Blaise Pascal said, "In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart."

I like that.

It's so easy to find ourselves overwhelmed by what's broken--by darkness, fear, and trouble. And there's plenty of all that around us.

Instead, carry something beautiful in your heart. It'll hold it all that at bay; it'll push back against the darkness that sometimes feels so suffocatingly powerful--both the forces outside us and inside us.

Beauty is bigger, more powerful. It has a force of light and the eternal about it. It is a source of hope.

So to any of you who find the shadows drawing near you. If winter's lingering long in your soul, the earthen clay of your heart hardened by whatever it is that creeps around inside you, making you feel dull, bleak, cold and hard . . . then here's a little beauty that can--if you hold it to your heart, feeling its warmth--bring a little of the greening power of spring to the winter of your life.

I suggest you find a way to just sit with this after the eight minute visual poem is finished. Don't hurry or let another task pull you too quickly from the beauty that wants to carry you through whatever difficulty gnaws at your heart.

And take care that you don't do too much theology or philosophy or science. It's a poem. If you try to explain it or debate it, you'll have missed it.

Peace.