It shows up time and time again in my writing, so it must be my favorite word. It runs neck and neck with the word love, which I have previously described in depth and will continue to do. But this post is about that beautiful word: beautiful.

I use it to describe the radiance of the sunrise, and the nostalgia of the sunset. It describes the patience of my husband and the essence of my children; their very being. It describes my garden in bloom, the feel of the wind on a warm day, the sound of the ocean, the sight atop a mountain, and the smell of the air after rain. It describes an unselfish act, and a kind heart. In my novels, my main characters always see their love interest in this way, and the sentiment is echoed back from love interest to main character – beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Thou art beautiful.

Lord Byron speaks of one who “walks in beauty, like the night,” and John Keats declares that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever.” While, Ruby Archer is quoted, saying “beauty is a bloom that dies”. Both Keats and Archer uphold the beauty of truth. Emily Dickinson wrote of one who “died for beauty” and was laid to rest beside truth. And Shakespeare speaks of a beauty made more beauteous by the sweet ornament of truth.

It is a truth that many poets spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating the beautiful things and the meaning of beauty. Yet it is a thing desired, a thing pleasing to all.

Beauty is a subjective truth. It is deduced by the one whose gaze has met something pleasing upon which it may rest and have no desire to look away. Is it fleeting? Perhaps. If the thing that is beautiful may one day fade – like a flower, or like a face. Can it be enduring? Yes. There is nothing so enduring as beauty wrought by Divine Hands. And there is the beauty that beautifies, a thing that seen or experienced changes the beholder for the better and forever, like seeing the person you will marry for the first time. Like meeting the person who you will love and who will love you in return. Like seeing your newborn child for the first time. Beautiful.

My favorite word may be beautiful because of it’s close relation to love. I chose not love because it is more than a word to me, but I chose beauty because as both word and fact it describes well all the things that I love: my family, my friends, my country, my pursuits, my God, the character of the just, and the natural landscapes of the world. All these are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Thou art beautiful to me.