Witnessing Beauty – A Sacred reason for Being!
Quakers have inherited a mystic tradition - waiting upon the
spirit of God to enter their meeting houses through their shared silence and
stillness. However, scientists such as
astrophysicists and quantum mechanics researchers have got some pretty mystical
ideas of their own too, that seem way beyond belief but which they tell us are, in
all probability, actually true.
They say that the universe is simply pure energy that it has,
over time, taken various forms that have given us the elements and many other
things that we do not know about yet.
They go on to say that all of the energy that is in the universe is a
set amount, and that there will never be any more nor any less than what it is
right now, at this moment.
Even more fantastically, they go on to tell us that
everything that we can see in the universe, was at one time, contained in a
little lump of impressive and massive energy, the size of a pea - until it
exploded that was, in an event which they call ‘The Big Bang‘!
As we sit in this room, we and all the matter that makes up
our bodies, originated from within that little pea of energy. So did our sun and our planet the earth, and
every other star and galaxy that you can or cannot see, throughout the
universe! Now that is truly
amazing. What this tells us in practical
terms, is that our bodies are basically made of energy manifested in many
different ways that give us our physical presence.
We are pure energy, which is simply another way of saying ‘spirit’. We are
spiritual beings who have manifested ourselves into physical bodies.
We also know that we are not here just by an accident of
physics – that is not possible. But how
do we know this? Why are we here and how can we have a sense of purpose if we
do not know what it is?
Well, what are the only tools that we have been given to discover
the answer to deep these questions - we have been given our 5 senses to relate
to this physical world that surrounds us - to relate to the beauty that we see around us every
moment of every day. I believe that it
is this indescribable Beauty that is
the key to why we are here.
Now that’s a big statement, but what is beauty? Beauty is a
value as important to us as truth and goodness and gives meaning to our lives. Through the pursuit of beauty, we shape the
world we live in as a whole and it helps
us to understand our own nature as spiritual
beings. Beauty and nature are the
means by which a Creator makes herself known to us. By witnessing and appreciating that beauty,
we are in conversation with that Creator.
Beauty is a universal need of human beings – if we ignore this need, we
find ourselves in a spiritual desert.
Beauty is the remedy to all of the chaos and troubles of this world – it
shows human life to be worthwhile.
Finding beauty gives meaning to the world and for this reason, Art is a
sacred task – it needs creativity and creativity is about sharing.
Everywhere we look, we see beauty, if only we become aware of
it. Our eyes can give us a view of the
whole universe one moment and the next, we can bend down and look at a flower
or a beautiful fungi or insect. If we
use a microscope, we can even see the minutest detail of natures beauty in a
grain of pollen or a flake of snow. When
we look up and see the moon, it inspires us with its beauty.
Beauty is our way to connect not only with the universe, but
with the Creator herself. We can easily be
transported by the beautiful things we see around us, into a deep
contemplation.
A flash of sunlight in the middle of a wood or a remembered
tune, the face of someone we love – when we see or think of these things, life
is suddenly worthwhile. These events
give us timeless moments in which we can actually feel the presence of another
and higher world. This experience of
beauty seems to be calling us to give us an insight into the divine.
Nowadays in our consumer society, we say that something has
value if it is useful to us and this is our priority; but what is the use of
art? ‘All art is absolutely useless’
said Oscar Wilde, who intended his remark as praise – beauty is a value higher than usefulness – people need useless
things even more than they need things for their use! – what is the use of
Love, friendship, worship – none whatsoever, and the same goes for beauty.
In our architecture, if you only build our homes or offices
for utility only, they will soon become useless, as no one wants to be in them
because they are so damned ugly. BUT, If
you put beauty first, what you do or
build, will last forever. It turns out
that nothing is more useful than the USELESS! – our traditional architecture
with its decorative details and ornaments, liberate us from the tyranny of the
useful – they satisfy our need for harmony.
In a strange way, they make us feel at home – we are not always governed
by animal appetites like eating and sleeping – we have spiritual and moral
needs too – if those needs go unsatisfied, then so do we.
In the fourth century BC, Plato said: ‘Beholding beauty with
the eye of the mind, you will be able to nourish true virtue and become the
friend of God’ - He believed that we are pilgrims and passengers in this world,
who are always aspiring beyond it, to get to the eternal realm, where we will
be reunited with God.
The Creator, or if you prefer, God, exists in a
transcendental world to which we humans aspire but which we cannot know
directly. However, one way that we can
experience that heavenly sphere here below, is through the experience of beauty.
