The Cry of Our Times

The Global Crisis and the Violation of Beauty

All the contemporary crises can be reduced to a crisis about the nature of beauty. John O’Donohue

For what does the human soul long? Sex? Power? Money? Beauty? In recent months the shroud of greed has been removed and the entire world has seen avarice with spiritual clarity. Unregulated markets run by individuals and groups whose only pursuit was acquisitiveness finally devoured their own off spring (as in the case of Madoff) and confessed their ponzie schemes. Their admissions have of course lacked contrition and are only due to their powerlessness to animate the cadaver. Countless economic institutions and their real intent are daily being disclosed and made public and the ugliness of it all nearly overpowers the average person on the street.

The media that months ago was complicit in their generation of “relentless images of mediocrity & ugliness” have now turned on their bosses and a coup is in the works. Even the media are shocked at the daily revelations. What has happened to our sensibilities in these last few months that what is truly ugly is now most visible?

How does a world fall into such chaos? How do political, religious, and economic institutions find themselves thrown into postures of extreme anxiety and uncertainty? There are and will be many declarations and assertions as to how we arrived at this juncture, what it means and what we are to do to put right the planet. I will speculate that beauty will not be pronounced as the foremost antidote for our planet’s woes but I believe it is only beauty that can reconcile and atone for the dangerous state of soul that animates our consciousness.

What happens to a world that represses or ignores the hunger of the soul for beauty? What transpires in the wake of such a lack of attention? In recent weeks it is as if the mask of our collective soul has been removed and we see in each other’s fear, the images to which we have bowed down and worshiped. We have mistaken glamour for the magnificent, Hollywood for our deepest most profound dreams, and technological fancy for the real imagination.

Why did God demand that there be no graven images to reflect His glory? Why were the Jews so prone towards creating idols that were proxies for the transcendent? Could it be that the presence of beauty is much like the Spirit? It goes where it will. Beauty is much like a mystical flame that burns only when stoked with love.

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

When our being is governed by frenetic gratification, our inner ear grows deaf and the call of beauty is lost to the cacophony of the ugly. We have lost our sensibilities regarding what we really esteem as beautiful. From malls built with faux streams and trees to simulated neighborhoods created by nostalgic Disneyesque fantasies, we have smothered our sense of wonder with belongings and ignored what cannot be bought.

What might happen if we were to awaken to the call of beauty? Is it possible that we will hear and see beauty where we could not before? O’Donohue, in his treatise on beauty declares what happens to our deepest nature. “The wonder of the beautiful” now begins surprise us. “Because our present habit of mind is governed by the calculus of consumerism and busyness, we are less and less frequently available to the exuberance of beauty.” Beauty has been repressed by our acquisitiveness and now in the wake of its toppling our inner most yearnings are coming to the surface. Frederick Tuner said, “Beauty…is the highest integrative level of understanding and the most comprehensive capacity for effective action. It enables us to go with, rather than against, the deepest tendency of themes of the universe.”

I am a part of a community that speaks often of liminal space. I believe we are standing within the threshold of new dispensation. I have told many of my closest friends that we are in the throws of a revolution. This revolution is a divine revealing of what truly sustains and animates this world. We are living in exciting times where our creative nature and its empowered nurturance from the Father can be released on this world with courage and service. This is a call to all the “creatives” to become emboldened. Do not shrink back in fear. Now, more than ever, we need celebration. Now more than ever we need the frivolous and extravagant. Now more than ever we need the utterly silly and sublime.

Let us invite beauty into our midst with parties. Let us give our most prized possessions away to the poor. Let us empty our homes of anything that remains unused and unstewarded. Let us repent when we merely consume but do not replace with something beautiful and precious. Let us be reckless in our gift giving. Let us envision a future where there is no lack because there is no hoarding.
Let us look for the beautiful in our enemies. Let us rename the flaw and the broken with magnanimous names of lavishness. Let our only debt be that of love and may we be reckless and wasteful in our welcoming of the stranger.

Let the dance begin! To the emerging New Adam!