True Beauty

When I was growing up, we had one television in the living room and being the youngest in the family meant that I never got access to the remote control; thus, I had two choices watch what my siblings chose or find another method of entertainment.  While many times I suffered through Steven Segal action movies as I gained access to books through my school library I began to devour novels.  While Segal fought multiple enemies in my living room, I escaped to wondrous places never leaving my kitchen floor. Early on words fascinated me.  The way artists combined them created goose bumps in my flesh and a profound joy in my heart.  For the longest time during my teenage years I couldn’t understand my affiliation to language.  How did it convey such depth, such closeness, such beauty?  Why did it make me feel so supreme?  Why did my body react to it with such tenderness, such exaltation with such an explosion of happiness?  

Once Upon A Time Show

Obviously my favorite subject was English and some of the best experiences of my early life happened while digging into Homer, Shakespeare, Frost, Steinbeck, Huxley, Salinger…  Looking back I didn’t understand the outbursts of deep pleasure words invoked, I didn’t understand the way my soul reached out to the heavens every time I greeted a new poem or the way prose inspired my heart to quicken it’s beating song… 

Last week I went to Theology on Tap at Claim Jumper and Father Troy spoke on the church and art.  He described beauty as a path that always leads to God.  True beauty has one purpose and that is to elevate our soul to dance with God - to share intimately with the Spirit of God.  Looking at a painting, a sculpture, listening to a song or as for me coming across words can transport our being to such immediate connections with God.  Pope Benedict “invites us to be open to beauty and to allow it to move us to prayer and praise of the Lord… Art is capable of making visible our need to go beyond what we see and it reveals our thirst for infinite beauty, for God.”  Visiting churches, galleries, museums can all be forms of prayer! 

San Juan Cathedral in Puerto Rico

During the talk I realized that while I love art I never saw it as a path to God, those deep feelings that I experience in poetry or a novel were just that - deep feelings.  But, now knowing that the purpose of beauty is to always lead us to the infinite, I am more vigilant as to what I read & listen.  In the past, all art and artistic expression was born of faith and expressed faith, but in this fallen world we have exploited the intention and the message.  Today, we have Miley Cyrus singing in a marijuana covered leotard, Beyonce & Rhianna dancing on strip poles, Lady Gaga living for the applause in objectifying wardrobe - sure they have the freedom of expression excuse, but their beauty is finite in a few months or a few years they are no longer in style.  On the contrary Pope Benedict describes his experience after a performance of the classical works of J.S.Bach, “After the last piece of music, one of the Cantate, I felt, not by reasoning, but in my heart, that what I heard had conveyed to me truth, something of the truth of the great composer’s faith and this pressed me to praise and thank the Lord.”  True beauty true art always leads to God and never goes out of style(smile)…   

Acrobats & dancing