Friday, March 11, 2011

Beauty’s Dwelling: Immanuel

Perhaps we are here in order to say; house, bridge, fountain, gate, fruit tree, window. To say them more intensely than the things themselves ever dreamed of existing.

Rilke 9th Duino Elegy

In the wake of centuries of chatter about beauty’s sublime nature, our passion for an embodied felt knowing has not been diminished. In our feeble attempts to repress beauty’s call and memory, we have but heightened our anticipation to the point where all this talk of essences and the dream of art reminds us daily that as Nabokov poets, some divine beckoning is made evident when “the lamp of art is made to shine through life’s foolscape.”

In such times of disconnectedness, mobility for the sake of ambition, possessions made known and named by the corporate language of non representational artifacts (i.e. homes decorated with objects made by machines, in countries that do not even speak the same language, made manifest by colors and shapes unfamiliar with the native tongue of the purchaser) we find ourselves nowhere, seeing little to nothing, collecting more of the same thing that first made us lonely and all the while wondering why beauty has left the building, departed from the sacredness of place.

The beauty of the imagination is that it can discover such magnificent vastness inside a tiny space. John O’Donohue’s - Beauty

Hungry in spirit we are so anticipating beauty’s mysterious welcoming presence into a place, a single place to abide. Beauty calls forth an awakening that envelopes our hearts, enlivens the very space we inhabit. Beauty confirms the uniqueness of each moment. We are not accidents nor are we called to dwell in a particular place by whimsy or happenstance.

Rilke reminds us powerfully as to the dangers of ignoring beauty’s voice and entrance when he says, “being here is so much.” There is no private territory, no place or space outside the pronouncement of beauty’s sacred embrace. Beauty calls us out of exile, invokes an ever-present sacramental pronouncement over the very place in which our soul is currently engaged and present. She calls us to listen, to re-engage and participate with life once again, refuse to objectify creation, self, along with others and this revelation ushers in the creative imagination as the only vehicle through which love can be grasp.

Beauty engulfs and informs presence and space offering transcendence through a revealing that all things cry out to be seen and known. Everyday experiences are enlarged through metaphor, image and other creative gifts that bring us together in a holy conversation. In this unique space, we see the profane and the sacred culminating with the primacy of beauty’s call – which is the reconciliation of all things.

As science has quelled if not silenced the welcoming blessing of beauty’s wooing, without fanfare and by her very nature, full of dignity, beauty incarnates newness to our daily lives. Beauty offers creatively the gift of animating property in an erotic manner such that objects are not merely objects. Things, created by humans for humans, have an attributional communal context to the exchange. Artists must learn to be custodians of these exchanges. Beauty, unhurried and unharried breaks the sacred silence naming the space with extraordinary mysterious care. Out of the mysterious silence an invitation is heard. This silence defines the borders of the enchanted space and evokes a rooted and deeply felt sense of knowing. Much like prayer, the heart is to be wholly present as beauty and its companion, the imagination, welcome the visitation- the Annunciation.

Beauty steps into time as well making sacramental the detailed ordinariness of our lives. Creative attention confesses to its holy longing. Welcoming the beauty into the space is more than ritual. It allows for a committed posture of attribution to avoid diminishment and interpretation as acts of engagement. As if the heart of creation, nature itself, was naturing us along taking upon her the burden of named or ugly space, w are welcomed into a landscape of exquisite presence. Although time indeed is spent or recorded or seen as moving in & through us, the welcoming of beauty makes the disclosure of the moment, the space, and the very sense of place holy.

Lovers of beauty listen to her voice and story. Unheard, the story of rapture and enchantment unfolds, spiraling out into the space filling each and every pilgrim with their own story of the sacred space. So beauty allows for the story to be a dialogue, a welcoming conversation of hospitality.


When beauty is received as gift, enlivened trust is birthed. This trust, much like light and darkness must have trusted the Father in the very beginning, opening space up to the good and the true. Not only does beauty welcome us into the space as if it were meant for us throughout all eternity, but it embraces the longing now free to this empowered open space generated by beauty. Now beauty induces the divine questions here to for hidden or unrevealed in us.

Beauty as well, tutors us in the custodial realm of honoring the erotic life of property and gifts we make for others. Many Christians, afraid of animism, as well as disenchanted Westerners, have desacralized the material world as lifeless and merely stuff. Outside of beauty’s wake, time and space are filled with “no-thing.” Beauty’s welcoming presence unmasks our more profound desires, desires to big for our hearts to fathom without beauty’s buffered hospitality guarding our childlike hearts. Beauty offers life to the material world. Welcomed, beauty dispels any sense of being a burden to the universe. Free to be truly present with beauty’s welcoming permission, my longing to see and know the rapturous wonders hidden in my desire cause me to discover that beauty’s very heart is reconciling all things unto the Father. This is beauty’s calling herself back to herself. Yes…desire heaven. Yes…But beauty’s reconciling radiance calls the space to enlarge itself, to duplicate itself, to share its glory and grace in the now, in this one single space, in time, through material things….the very stuff of earth…the ordinary, the simple.

So beauty walks the earth, seeking out seemingly emptied wastelands and ever so quietly announces a new naming presence for the space. This is the Kingdom of God. Beauty’s role is to exchange the previously impoverished places with the hospitable grace of the newly redeemed, recklessly innocent, and overwhelmingly unashamed of its powerful desire. As though beauty’s presence carried with her an authority to exchange the ugliness of disenchanted space and time with love, now touched and moved by our being in the space with the 3rd member of beauty’s original family, we get to share in the ushering in & attributional festivities.

Over and over again beauty tells her story, beginning where someone else left off, creating where someone else grew weary in well doing. Now,,,,no thing could be called abstract. All things belong, all is enlivened and animated and beauty’s force and presence creatively points to both the here and now and the not yet.

Welcomed into the space beauty offers hope and the future is unveiling itself as we speak. Every moment is full, every nook & cranny full of glory and presence, every sound and smell reminds us we desire because we do belong in this sacred space called out home, our street, our town, our world. It is safe to inhabit the space fully and without resignation. Creative callings beckon beauty’s tourist heart and provides all the encouragement to unpacked the gift, to see the space as holy, the entire world as an erotic narrative full of enchanted images waiting for miracles to happen.

Step into beauty’s welcoming hospitable presence today.

How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weighs of beautiful things. Elaine Scarry