It was well formed with rounded quadrants at the top and bottom. The skin was soft, smooth and ruby red. The stem was perky and green and still had a leaf attached. It had a scent of pepper mingling with sweetness. It was simply beautiful. It sits on my window sill and I gaze at it when I am at the sink. I tend to put small beautiful things on my window sill. I spend a lot of time in my kitchen and I like to surround myself with beautiful things. Making beautiful things gives me great pleasure, too. When I cook, I am aware of the color and presentation of the food as much as the taste. I consider the color of the platter and how it will complement my entree. There is something about beauty, wherever it is found, that captivates us and makes us pause for a moment. But, what is in that moment? Why do we have beauty in our lives?
Fra Angelico was a monk who was also a painter. I had the opportunity to explore the San Marco Monastery in Florence when I was in college. On each dormitory wall, he had painted a fresco depicting moments in Christ's life. I stood in the nearly empty dorms and imagined what it must have been like to awaken in this spartan room and the only thing other than walls and floor to greet the monk was a thing of beauty. Colors and lines and symbols telling the story of our Lord. What richness among the impoverished life of these monks! It was as if they traded all the treasures that this natural world has to offer to live in the beauty of the eternal truth.The life of Christ has inspired some of the most magnificent works of beauty known to man. During my time in Florence and Rome, I was able to experience coming face to face with so much beauty. So many gifted painters. Not just Michelangelo and Leonardo Da vinci, but their many apprentices, too. And not just painting, but literature, architecture, and music has also been created by man to glorify God. We have G.K. Chesterton, Flannery O'Connor, and Robert Southwell, to name a few, whose writing uses the beauty of language in either its poetic or reasonable tilt to tell the truth.
By stark contrast, when beauty is absent, we find darkness, confusion, destruction and despair. When the towers fell, ten years ago on September 11, 2001, we witnessed the opposite of creation. We witnessed destruction. The images that emerged from that tragic day were filled with darkness, confusion, destruction and despair. In the same way, we pause and we are captivated. But there is something very different that moment when we behold ugliness. When something is created to glorify God, there will be beauty. If we really believe this to be true, we must question how war and acts of war can ever be considered acts that glorify God. In light of the recent conflicts, Pope Benedict has said that we need to be "asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'." In the face of the depraved images of war, I hope we can pause and reflect on how we can resolve the problems in the world without turning to acts of war. Since September 11, 2001, we have each done our part to restore beauty to the landscape of our life. There are so many little ways that we can participate in God's ongoing creation. Grow a garden, knit a scarf, paint a picture, play a song on the piano and take moments to experience beauty wherever you can find it. And create it where it is lacking.
from New Heaven, New War
His naked breast stands for a shield,
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows, looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns, cold and need,
And feeble flesh His warrior's steed.
~Robert Southwell
~Robert Southwell
Botticelli, Madonna of the Magnificat
1 comment:
Shiela--what a great post, it is so true that we get to participate in the on-going creation in so many ways. Sometimes I think it's easy to forget that simple truth.
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