Sunday Morning

Posted on by Live & Learn

For the past three decades, I have covered the dehumanizing cauldron that is our current politics, and the last decade has been particularly soul-crushing. I begin today a new column dedicated to reclaiming the humanity we are losing to the savagery of politics, the toxicity of social media and the amorality of artificial intelligence. One of the keys to that recovery is nurturing our innate sense of awe, the feeling we get when we contemplate something so vast and mysterious that it quiets our anxieties and ambitions and puts our differences and disagreements into perspective.

I chose to start this exploration with common grasses and other unpresuming plants of the field, for they show us that awe is accessible to all of us — if we seek it. We feel it gazing at the Milky Way in the night sky far from city lights, or taking in a mountain vista or an infinite ocean horizon. But we also feel it when we encounter an act of moral beauty, or when we pause to admire the shape of clouds or the changing leaves — or even when we take a beat to see the breathtaking architecture in simple grasses. […]

I believe extraordinary beauty exists in ordinary things all around us, all the time. We just have to slow down long enough to see it. […]

I saw the glorious bloom of Paspalum laeve, whose beaded green florets line the stem so tightly they resemble a caterpillar. From these explode creamy white anthers atop translucent filaments, along with rich purple stigmas that could be tiny feather dusters. My breath caused its pollen to swirl as if I had shaken a snow globe. […}

As I write this, I’ve just learned of the horrific murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the latest act of political violence to make us feel as though we are losing our humanity. It seems at times such as these that things are spinning out of control, that the problems abroad (Russian drones over Poland, Israeli missiles in Qatar) and at home (the National Guard patrolling the nation’s capital, the president feuding with the central bank and public health officials) are so big as to be insurmountable.

Yet it’s precisely when our troubles are greatest that we need to remember to find beauty in the smallest things. A sense of wonder doesn’t make those problems go away — but it can keep us from despair. “When I’m feeling anxious, if I look at something up close and study its beauty, I find the anxiety diminishes,” says Natalie Izlar, the botanist who led me on my discovery of the world of the micro. “When you focus on something outside of yourself, the thing you’re focusing becomes the important thing and everything else takes a back seat.” […]

After an hour in the field, kneeling and sitting under the canopy of grasses, I felt the urge to lie on the ground, ticks be damned, smelling the rich earth and soaking in the beauty — my cares forgotten for the moment, my mind reinvigorated and my soul full of awe…

This particular source of joy costs us almost nothin⁠⁠g… […]

Then put away the phone, and spend some time immersed in wonder — at God’s creation, at nature’s ingenuity, or both. […]

We hear often about plant and animal species hurtling toward extinction as the planet warms and their habitats disappear — and we need to do all we can to reverse that. But we also need to pause for a moment in gratitude for the bounty that remains. […]

That in itself is cause for joy.

— Dana Milbank, excerpts from “In Ugly Times, We Need to Seek Beauty” (Washington Post, Sept 13, 2025)

DK Photo: Clouds 6PM, September 14, 2025.

26 thoughts on “Sunday Morning”

  4. Oh dear Dave, I so hoped and quietly prayed that those were YOUR words, your pondering, your thoughts and experiences. But of course not! How could I be so naive?
    I now, at a somewhat advanced age but not yet too old to not be taken seriously (sometimes) I do remember indeed things of great beauty. Lying in the grass after having weeded the surroundings of my grandparents house in the countryside, maybe eating a fallen apple, enjoying the marches of clouds, sucking the juice of a long grass, watching a bee tumble from flower to flower…. and a great peace inhabiting me.
    Also, I could absolutely NOT live in your country now – with all the lies and misery being your daily fare, it’s unthinkable to me.
    Maybe you could, now, that you are no longer in the working process, learn a bit from those wise women and men…. try it out, hit the grass with your body and enjoy the feeling.

  11. It is all I try to do in this festering world of rotten thoughts spewing from so many mouths 🙁
    Politics be dammed I still have tiny baby hummingbirds to tend to and blossom before our first frost which will soon be upon us <3 Take care David.

      1. I am so glad like you I can go capture the pretty scenes we are blessed with imagine if we lived in a war torn country 🙁

        I think it is why I do not photograph humans I can see rage, hurt and sadness and not much joy <3

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