The Beauty Around You

Read a great article (it won the Pulitzer Prize) from the Washington Post about a reporter's experiment in "context, perception, and priorities." During a typical morning rush hour in DC, an unassuming young man sets up with his violin just inside a metro train station lobby and starts playing. He plays for almost 45 minutes, as over 1000 people walk by. Do you stop and listen? Do you even notice him?

In this experiment, the young man was world renowned musician Joshua Bell. His instrument was a multi-million dollar Stradivarius, and he played some of the greatest violin pieces in history. (You can listen to all 45 minutes yourself.) People pay big bucks to sit in the back rows of a concert hall to hear him play, yet here, out-of-context, almost no one pays him any attention, much less stops to listen.

This part of the article grabbed me the most:

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

Can you see yourself here? Are you getting further and further away from that natural human instinct (your kids still have it) to appreciate beauty and art? And don't we frequently miss the beauty that God wants for us, the masterworks He brings to our lives, but we are so busy - so mind-numbingly busy - that we don't even notice the grandeur all around us.

And even if we can learn to take time out, don't we still get tripped up by context? Could i really learn something - not just something, but the very truths of heaven - from a shoe shine guy who likely never finished high school? Would a god really arrive humbly among the poor, as a helpless baby, no less?