To Bring Beauty and Healing....

In the past few months, I’ve come to see with great longing of heart the incredible beauty that surrounds me, and not only the beauty of God’s rich and glorious creation, but the beauty of each artist and artisan creating beauty. Beauty’s pervasive presence in the world has descended like a curtain of enlightenment: the Van Gogh exhibit we visited last August; the Sedona Desert and Heard Museum in April; the Saint-Gaudens National Park in New Hampshire I visited just a few weeks ago that displayed some of the most beautiful sculptures I’ve ever seen, in garden settings that moved me deeply. The beauty of my neighborhood shoreline; the rocks and tides, the seabirds and plants. The colors and shapes of the shore - incredible beauty that is hard to describe. I belong to several Facebook quilting groups, and I’m overwhelmed with the ongoing, prolific creativity of men and women word-wide who create beautiful, rich, lush works of art from fabric and thread. And when I’m reaching inward for an expressly divine example of beauty? I listen to Van Cliburn’s recording of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No.2 in C Minor. Beauty transcending the universe.

All of these never fail to literally bring me to tears. True beauty is deeply moving, overwhelming. And it surrounds us every day.

I came across this comment earlier this week while reading my morning meditations: God calls us to a deep-rooted spiritual simplicity, inspired by our encounters with God, to bring beauty and healing to the world. [1]

To bring beauty and healing to the world. How amazing is that? These words have bored deeply into my heart, and I’ve come to realize that in the past few months, I’ve come to see the beauty of and in this world like never before.

Last week, my high-school friends and I had the privilege of once again gathering together to share lives, loves, sorrows, dreams. During our three days together, we were spontaneously gifted with art from two of the amazing women in our group: one woman who couldn’t attend sent along beautifully beaded birds she had hand-crafted for each of us, each bird unique in design, but equally stunning, as a reminder of her friendship even in her absence. Another friend had painted for each friend an individual watercolor of a bird, again each bird unique; special messages of love for each woman present in gratitude for a time when each of us had sent her cookies for her birthday during a particularly difficult time in her life. Friends sharing love in sharing beauty. Cookies, beads, watercolors. Simple yet profound.

Just a few days later, I attended my granddaughter’s dance recital. Anyone who knows (and loves) little girls who twirl in clouds of pink and purple and glitter know that dance recitals are “de rigueur” in June, a sort of right-of-passage into the next year of girlhood for any little dancer. Having had a daughter myself who was a very serious dancer throughout her childhood and into college (and still is!), I’ve attended my fair share of recitals - always excited to see my very own Sweetie displaying her beauty and grace on the stage. Imagine my surprise, then, when watching the recital on Saturday, I was moved to tears with the beauty of the dancers on stage- none of whom I knew, save one. It wasn’t Broadway-level dancing to be sure; but the joy and sparkle (literal and figurative) of these children and teens, enthusiasm overflowing, sharing their love of music and dance, overwhelmed me. Yes -to tears. There was beauty here; raw, simple, uncompromising beauty.

As I thought about all this earlier this week, I wondered why it seemed that in recent months, astounding beauty was everywhere I looked. And it’s not as if I’d never appreciated beautiful things before; just looking at the topics of past entries of my blog, or some of the items I hold to be precious in my home and garden will tell you that the appreciation of beautiful things is not new for me. But - this newly found enchantment with beauty? This heart and soul experience of beauty that routinely moved me to wordless tears? This was experiencing beauty at a whole new level, a visceral response that had not been there before.

As I thought about this deeply for a few days, I came to realize something: I cam to see that something inside me has shifted. My heart has been softened, mellowed, expanded. I came to see clearly that this has come about, I think, because I’ve changed the way I pray. For these past few months, my prayers have ceased to have words. My prayers are now silent spaces where I sit and wait; walk and ponder. I don’t pray much in words, anymore. I pray in silence. A watchful, expectant silence that wipes away my thoughts that had often interfered with the simple, the holy. And I believe that in abandoning my words, God has transformed me somehow - and not in the ways I was expecting. It’s as if the simplicity of the silence has polished up my heart, sharpened my inner eyes, tuned-in my inner ear. I now see beauty everywhere, in everyone. I see God in everything! His beauty is reflected more clearly, more deeply, in all its wild shapes and colors and sounds. It’s dazzling, this new landscape.

Now, I see beauty surrounding me on every side, inside and out. Beauty is shaping my soul, tipping my vision upward to the One who conceived of beauty from millennia before eternity even began. His every stroke, every breath, every Word is a declaration of beauty, of perfection in scale, form, color, sound. And as those made in His image, we carry on His creative force, the legacy of creating beauty, of dabbling in shape and hue and scent and movement to create, as best we can, that approximation of beauty that resides in each one of our souls.

Beauty not only blesses us and enriches our lives, but it heals us, too. As we sculpt and paint and quilt and knit and sew; as we steward our gardens and parks; as we create beautiful music and delicious food, we bring forth a part of the Divine, and then we share it with others. We share beauty to heal deep wounds, to love and cherish. We share the beauty that rises from within our deepest selves to heal others with that same Divine Love that first conceived of universe and man.

This legacy of beauty is worth sharing, from the Creator to all of humankind. Seek beauty. Share beauty. Be healed by the beauty you see. It won’t disappoint, but will enrich and expand your heart and your horizons.

Living in and around beauty? It’s heaven on earth.

[1] Paraphrased from Bruce Epperly, Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2021).