The beauty in the world around us

There is a religion in everything around us,

A calm and holy religion

In the unbreathing things in Nature.

It is meek and blessed influence,

Stealing in as it were unaware upon the heart,

It comes quickly, and without excitement,

It has no terror, no gloom

It does not rouse up the passions;

It is untrammelled by creeds

It is written on the arched sky,

It looks out from every star,

It is on the sailing cloud and in the invisible wind,

It is among the hills and valleys of the earth

Where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin

atmosphere of eternal winter,

Or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the

strong wind,

With its dark waves of green foliage;

It is spread out like a legible language upon the broad

face of an unsleeping ocean;

It is the poetry of Nature;

It is that which uplifts the spirit within us

And which opens to our imagination a world of

spritual beauty and holiness.

-- John Ruskin

Here is a ten pound log of ground beef, 90% lean and 10% fat, sitting on a homemade craps table!

And Joy is Everywhere;

It is in the Earth's green covering of grass;

In the blue serenity of the Sky;

In the reckless exuberance of Spring;

In the severe abstinence of grey Winter'

In the Living flesh that animates our bodily frame'

In the perfect poise of the Human figure, noble and upright;

In Living;

In the exercise of all our powers;

In the acquisition of Knowledge;

in fighting evils...

Joy is there

Everywhere.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

Here is my buddy passed out on the floor with that same enormous ten pound meat log, 90% lean and 10% fat, positioned in a hilariously suggestive manner!