Out of the desert

When you come to a desert in your work, what do you do?

Obligation, Like Mercy, my new essay, is now available for reading at Curator Magazine. Here are a couple of quotes that influenced me as I wrote:

• What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.-C.S. Lewis

• We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.-Marie Curie

How are you participating in and pursuing beauty in your life and work today?