Bring your beauty into the world with your song, your voicings, your drumming and dancing, all the rhythms of you.

We all have beauty to contribute. 

Although the woodpecker does not have a distinct melody like a warbler, a cardinal, or a mockingbird, all its calls, peckings, drummings and dances are beautiful in how they serve the woodpecker as well as other birds and animals.  

A quick, true story example: 

Everywhere we have lived we have fed the birds. In Phoenix, we liked to place a block of mixed seeds under a big, shady mesquite tree in our back yard. The block was very popular, attracting quail, doves, cardinals, sparrows, finches and others birds. It would soon disappeared. And we would promptly put out a fresh block. 

Although Frank tapped into the block to loosen it a little for the birds to have access, each new block remained untouched until a certain activity took place. 

It took only a day, two at the most, before a particular woodpecker came, stood on the block, and did his job, pecking into the hard block, loosening the "glue" here and there, little by little, while other birds watched from branches on that tree and from the top of walls and a fence that enclosed the backyard. 

That cooperative community event was a beautiful thing to witness. Watching, I often felt like more than an observer. And I realized we were part of the cooperative community also, as the providers of the seed blocks.

There are so many ways, large and small, that we already bring beauty into the world, without even realizing how our song, our rhythm, is in harmony with other people and other creatures. There are so many more ways we can make beauty as we notice needs, care, and play our part in the harmony. 

With love, 
Charlene

PS - Today's image is an enhanced-with-paint photo I took a few years ago in the garden at Sanibel Moorings on Sanibel Island.

THE SECOND GIFT IS BEAUTY.   

May your deeds reflect its depth.    

from The Twelve Gifts of Birth