On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous[i]

On Earth

That’s the extent of it, as if that is not sufficient. When you see the magnificence of the mountain (peaks) and the serenity of the stream (valleys), or the wonder of the water crashing the rocks or sliding onto the beach from the depths we have yet to explore, or that child’s delight in peek-a-boo, I’m not sure what else you need.

We Are

You, me, all of us. Together, whether we like it or not, and mostly we don’t because we like our tribes.

Briefly

What percentage is, say my 70, to our planet’s 4.5 billion years? Blink and we are gone.

Gorgeous

This is where we are stunned and stare in disbelief. We simply will not, not cannot, but will not, believe that prior to the Decalogue and its Demand that pummels us and rightly frightens us to death, there is this overarching and penetrating and all-together extensive and all-embracing Promise of “I am the Lord your God” that liberates and verily gives us without condition the beauty inside and out regardless of anything we see in the mirror or know in our hearts.

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous

I have found this to be in sentence form a comprehensive description of a trustworthy truth.

[i] Cf. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019) Ocean Vuong’s debut novel. I highly recommend. It’s a narrative with striking language and descriptions of emotion and event. It’s a novel, prose, that reads like poetry. Vuong’s work previously was poetry, so there you have it.