Kaleidoscopes.

There’s something deliciously confessional about a blog, isn’t there? Things I would never actually say, for fear that it’s just too corny or insignificant, I feel free enough to present to the entire cyberspace world to peruse at its whim, should it so desire. Case in point: the reasoning behind naming this blog “The Kaleidoscope.”

It’s a great word.

Well, that, and the word kaleidoscope comes from two Greek roots: kalos, meaning “beautiful,” and eidos, meaning “form.” Don’t ooh and ahh just yet; the word gets better. The suffix –scope means “instrument for viewing, observing, or examining.” Therefore, a kalos-eidos-scope is an apparatus specifically designed to show the viewer everything beautiful in a particular design or shape. A kaleidoscope’s raison d’être is to suffuse beauty into someone’s immediate vision. Which is kind of our mission as responsible humans, right? Isn’t the Golden Rule all about upping the world beauty quotient a little?

So this blog is The Kaleidoscope because being a kaleidoscope is my goal. (I know that sounds cheesy, but hey, I’m in confessional mode here.) My life ought to consist of a shifting and colorful design of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I ought to be living beautifully.

I must admit, though, living beautifully has proven enormously challenging up here in Virginia. My days are filled with nothing but reading and writing in my second language, which is shaky even on my best days. I work my derrière off and make decent, but not great, grades. Those factors (and others of which I will spare you) add up to major discouragement a lot of the time, and to make it worse, I’m not sure why I’m doing it all. My life’s dream is not moving to a Francophone country or being a scholar of French literature.

But here’s what I do know about language: it’s a kaleidoscope. Language is an instrument that lets you see the beautiful forms of life around the world. You don’t learn a language so you can speak it; you learn a language so you can hear it, so you can appreciate the beauty that is other cultures, other colors, other designs of life. And here’s what I know about God: he’s the power behind the kaleidoscope. He shifts people and their talents around to create intricate and lovely designs that saturate the world in beauty. His grace allows us to see the magnificence of the world; indeed, his grace is the magnificence of the world. The changing colors of leaves and flowers, the prisms tucked away in dewdrops, the rainbows spread from east to west: it’s all kalos eidos, beautiful forms.

It may be years before I know why God opened the door for me to study French at the University of Virginia; by all accounts, I don’t belong here. But until I get my next set of marching orders, I’m just going to try to live like a kaleidoscope.