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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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.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

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