Little girl’s face and colorful sky have power to pierce my heart

By David McElroy · August 8, 2015

A woman I know sent me a few pictures of her young daughter Friday. I hadn’t seen pictures of this little girl for about six or eight months — and I wasn’t prepared for how seeing her would affect me.

This little lady is beautiful. Her mother is beautiful, too, so that’s no surprise, but she’s already getting to the point that she looks more like a beautiful little girl than just a drooling baby. She has some teeth and you can see depth of personality in her toothy little grin. You can see some kind of beauty that transcends physical appearance in an inexplicable way.

Looking at those pictures almost made me cry, because I was overwhelmed with a beauty that pierced my heart and pointed me once again toward the joy of living in this amazing Creation.

Saturday evening at sunset, I was walking in a local park when I realized the sky had suddenly started turning pink and orange and red and gold. I stopped walking and just stood there trying to drink it all in. For about 15 minutes, I felt as though I was watching a Master Painter put on another showing of the world’s longest-running art show. The western sky glowed and changed colors constantly for a few minutes, but even the sky overhead and on other sides was a delicate pink and orange.

A little girl came walking by with her parents and she looked at me as she pointed to the sky.

“It’s pink!” she told me with excitement in her voice.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked her and she nodded enthusiastically as they walked past. Her parents never looked and never said a word. (Click here for a bigger image of the sky.)

In both of these cases, I experienced the joy and beauty of this Creation in ways that were so strong they hurt. With both of them, I felt a fullness in my chest around my heart. It felt like love that was going to break through my chest and fill the world.

I was filled with painful pleasure. I felt happy to be alive.

Nature can sometimes be so wonderful that it hurts when I experience it, but I certainly don’t mean it’s something to be avoided. It’s the same kind of painful pleasure — a lump in my throat, a full heart, a warmth all over — that I sometimes get from art, especially music.

That pain which pierces my heart makes me excited to be alive. It feeds my soul. It reminds me why I need connection to God and people and all of Creation. I never feel as alive as I do in such moments.

I realize that not everyone experiences such things in the same way. I have no idea why, but some people seem oblivious to such beauty. They’re the sorts who hastily rush to wherever they’re going instead of stopping to watch the colorful sky or gathering storm clouds or the rustling red and golden leaves waving in the breeze of an autumn day. They’re the sorts who see imaginative children as nuisances to be handed off to others to mold as soon as possible, not living works of art to love and cherish.

I need art. I need nature. I need beauty. Something about them feeds a hunger in me which food can never fill.

I grew up with the vague notion that it was shallow for me to care very much about beauty. I heard people lamenting men and women choosing romantic partners based on their looks instead of their brains, personalities, values, character and hearts. So I spent years trying not to care so much about beauty — especially in women — lest I have to judge myself shallow.

But I think I’m finally mature enough to understand there is something built into me which seeks beauty, whether it’s sunsets or a little girl’s face or well-designed buildings or hills covered with colorful trees or a lovely woman’s face. There is something in me which is programmed to need these keys which perfectly fit a lock that opens my heart.

Life is more fulfilling to me when it’s filled with such experiences. Money and nice houses and nice cars and things other people might admire are great. I enjoy such material things — but they’ll never be worth as much to me as experiences which are there all around me for the taking. For free.

When I experience a loved face or a colorful sunset or a powerful thunderstorm, it’s as though I’m indirectly experiencing the love of God. My heart is overwhelmed. For that moment, I feel connected to all things in pure love — and I experience the joy of being alive.

I need that love. I crave it.

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Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

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