An Eye for Beauty
I realized this week how much I appreciate beauty--not in the sense of reading fashion magazines or buying pretty things for display--I mean that I appreciate genuine loveliness when I see it: Beauty in nature. Beauty in people. Beauty in literature and visual art. Beauty in perfect order and design.
God must certainly delight in the beauty that he's created, so I think it's appropriate that I too delight in this beauty and acknowledge him as the creator of all things good and beautiful. I hate to think how often I've missed the beauty in something that he created for me to appreciate. Sometimes I'm just not searching for it, or even worse, I'm not expecting to find it, so I don't bother looking. Sometimes, the beauty is disguised or packaged differently. Perhaps there are layers of unloveliness, disorder, sin, pain, or complexity that need to be understood or stripped away before the beauty is recognizable. The process of searching, discovering, and revealing this beauty seems a worthy one to me--like finding a treasure hidden in a field, a pearl at the bottom of the sea. Sometimes I stumble upon such beautiful finds and am delighted by their loveliness and spontaneity: a sunrise on an early morning run, a field of wildflowers, a mountain view. God must enjoy creating moments like these for me. Other times, I have to work hard to find and uncover the loveliness--maybe it's in a person that is difficult for me to get along with, a place that feels alien and uncomfortable, an experience that merely seems like hard work, a piece of music or artwork that is stylistically different from those that I usually appreciate.
Maybe, in some rare cases, there is no beauty to be found: things that are not of God are ugly; they just are. Last night I listened to a Holocaust survivor tell his story, and I was reminded of the ugliness of this event in our recent history--the depth of human pain and suffering as caused by the depth of human pride and greed, of human sin. It's so ugly, and when you gaze upon the rows and rows of barracks at a place like Auschwitz-Birkenau (as I have), you are just overwhelmed by the desolation, by the sadness, by the ugliness--you wonder if God himself turned his face from such a place for pain of gazing upon the atrocity. And yet it's the sin that's ugly, nothing more; anything or anyone created by God must retain a remnant of his loveliness. And sometimes, in the midst of great darkness, of ugliness, bit of beauty become more evident--acts of human kindness, warmth, order.
Much has been written about the Holocaust, many films made, music written, artwork created, and I am always struck by the way that beauty emerges from chaos. The scene from The Pianist for example, when the protagonist comes upon a piano, a magnificent instrument, amidst the rubble that is Warsaw after the war. (Watch the scene at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkUVb1AJbSM) The sense of desolation, hopelessness, and death, is heavy, but the musician sits down at the piano and begins to play a Chopin polonaise. It's achingly beautiful. The fact that he plays the music of his countryman, the fact that the German soldier gives grace, the very music itself, it's beautiful. Is Chopin "Christian" music? I say, yes--all that is truly beautiful must originate in God. Take also the scene from Elie Wiesel's Night. The prisoners are piled one on top of another in the barracks on a cold night--it is a night during which many individuals die, including one young violinist. Amidst the dead and dying, the boy takes out his violin and plays a Beethoven concerto, and the strains of the music haunt young Wiesel. So beautiful. I am convinced that it matters, this beauty--even in situations such as these, especially in situations such as these when we feel like we should be doing something, the beauty matters. To reflect beauty, to appreciate it, to seek it out, these are worthy pursuits. Sarah Groves expresses it well in a song called "Why It Matters:"
Sit with me and tell me once again
Of the story that's been told us
Of the power that will hold us
Of the beauty, of the beauty
Why it matters
Speak to me until I understand
Why our thinking and creating
Why our efforts of narrating
About the beauty, of the beauty
And why it matters
Like the statue in the park
Of this war torn town
And it's protest of the darkness
And the chaos all around
With its beauty, how it matters
How it matters
Show me the love that never fails
The compassion and attention
Midst confusion and dissension
Like small ramparts for the soul
How it matters
Like a single cup of water
How it matters
My students think I'm a little crazy sometimes because I tend to get really excited about things like a soliloquy from Hamlet, a passage from Walden, or the poetry of Pablo Neruda. In class last week, we were talking about the many reasons that we read and write; I told them that sometimes I read merely to appreciate the beauty of the literature--I'll recite a poem because I like the way that the words fall off the tongue, I enjoy the pictures that are painted on the page. They say I'm a romantic. I say, maybe, and smile; I think that they're waiting for inspiration and may soon become as enchanted as I by such beauty and the opportunity to be artists themselves. Sometimes, I think that we're just waiting to be enchanted--to be caught in surprise by a beauty that captures our gaze, grips our hearts, and draws us to our knees in worship and thanksgiving. Surely this is what the psalmist means when he says, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). May this be the cry of my heart: to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to reflect his beauty in this world.
