Beauty with a Capital “B”
A Reflection by Christine Jurisich
Beauty is all around us. This gives us reason for hope.
Beauty is the intensity of red in a rose that gives the look of soft velvet and leaves you in awe of its richness.
Beauty is the vibrantly colorful fresh fruit on your plate and the feeling of gratitude and connection you have with all who allowed it to be there.
Beauty is the sky with its uniquely stunning cloud formations and variations of blue and white that conjure up awe and wonder.
Beauty with a capital “B.” In the book, “The Invisible Embrace: Beauty,” John O’Donohue talks about Beauty with a capital “B” as an invitation to open our hearts and minds to God as Creator of all that is good and merciful and beautiful and to recognize how God speaks, heals, comforts, and sustains us through God’s beautiful creations.
O’Donohue says if you choose to look for Beauty, you will find it everywhere.
Beauty is so quietly woven through our ordinary days that we hardly notice it.
Everywhere there is tenderness, care and kindness, there is beauty.
Yearning for Beauty is Yearning for God
Why are we so drawn to beauty? And why do we find comfort in a precious hummingbird or a fluttering butterfly? Because God speaks to us through beauty. We yearn for beauty because we yearn for God’s goodness.
The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere - in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion, and in ourselves. No one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. Some of our most wonderful memories are of beautiful places where we felt immediately at home. We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul.
Beauty meets the needs of our soul. When there is a deep longing for beauty, there is a deep longing for God. In the middle of a deep disappointment, loss, or stressful situation and desperately wanting a connection with the Divine, the invitation is to look for one piece of goodness around you. Many times that one glimmer of Divine hope is found in a quiet moment when you pause and look at a flower, a beautiful leaf, or an awe-inspiring formation of birds in the sky. O’Donohue explains the connection between a longing for Beauty and our longing for God.
In Greek the word for ‘the beautiful’ is to kalon. It is related to the word kalein which includes the notion of ‘call.’ When we experience beauty, we feel called. The Beautiful stirs passion and urgency in us and calls us forth from aloneness into the warmth and wonder of an eternal embrace. It unites us again with the neglected and forgotten grandeur of life…. We respond with joy to the call of beauty because in an instant it can awaken under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness.
Beauty as a Source of Hope
Beauty gives us hope as we see that God never stops creating. It is a choice to recognize Beauty. Making that choice to pause and notice the wonder of a unique formation of branches on a tree is how we cultivate hope. This hope inspires us to co-create with the Creator and spread more Beauty into the world.
O’Donohue sums up the importance of beauty in a trying time. He asks:
Why turn to beauty when the world is in crisis? Because there is nowhere else to turn and we are desperate. It is as simple as that.
My heart feels hopeful when I gaze at my rose bushes and notice the different stages of growth; from the branch that looks lonely without a bloom, to the bud slowly revealing new life, to the rose that inspires me in all its bold Beauty. Each stage reminds me of the different stages of grief and the potential for new life within me. It calms me. I see my sadness within the universal cycle of death and new life and am comforted to know that living, suffering, dying, and rising are all part of the Christian experience. Beauty with a captial “B” is what brings this all to my attention.
Hope is found in the awareness of our sacred place in the universe. Beauty brings forth hope in that it connects us to our imagination, creativity, each other, and to the web of life.
As spring and Easter near, I invite you to spend time with Beauty and recognize Beauty with a capital “B.”
Find something awe-inspiring and sit with it.
Breathe with it.
Touch it.
Smell it.
Listen to it.
What is it telling you about God’s mercy? How is it inspiring hope?
Listen to this reflection on YouTube.
Share in this month’s Sacred Circle
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How do you experience Beauty with a capital “B”?
John O’Donohue, The Invisible Embrace: Beauty (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003).