Magnificent Desolation
“Magnificent desolation.” Those were the other famous words spoken from the surface of the moon on July 21, 1969. It was Buzz Aldrin’s description of the gray-white lunar landscape.
I had those words in my mind on a late winter morning a couple of years ago as we sat at the kitchen table and watched the falling snow cover the dead brown grass and trees with a clean white coating. And then as we watched the snow grow deeper and deeper, LeAnn read aloud from an article about tall, flowering hedges that would make good borders for a fenceless back yard such as ours.
You see . . . the false spring we were experiencing that year had us dreaming and planning for warmer days, and the late winter storm that blew in with its ice and snow couldn’t knock us back. We were moving forward, even just in our minds, because we knew that spring always follows winter. Always.
That fits well with Aldrin’s full quote, which was, “Beautiful, beautiful. Magnificent desolation.” It says that there is beauty in emptiness, beauty in nothingness. And at this time of year, there is beauty in waiting and trusting that the desolation will be transformed into something beautiful.