He also said ‘Lust is
about taking and Love is about giving’.
To reach the source of beauty, we
must overcome lust. Longing without
lust is Platonic love. A beautiful human
form is an invite to unite with it spiritually, not physically.
Our feeling for beauty is therefore a religious and not a sensual emotion. We can do nothing with beauty,
except contemplate its pure radiance – anything else, pollutes and desecrates
it, destroying its sacred aura.
Real beauty lies beyond desire – we can find beauty not only
in a young, desirable face but also in a face full of age defined by grief and
wisdom. The beauty of a face is a symbol
of the life expressed in it. It is flesh
become spirit. And by fixing our eyes on
it, we seem to be looking right through it and into the soul.
Beauty lies all around us – you need only the eyes to see it
and the heart to feel it - the most ordinary event can be made into something
absolutely beautiful.
Beauty is the revelation of a transcendental God in the here-and-now and this
religious concept lasted for some two thousand years.
However, the scientific
revolution came along and began to sow the seeds of doubt. It described our world as having no space in
it for gods and spirits. No place for
values and ideals. No place for
anything, save the regular clockwork movement which turned the moon around the
earth and the earth around the sun for no purpose whatsoever.
But science merely explains things and its account of the
world is in one way, incomplete. At the
heart of the scientists universe is a god-shaped hole, a spiritual vacuum and
this hole is filled by beauty - We can see the world from another perspective –
not seeking to use it or explain it, but simply
contemplating its appearance, as we
might contemplate a landscape or a flower.
The idea that the world is intrinsically meaningful, full of
an enchantment and beauty that needs no religious doctrine to perceive, answers
to a deep emotional need – beauty was not planted in the world by God, but
discovered there by people – you simply need to look on things with clear eyes
and free emotions - The message of the
flower is simply the flower itself! By leaving all of our pre-conceived ideas
about the world behind, and just ’Seeing’ things that way, we discover their
true beauty.
Think of the sheer joy you might feel when you hold a friends
baby in your arms - you do not want to do anything with the baby, you don’t
want to eat it or put it to any use or carry out scientific experiments on it,
you want simply to look at it and feel the great surge of delight that comes
upon you when you focus all your thoughts on this baby - and none at all on
yourself. It is this ‘disinterested’
attitude of not wanting to measure or explain things, that underlies our
experience of beauty.
Anyone listening to a beautiful piece of music, looking at a
sublime landscape or reading a poem, says, ‘Yes, this is enough!’
This experience is so important - the encounter with beauty
is so vivid, so immediate and so personal, that it seems hardly to belong to
our ‘ordinary’ world. Yet beauty shines
on us from ordinary everyday things and
we start to ask ‘is it really a feature of this world or a figment of our
imagination?’
Plato told us that the only explanation of such a wonderful
and spiritual experience of beauty was its transcendental origin – ‘beauty speaks to us like the voice of
God.’ – it connects us with the ultimate mystery of being. Through
beauty, we are brought into the very presence of the sacred.
This same sense of the transcendental
arrives in the universal experience of what we call, falling in love – it is an experience of the strangest kind. The face and the body of the beloved are
imbued with the intensest life, but in one crucial respect, they are like the
body of someone dead – because they seem
not to belong in the everyday world.
The urge to unite with someone or the loss of someone loved, are moments
that we all understand as sacred
moments.
We have good reason to connect the beautiful and the sacred; our need for beauty is something deep in
our nature; it is a part of our longing for compensation in a world of
dangers, sorrows and distress.
Plato said that ‘beauty
was a pathway to God’, while thinkers of the enlightenment saw art and
beauty as ways in which we save
ourselves from meaningless routines and rise to a higher level.
Beauty is an essential resource for us here on earth - through the pursuit
of beauty, we shape the world as our home and in so doing, we amplify our joy
and find consolation for all of our sorrows.
Art and music shine a light of meaning on an ordinary life
and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find
consolation and peace in their presence.
This
capacity of beauty to redeem our suffering is one reason why beauty and the
sacred can stand side by side – they are two doorways that take us to a common
space and in that space we find our home.
We also find meaning and a reason for being here – to be the witnesses
to the true beauty of this universe of ours and of God’s creation as a whole –
including us. Nigel Norie 03 12 09 with
thanks to Roger Scruton for his leadings, insights and phrases, which I use shamelessly but for a different outcome.