Day 13: Beauty In Detail

I've mentioned this before, I know, but it bears repeating.  There is a depth of beauty in the detail that we absolutely have to take the time to enjoy.  As a photographer, I'm blown away by detail, especially when I take out my Macro lens and focus in on something I've seen a hundred times in 'big picture' but am now seeing intricately. 

Today it was pomegranates and dragonflies.  I hung over the edge of the pool and various dragonflies flitted in and out, up and down, sometimes hesitating right at the edge near my arm, taking a drink and settling in for a few moments as I sat very still.  Dragonflies are incredible up close.  Their wings are intricate, lacy things that look as though they wouldn't lift a housefly, much less the heavier bodies of a dragonfly.  They actually sparkle in the sunlight - shimmering reds and golds and a hundred other colours that catch the sun's rays and reflect them back in my eyes.  And eyes that go round almost the whole circumference of the head: how fascinating to me that God would create a creature like this, with every detail not only beautiful but practical as well.  And to go to all this effort for a being that lives a few days or a few weeks or two months at the most, that flies around and eats other small bugs and then dies.  I was fascinated by them especially today since I was able to get quite close...they hung on to the edge of my chair and obligingly waited while I got  my camera and lens and crept up close. 

Later I did the same once I'd opened a pomegranate - the vibrant colours, the little pieces, the red fading to white in the middle of each seed.  I love taking a few minutes to experience 'tiny' beauty in this way - the kind that you usually rush past.  Oh, a dragonfly.  Here, a pomegranate.  Lovely flowers.  Blue water.  White sand.  Go, rush, walk, run.  But today was a quiet day, and I got to go deeper. 


May you see beauty in very, very tiny things today.