Paradise

"If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it."

I can hear the skeptic voice in all of us rise up in response to this statement instantly, this paradise? Look at the poverty, look at the wars; how could anyone call this life of struggle and suffering heaven? Yet if I invite you to look at a freshly bloomed rose or the innocent smile of a child your heart would open to the beauty you see before you. Similarly if you recall a struggle from your past that you have surmounted and from which you have grown you can also see the beauty in that experience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Behind us all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale but even the tragic and terrible are comely as they take their place in the pictures of memory.” 

Even in my darkest moments I have known that there is beauty and good and love to be found and if I can adopt the pace of nature as Emerson says; "her secret is patience," it will reveal itself in time. So take heart if you are in despair or off kilter today, all things come to pass and not to stay.

For the Glee version of the song "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTBG7FZvmc0&feature=related