A delicate beauty.  Among the plants and flowers we have in our garden are peonies.  Lovely flowers, peonies bloom profusely in early June.  All through the winter and into the nascent spring, we wait for them to come forth, watching the stalks emerge, the buds appear and, finally, the full flower.
     Almost as quickly as they explode with color, however, the peonies are gone.  Their reign is brief, an evanescent moment of glory that, in the space of a couple of weeks, is over.  For the remainder of the summer, all we see are the rapidly drying stalks, falling onto themselves, not to resurrect for many, many months to come.

     And even then for an achingly short time.  The ancients viewed beauty as a sign of wholeness, a vision of integration and order.  Beauty was an ultimate good.  But it was elusive:  who could really attain it?
     So go peonies.  Though we retrieve as many blooms as we can, our time to do so is very limited.  We strive in vain to lengthen it.
     And then we're left with the dust of the earth:  a delicate beauty.
     If not for God.