“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the
longing to find the place where all the
beauty came from.” C. S. Lewis
“God makes everything beautiful in its own time.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:11)
“What could be more beautiful than people
becoming what God intended them to be and
having some small part as a writer in
their transformation.” NJ Lindquist
You and I may disagree on what is beautiful, but we can agree there is beauty all around us. We all enjoy something pleasing to the eye. Beauty can move and convert your heart to new thought, new faith, and new horizons.
You can find beauty in writing about raising a family, making a marriage work, advancing the causes of justice, and in contexts that range from the mundane to the mysterious. Perhaps the most intriguing beauty may rise, as NJ Lindquist asserts, from some small part you play as a writer in people’s transformation.
Poetry and prose possess a beautiful quality. And even though we can’t always physically see it we know it when we feel it.
And for writers, or any creative for that matter, even ugly can become beautiful.
Start Ugly
As Jason Dauphinee points out in, 10 Uncomfortable Truths For People Who Lead With Heart,
In Home Behind The Sun, authors Timothy Willard and Jason Locy offer a spiritually rich perspective on beauty:
“It’s easy to focus on the brokenness and miss the beauty – to get hung up on the ‘what-if’ of a situation. No matter how dark our world, no matter how many shadows cast their despair on us, beauty remains. No matter how much pain and suffering rise to conquer us, God overwhelms them, causing good to come from even the blackest circumstances.”
Take away all the colours of the rainbow and you won’t get darkness; you get pure and radiant white. No matter how hard you try to black it out, light seeps through the cracks.
Willard and Locy observe that what we see as beautiful points to something else - the thing behind “the thing." It’s not really "the thing" we desire at all. We see beauty and we long for God.
5 Observations of Beauty
1. Our souls were made to run on the practice of worship, law-keeping, truthfulness, honesty, discipline, self-control, and service to God and others, which is beauty.
2. When we live contrary to our designed purpose, we dry up and lose the capacity for beauty.
3. Beauty is in the brilliance of the everyday - in innocence, forgiveness, physicality, deformity, art, music, mathematics, relationships and more.
4. Beauty is that surprising clarity that arrests and liberates our attention, evoking awe and wonder and opening us to the eternal.
5. God is beauty and beauty is love.
Which observation stood out to you?
Where do you observe beauty? Please comment at the bottom of this post.
Thank you.
Poetry and prose possess a beautiful quality. And even though we can’t always physically see it we know it when we feel it.
And for writers, or any creative for that matter, even ugly can become beautiful.
Start Ugly
As Jason Dauphinee points out in, 10 Uncomfortable Truths For People Who Lead With Heart,
“Never brainstorm sitting still. Start ugly. Write the bad version. Sketch the crooked line. Motion tells your nervous system you’re safe enough to wander— and that’s where the real work begins.”Writing the "bad version" has been a fruitful writing practise for me. As well, starting with the ugly, the suffering and hardships in life, has been a way to discover beauty.
“It’s easy to focus on the brokenness and miss the beauty – to get hung up on the ‘what-if’ of a situation. No matter how dark our world, no matter how many shadows cast their despair on us, beauty remains. No matter how much pain and suffering rise to conquer us, God overwhelms them, causing good to come from even the blackest circumstances.”
Take away all the colours of the rainbow and you won’t get darkness; you get pure and radiant white. No matter how hard you try to black it out, light seeps through the cracks.
Willard and Locy observe that what we see as beautiful points to something else - the thing behind “the thing." It’s not really "the thing" we desire at all. We see beauty and we long for God.
5 Observations of Beauty
1. Our souls were made to run on the practice of worship, law-keeping, truthfulness, honesty, discipline, self-control, and service to God and others, which is beauty.
2. When we live contrary to our designed purpose, we dry up and lose the capacity for beauty.
3. Beauty is in the brilliance of the everyday - in innocence, forgiveness, physicality, deformity, art, music, mathematics, relationships and more.
4. Beauty is that surprising clarity that arrests and liberates our attention, evoking awe and wonder and opening us to the eternal.
5. God is beauty and beauty is love.
Which observation stood out to you?
Where do you observe beauty? Please comment at the bottom of this post.
Thank you.
These words of yours "we see beauty and we long for God" stood out to me today, Bob. Beauty often creates an ache in my heart and I know it is that longing that puts it there. I also appreciate point number four "beauty is that surprising clarity that arrests and liberates our attention." Thank you for your thoughtful post.
ReplyDeleteLike this post, Bob. The line, “When we live contrary to our designed purpose, we dry up and lose the capacity for beauty.” speaks a deep truth that gave me pause. Thank you.
ReplyDelete