Transcendent beauty

Friends,

I was preparing to write my blog on this foggy and cloudy Saturday evening when I suddenly noticed one of the most improbable, brightly colored rainbows I’d ever seen as the sun snuck under the eastern cloud blank. Like the rainbow, moments of exquisite beauty continually surround us if our hearts and minds are open to them. I am always grateful for their reminders of the goodness in the world, in all life. I have taken up the ritual of stepping outside for a few minutes each morning, taking deep breaths and marveling at the wonder and grandeur before me. In those moments I feel expansive and whole and attuned to the mysterious life force, but I also realize in the expanse before me how small and humble I am at the same time. Both perspectives are true. 

In these days of foggy and seasonal transitional days, combined with similar political and historical uncertainty, we need especially to recognize and nurture our emotional and spiritual places of comfort and solace. One way to describe those places is through our awareness of various forms of transcendent beauty that softens and warms us against our wariness and anxiety. I want to suggest several different contexts where we are most likely to find and experience transcendent beauty that give us perspective and hope. You will have your own places. The point is to be more intentional about relishing all the beauty that surrounds our lives with grace and hope

When I tenderly hold my cat, for example, my mind, heart and soul moves me into another level of intimate consciousness beyond the human. I am largely free from the judgement of cultural expectations.  I feel different about myself and life in general because I am different when I accept and share love that is pure grace. For those of us who share our lives with a beloved pet it is, indeed, a beautiful, heart warming, healing experience. 

Another form of exquisite beauty is music that goes straight to my soul. I am listening tonight to quiet, orchestrated ambient music, but I also am moved by Gospel music from my childhood, suave jazz, and music written for the peace movement, for example. (You will certainly have quite different preferences). The point is that heartfelt music crosses a threshold that creates a passage from merely words and sound to create the magic of harmonious  beauty that allows me to go into another realm of memory, creativity, comfort, and imagination. 

For most of us examples of quintessential beauty comes to us from nature. Intimate bouquets of flowers on our dining room table suddenly become near miraculous with their details of variegated color and intricate designs that defy our imagination about how such beauty was created. And I continue to grow in my rapt fascination with the physicality of birds, especially the hummingbirds. As I have aged I have been able to spend time immersed as best I can in how much they must know to be able to fly and land with such perfection. 

Artistic expression also is a powerful means of creating beauty that often transcends words and goes directly to the heart. The artist can plumb the soul with imagination and truth that touches our deepest being. Perhaps the artist  is in the best position to lead us during these confusing times. Can their visionary interpretations of reality and a viable future guide us, again if we are attentive to it? Painting or sculpture or any of the artistic expressions that touch  our lives, offer us beauty and also bring us to the call of our souls.

And finally a consummate source of beauty resides in the best of our human species: love, creativity, art, music, is latent in each of us. In spite of all that is corrupted with greed and power, I am forever in awe with the human tenderness that I see in the hospital or in the awe in the eyes of young parents as they stare with profound wonder at the life they have created. And recently I am just captivated to watch small children lost in gleeful play. It is a great source of gratitude that we all have the reality and untapped potential for the love that is intrinsic in each of us that longs for beauty and connection. 

I encourage you to think of examples of beauty in your life that inspire you with joy and hope, especially when anxiety, fear and discouragement begin to dampen your days. I will be trying to do the same.

I am aware that I often tend toward too much naive hope in my writing. Maybe I am just "whistling in the dark,” but I am convinced that God’s grace and mercy holds us, even in the fog and fear that can lead us into discouragement and, despair. As I note above love and beauty are tangible reminders that we have the option of trusting in the power these forces offer us. 

Peace,
Tom