May 9

While I was out walking this evening, I decided to stop and take a picture of a rose. I didn't see anything especially noteworthy today, so I figured I could (briefly) wax poetic on the loveliness of creation and be done with it. Initially, I was annoyed when a particularly strong gust of wind rattled the rose bush just as I snapped my shot, but when I looked at the image, I saw something unexpected.

Objectively speaking, it's a dimly lit, blurry photo of a flower. From a technical perspective, it's a lame rose picture (not unlike the other hundreds of lame rose pictures I've captured over the years). But it's also more than that. It's a visual reminder (to me, at least) that even imperfect things --like us-- can still be beautiful. Even when storms are raging and life gets hard, it's still rife with dimenson and color and richness and quite pretty in its too-blurred glory. And given that I've felt rather blurred of late, I'm thankful for that truth.