02 July 2006

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. For a while the strains of struggle and endurance are relieved and our frailty is illuminated by a different light in which we come to glimpse behind the shudder of appearances the sure form of things. In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness. Without any of the usual calculation, we can slip into the Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that this embrace will hold us. (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, by John O'Donohue)

For such is the beauty of God.

1 Comments:

Blogger kate said...

Homecoming. I love that. I absolutely love that.
Sometimes, beautiful places -- or experiences -- feel so familiar, and I don't know why. And I feel so unable to drink them in. As if I haven't got the right senses (yet?). I am so comforted by the possibility that I feel this way because some part of me knows these moments are but a taste of what is to come. And when I, and we, get there, we never have to leave.
Sometimes it's so hard to remember, though, in between glimpses.

7/03/2006 03:59:00 PM  

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