The Beautiful

But of course this is difficult. It can’t possibly be defined. It can’t possibly exist since it can’t be defined. Therefore, we should all call it a day. So much for logic. So much for rationality. For the appearance of knowing what we’re doing. So much for orderliness. For the well mannered clavier. The well behaved concept. The ordered universe. The clockwork universe.

Beauty. One knows it when one experiences it. One thinks. When one’s breath comes more easily. When one is less labored. More calm. More peaceful. Suddenly more given over. Suddenly at ease. At rest.

But oddly also when one’s breath becomes erratic, perhaps difficult. When one gets that stunned sort of a feeling. That shocked sort of sense. That mind suddenly on vacation and heart leaking all over the floor type of deal. Joy pouring out into all the world from every pore.

What is this. How can this be. Why does this happen. Why is this so various. Peace but also the absence of peace. Revolutionary joy, for example. Startling and subversive and energetic joy. The sense that one could jump up into the air and fly. Purely fly by flapping one’s arms. What in the Sam Hill is going on here?

I think it must be that God has stepped in. That God is moody and these are a couple of his moods. These are ways he has of stepping in in power. These are two of the meanings of glory. These are what God’s glory is, maybe. These are two of the ways we know his lights are on and he’s open for business.

Imagine a world in which there is no beauty. In which all music is cacophony and dissonance. In which all stories are concerned exclusively with viciousness and death. In which all color has been reduced to shades of black and gray. In which all shape has no symmetry whatsoever. No regularity at all. No cleanliness at all. In which there is no courage or honesty or truth or goodness or faithfulness or forgiveness or grace or hope or love. In which there is no variety. In which there is a same drabness to everything. A same ugliness. Meanness. Depravity.

Wouldn’t this be hell? Wouldn’t this be the place God isn’t?

We speak among my crowd sometimes about God’s in-breaking Kingdom. Kingdom theology it’s called. Well. What I want to say is yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Bring on the beauty. Bring on the glory. Let’s go wild. It’s joy-boy time. It’s joy-girl time. It’s heaven-made time when beauty is.

And more. These qualities I mention. These attributes. These indications in people that they have been touched by God and made beautiful in their hearts and in their minds. These moral attributes that we ascribe to righteousness. This is why the fixation with righteousness, of course. This is why we have an enormous herd of us stampeding in the direction of righteousness, because it partakes of God. Of God’s beauty. Of the beautiful itself. Because it seems to sum up all of these admirable attributes into the one attribute—itself. But this is incorrect. This is off the mark.

It’s love that sums up all of these. It’s love that is the one gesture that stands for all of them. Love’s the one habit of heart and mind through which we may be said to be in God and God in us. To have God in oneself. And this only happens in oneself, not of oneself. In oneself by the work of the Holy Spirit. And by his work alone. One only receives. One only chooses to be a courteous host. That is our only work, really. Inviting Holy Spirit into the house of ourselves and providing him interesting company. And clean sheets. And freedom. Complete freedom to go wherever he wishes. To rummage wherever he wishes. To clean our house for us, if that is his pleasure. And to love. To love shamelessly. To love fervently. To love wantonly. Immoderately. Imprudently. Indecorously. Obviously. Blatantly. Embarrassingly. Fully. Completely. Drunkenly. Riotously. Repeatedly. Freely. Joyfully. Perfectly. Hedonistically. Wastefully. Carelessly. Richly. Tenderly. Honestly. Courageously.

And that is his love. Holy Spirit love. And we are the joyful hosts who get to join with the Guest in what he does. In his work, you might call it. Or his play. Same thing. It’s what he does for a living. The living. For those of us who will have him.

But what about beauty, you ask. Where did beauty end up in the great mad scramble here to invite the Holy Spirit in. To bring the Holy Spirit into our discussion. Well. Isn’t beauty what we’re talking about when we talk about Holy Spirit. Isn’t the Holy Spirit what we’re talking about when we talk about beauty. Isn’t Holy Spirit the spirit of beauty. Isn’t what the artist presents to us the intimations of the Holy Spirit. The forms of him. In music, in paint, in words on paper, in stone, in bronze, in plays, in dance, in body, in earth, in any living thing. So forth and so on. Aren’t all of these his vessels. His media. His languages. His instantiations. His expressions. His immodest proposals. His love-making. For us and through us. Because of us. Around us. And over us and under us and everywhere we look. If we would. If we would only open our eyes and ears and noses and mouths and skin. And admit him to the place where we live. Our heart and mind place. The place where heart and mind join in ourselves to create our house. The house of ourselves. The holy home of ourselves that is made for the Guest. That has been fashioned for him. For ourselves and him in the first instance. From the beginning of the world.