O Beauty Ever Ancient, Ever New

St. Augustine said, 

"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! 

You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. 

In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. 

You were with me, but I was not with you. 

Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. 

You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. 

You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. 

You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breathe and now I pant for you. 

I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. 

You touched me, and I burned for your peace." 

In simpler terms, Dostoevsky said, 

"Beauty will save the world." 

I am lost in so many beautiful things. Sometimes, it is quite a downfall. For example, music. I Love music. In many forms. Therefore, if I hear a song I love or lyrics I like or a note I am fond of trying to hit, I may, at any given point in conversation, go to another place all together. I will be singing, and listening, and not paying a lick of attention to the conversation I just left. Now, is this some form of cruelty or snobbishness? Of course not. It's simply that I got lost. I will make my way back, most likely as soon as the music ends. I am certainly sorry that I disappeared, but then, it was beautiful. 

Beauty is worth...everything. I must insist that you read Hans Urs von Balthasar at your earliest convenience (or inconvenience), for his reflections on the transcendentals, on Truth, Beauty and Goodness, are powerful and heart-changing. These three are aspects of love, and they assist us in coming to know and enter into love through their very nature. They can be likened to the most vibrant colors in a rainbow or the three-part harmonies of a song - each its own beautiful thing, but together, they make up something monumentous, and something that pulls you out of yourself so that you are quite lost in the other. 

Love is meant to do this to us, for how else would we be able to learn what Trinitarian Love is like? The three persons of the Trinity can dwell in constant and total loving gift of self to another, the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father and the Spirit the generation of their mutual loving gift. For us to come anywhere near perfect selflessness, perfect goodness, perfect truth and the ultimate beauty, we must begin with what is right in front of us. Person or hilltop, music or vista, artwork or literature, the things that stir our hearts and bring us to a new understanding of what is good are the things that beauty has used as a net. We have been caught. We are no longer our own. We will happily stay lost, right where we are. 

I can easily list some of the other beauties that save my life, that save my world, day by day. First of all, the sunrises. The light on the buildings of the city, on the river as we drive over, on the arches of the bridges and tunnels, on the grass, setting it aglow. The smell of summer air, heavy with rain, or thick with freshness, or laden with growing things. The baking of the sun on your arms and face, feeling sleepy and refreshed all at once by its warmth. The breeze, coming to flirt with you and play with your hair, filling your shirt and skirt and gently moving you to and fro. The thunder and the clouds that billow up into the sky, dousing you with water and turning the temperatures upside down. The night, the glorious coolness after the heat of day, when things find rest and others come awake. The crickets chirping and the lightning bugs blinking around. The smell of a bonfire reminding you that somewhere there will always be kids with gooey fingers trying to get chocolate on their graham cracker before their marshmallow lights on fire. The sound of laughter from your neighbor's porch, gently whispering to you that no problem is really a problem, for you can laugh it all away in the safety of your family. 

These are just the summer beauties. Don't get me started on the fall or winter, for those seasons tear my soul out of me like nothing else can. The intoxication that comes over me from the smells of those seasons would make you weep for me. I am blessed that they are not long lived, for otherwise I am sure I would always live in "another" place. Reality changes for me when I encounter beauty. 

The challenge for myself, and for all of us, is to never turn off our "beauty sensors." It can be exhausting trying to flit through all the stimuli of beautiful things in life. It can be burdensome to be so taken off guard at any and every moment. We might think it safer, or better, for us to dim our sights, and to stop up our ears. We might think beauty can be recognized by us safely enough, but not entered into. We might wish to rein in our wild hearts. This is a terrible idea. 

We should always burn for beauty, always be ready to die for what we find so sincerely good. It is vital. For our lives and for the world, beauty must never cease to captivate us. I'll never forget in seventh grade when I was in a writing competition called "Power of the Pen." We had 40 minutes to write whatever came to us on a single-word topic. The word was, Spellbound. 

I could think of a million things for this! I didn't know how to narrow it down. So I just went there, in my mind, to that "other" place where I was lost in the beauty, and I started to scribble what I saw. Later in life, when I read the Narnia Series and the Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, I was surprised to note that some of his descriptions of beautiful things were just as I envisioned this beautiful place. It was a hillside, but the grass was the most brilliant emerald green that has ever been, and its movement was like the tide of the sea coming in on the shore, so brilliant was the effect when the wind moved through the blades. I cannot recall much of the landscape now, but I did the best for that round out of my competitors. The following round, whose topic was beyond dumb, I did very poorly in. This is a perfect example of the true goodness of beauty. When asked to be in something that takes the imagination and invites it to see what lies beyond every perviously stated border, why, of course it's ready to go! When something says, enough is enough, let's calm it down, that is when I know I have lost something precious. 

If we would only open our eyes more! How much I miss. How little I am thankful for! How many times are the clouds just so perfectly colored that I would die to see them, but I am too busy to notice their perfection? How many times is a leaf left in my path or a tree touched with light in just such a way as to make my heart soar, and I do not allow it to touch me? Oh! I need, how I need, the beauty. When we know beauty, we know wisdom. Our Blessed Mother was and is the most beautiful creature on earth and now in heaven. She was the most wise. She loved the truth and goodness of everything. She dwelt in the beautiful. I yearn to do the same. 

Let us consider sincerely what is true in our lives. Let us seek the truth at any cost. Let us recognize all the good, and never settle until there is more and more of the good around us. Let us find ourselves lost in the beautiful, and let there be no hurry to return when our hearts are happily surrendered to its love.