God must certainly delight in the beauty that he's created, so I think it's appropriate that I too delight in this beauty and acknowledge him as the creator of all things good and beautiful. I hate to think how often I've missed the beauty in something that he created for me to appreciate. Sometimes I'm just not searching for it, or even worse, I'm not expecting to find it, so I don't bother looking. Sometimes, the beauty is disguised or packaged differently. Perhaps there are layers of unloveliness, disorder, sin, pain, or complexity that need to be understood or stripped away before the beauty is recognizable. The process of searching, discovering, and revealing this beauty seems a worthy one to me--like finding a treasure hidden in a field, a pearl at the bottom of the sea. Sometimes I stumble upon such beautiful finds and am delighted by their loveliness and spontaneity: a sunrise on an early morning run, a field of wildflowers, a mountain view. God must enjoy creating moments like these for me. Other times, I have to work hard to find and uncover the loveliness--maybe it's in a person that is difficult for me to get along with, a place that feels alien and uncomfortable, an experience that merely seems like hard work, a piece of music or artwork that is stylistically different from those that I usually appreciate.
Maybe, in some rare cases, there is no beauty to be found: things that are not of God are ugly; they just are. Last night I listened to a Holocaust survivor tell his story, and I was reminded of the ugliness of this event in our recent history--the depth of human pain and suffering as caused by the depth of human pride and greed, of human sin. It's so ugly, and when you gaze upon the rows and rows of barracks at a place like Auschwitz-Birkenau (as I have), you are just overwhelmed by the desolation, by the sadness, by the ugliness--you wonder if God himself turned his face from such a place for pain of gazing upon the atrocity. And yet it's the sin that's ugly, nothing more; anything or anyone created by God must retain a remnant of his loveliness. And sometimes, in the midst of great darkness, of ugliness, bit of beauty become more evident--acts of human kindness, warmth, order.
Much has been written about the Holocaust, many films made, music written, artwork created, and I am always struck by the way that beauty emerges from chaos. The scene from The Pianist for example, when the protagonist comes upon a piano, a magnificent instrument, amidst the rubble that is Warsaw after the war. (Watch the scene at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkUVb1AJbSM) The sense of desolation, hopelessness, and death, is heavy, but the musician sits down at the piano and begins to play a Chopin polonaise. It's achingly beautiful. The fact that he plays the music of his countryman, the fact that the German soldier gives grace, the very music itself, it's beautiful. Is Chopin "Christian" music? I say, yes--all that is truly beautiful must originate in God. Take also the scene from Elie Wiesel's Night. The prisoners are piled one on top of another in the barracks on a cold night--it is a night during which many individuals die, including one young violinist. Amidst the dead and dying, the boy takes out his violin and plays a Beethoven concerto, and the strains of the music haunt young Wiesel. So beautiful. I am convinced that it matters, this beauty--even in situations such as these, especially in situations such as these when we feel like we should be doing something, the beauty matters. To reflect beauty, to appreciate it, to seek it out, these are worthy pursuits. Sarah Groves expresses it well in a song called "Why It Matters:"
Sit with me and tell me once again
Of the story that's been told us
Of the power that will hold us
Of the beauty, of the beauty
Why it matters
Speak to me until I understand
Why our thinking and creating
Why our efforts of narrating
About the beauty, of the beauty
And why it matters
Like the statue in the park
Of this war torn town
And it's protest of the darkness
And the chaos all around
With its beauty, how it matters
How it matters
Show me the love that never fails
The compassion and attention
Midst confusion and dissension
Like small ramparts for the soul
How it matters
Like a single cup of water
How it matters
My students think I'm a little crazy sometimes because I tend to get really excited about things like a soliloquy from Hamlet, a passage from Walden, or the poetry of Pablo Neruda. In class last week, we were talking about the many reasons that we read and write; I told them that sometimes I read merely to appreciate the beauty of the literature--I'll recite a poem because I like the way that the words fall off the tongue, I enjoy the pictures that are painted on the page. They say I'm a romantic. I say, maybe, and smile; I think that they're waiting for inspiration and may soon become as enchanted as I by such beauty and the opportunity to be artists themselves. Sometimes, I think that we're just waiting to be enchanted--to be caught in surprise by a beauty that captures our gaze, grips our hearts, and draws us to our knees in worship and thanksgiving. Surely this is what the psalmist means when he says, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). May this be the cry of my heart: to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to reflect his beauty in this world.
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