It’s astonishing how confused we become by the way language objectifies and distinguishes aspects of our relational experience.

Beauty is not something one witnesses — it is -=an invitation to relational intimacy=-. If you cannot answer the invitation, what you receive is just the shell of the experience on offer: the invitation.

So, go ahead, take a picture of the invitation and share it with everyone you know. Here’s the message encoded in that gesture: “Awake to Shells :|: Dead to Beauty”.

Don’t avoid or interrupt beauty and gain shells for public display. Stay with the beauty. Leave the shells ungathered. This all happens in secret.

Forget the public.