CS Lewis said, “We do not retreat from reality, we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves…by dipping them in myth we see them more clearly.”
I can show you a picture of a lavender rose and we can agree to the reality of it’s beauty…the color, the delicate petals…the scent.
But what if we looked closer? Not retreating from that reality but leaning into it, rediscovering it almost as if seeing it for the first time.
What if we looked closer still? Looking in such a way as to have all of our senses come to bear…the reality of the ordinary mingling with memories and wisps of emotion.
The flower becoming more real as we dip it into the myth of the symbols of romance, of faithfulness and promise that we’ve come to associate with it’s form.
Now we no longer just see the ordinary beauty of a rose…now we can see something more…something that isn’t quite there but hints at a fullness of beauty that is to come.
The Common Place 