Traveling in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, I looked down onto Mono Lake. It was an astonishingly beautiful sight. Tufa columns—statuesque exposed mineral deposits that were formed underwater when the lake level was higher—rose from the water, no two alike. As I walked around looking at the array of tufa, I could not help but ask, “God, how do You do this?”
I knew that the picture seen by the physical senses is a limited representation of “the ideas of Soul” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 269). Nonetheless, as I looked around me at the lake and the mountains nearby, I could not help but ask the question again and again.
In the years since, I have asked it regarding many other things, such as an arrangement of flowers. And I have begun to call expressions of beauty, form, intricacy, color, geometry, harmony, etc., the artistry of Soul (one of the synonyms of God).