create pulchritudinem

Early this year, I got this tattoo on the inside of my left wrist. CREATE PULCHRITUDINEM. It means 'create beauty' in Latin.

One day when a friend and I were discussing possible tattoo designs she was thinking about, she said, "I feel like you needed that for yourself this year." I agree. Now, one can debate the merit or necessity of a tattoo, but that's not what I'm going for, so don't feel compelled to weigh in on that here.

It is a message, primarily to myself, and one that has kept me going thru the challenging times I alluded to in the previous post. Creating beauty is something that I feel compelled to do, and it takes many different forms...helping to curate worship stations, hosting people in my home, knitting, sewing, and photography, to name a few.

The last couple of years I lived in Birmingham, I was part of a small-group Bible study that, if you examined it from afar, seemed like the least likely group of women to fit together for such a purpose. Yet it was a rich experience. Over the course of time, we probably exchanged hundreds of dollars in the form of shoes, jewelry, books, and lunches, without much money ever changing hands.

We met during lunch on Fridays and usually did a book study of some sort. At one point, we went thru The Purpose-Driven Life. I know there are many, many people that love that book and gleaned much from it. I happen to not be one of those people. With one exception. The section on What Drives You?

As a pre-cursor to talking about that section, we all asked that question of others in our lives. I sent out an email to one of my brothers, some friends from forever and some from not so long ago, my mom's best friend, people young and old. All of the answers that I received boiled down to two things:

seeking truth and/or creativity

While I know that is true, and it is something I can easily articulate for myself, it still blows me away to know that people can see that. Occasionally, I still pull out that list and marvel that it boils down to those two things.

Create pulchritudinem. Looking forward to more in the days and weeks to come.