.

The other three hundred and fifty are gray, or too warm, or the light is wrong, or you are wearing something that would not feel right, or it is half past four and the whole day already has the wrong texture.

And you do not think of yourself as refusing those. You just do not go, and you would not describe it as a decision, and nobody has ever pointed out that the standard is aesthetic.

Here is the thing I want to say, and it is not what you would expect from an article like this.

Your instinct is not the problem. Your instinct is unusually good. You notice light and air and the quality of an hour, and most people move through a whole autumn without registering any of it, and that noticing is a real thing and it is worth something.

The problem is that the noticing has become a gate. Something that was given to you to enjoy things with has quietly become the thing that decides whether you are allowed out.

One thing have I desired

There is a line in the psalms about beauty that is more useful to you than any of the ones about discipline.

One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4, King James Version)

One thing have I desired of the LORD; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD.

He wants to behold beauty. That is the stated desire, and it is not treated as a lesser or a softer kind of longing.

You have a psalm where the wanting of beauty is spoken of as the one thing, and Psalm 27:4 has never once treated that as an indulgence. The desire is to behold, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put the noticing in a person in the first place.

You are able to take that seriously about yourself. This is not a fault you have to correct out of your character. The capacity to be moved by an evening is a real capacity and this psalm gives it high standing.

But look at where he wants to do the beholding. In the house of the LORD, all the days of his life. Not on the eleven best days. All of them.

The dwelling is continuous and the beholding happens inside the dwelling. It is not that he shows up for the good ones. He is there all the time, and because he is there all the time he is present when the beauty arrives.

You are able to be present on the ordinary days and be there when the good one happens, and Psalm 27:4 has never once separated the beholding from the dwelling. The Spirit of God is the one who is present on the gray evenings as much as the golden ones, and the psalm asks for all the days rather than for the best of them.

You cannot be there for the good one if you are not there

Here is the practical consequence and it is almost mechanical.

The eleven good evenings are not announced in advance.

You have been waiting for something you cannot see coming, and Psalm 27:4 has never once made the beholding a matter of timing it right. It is written that he desired to dwell all the days of his life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings the good hour to somebody who is already outside.

Half of the loveliest evenings you have ever had did not look like anything at five past six. The light did the thing it does at twenty past, when you were already out and had stopped assessing.

That has happened many times and none of it gets counted, because the evenings that were turned down do not report back on what they turned into.

And here is the other half, which is the more important one. A gray Tuesday with somebody you love is not the consolation version of a golden one on your own. It is a different good thing entirely, and it is available three hundred and fifty times a year rather than eleven.

You are able to have the ordinary version of this and find it is not a lesser thing, and Psalm 27:4 has never once put all the days below the best ones. The Spirit of God is the one who makes something out of a flat Tuesday, and the psalm's desire is for the dwelling and not for the highlights.

Go on the ugliest evening

So here is the assignment, and it is chosen to be as unappealing as possible.

Go out on the least appealing evening this week, at the ugliest hour, with somebody, for ten minutes.

You are able to go out into an evening you have not approved of, and going anyway has never once been the same as not caring how things look. It is written that he desired to dwell all the days, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present on a street with nothing to recommend it.

Pick the worst one. Flat light, wrong temperature, half past four in November when the whole day has gone the color of a dishcloth. If you are wearing the wrong thing, wear it.

And take somebody, which is not incidental. On the gray evenings the walk is not carrying itself, and the second person is what makes it good, and that is exactly what gets missed by going only on the days when the light does the work.

Walk it. Ten minutes on your feet. Say nothing about the weather.

You have a capacity for noticing that was never meant to be a gate, and using it to enjoy things has never once required it to decide anything. Psalm 27:4 asks for all the days of a life, and the Spirit of God is the one who is out on a plain street with two people in the wrong coats.