Let the Beauty We Love Be What We Do

I’ve been sitting with Rumi’s words that attracted me a few months ago:

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways
to kneel and kiss the ground.

A few recent sunrises have stirred something in me, a tenderness, a remembering. Watching the sky open itself in color, I felt that familiar tug toward the beauty of creation, the beauty that asks nothing of us except to notice. It’s astonishing how simply witnessing light can soften the heart.

And it makes me wonder, are we living as co‑creators in this world, or as consumers of it? Do we always want more, or can we be satisfied and grateful for what we already have? Do we let the excess of our culture sweep us along, or do we choose a simpler path that leaves room for wonder?

To “kiss the ground” is not only to kneel in prayer. It’s to live in a way that honors the gift of being alive. A life given to us through love.

There are so many ways to do this:

• Tending a small garden — even a single pot of herbs on a windowsill becomes a daily act of reverence.
• Sharing a meal slowly — not rushed, not distracted, but with gratitude for the hands and earth that made it possible.
• Choosing simplicity — buying less, noticing more, letting contentment grow where comparison once lived.
• Listening deeply — to a friend, to your own breath, to the quiet voice of God beneath the noise.
• Caring for creation — picking up litter on a walk, conserving water, honoring the earth as sacred ground.

These small gestures are not insignificant. They are ways of saying with our lives: I see the beauty. I honor it. I want to live in harmony with it.

Maybe that’s all Rumi meant. Not perfection or grand gestures. Just a life shaped by the beauty we love, a life that kneels, again and again, in gratitude, kissing the ground where we walk.