"God is Beauty"

Looking north, Friday, June 15, ~5:30A

“God is Beauty” titles the final chapter of O’Donohue’s Beauty. It’s only one of the infinite ninety-nine names but perhaps among the most under-attended while most available. Sometimes the face of beauty just requires getting up at 5:30A and looking out the window. Other times the display depends on devotion to tending the gardens, both in the ground around us and in the inner reaches of the soul. Perhaps like all the names of God, beauty reveals the mystery as one travels deeper and deeper into the layers, by grace and by dedication. The gifts include interpenetration with other names of God and this opens vistas that have been veiled until their connection is realized.

“Thomas Aquinas and the medieval thinkers wisely recognized that beauty was at the heart of reality; it was where truth, unity, goodness and presence came together. Without beauty they would be separated and inclined towards destructive conflict with each other. Accompanied by beauty, truth gains graciousness and compassion. Beauty holds harmony at the heart of unity and prevents its collapse into the most haunted chaos. In the presence of beauty, goodness attracts desire and beauty makes presence luminous and evokes its mystery. There is a profound equality at the heart of beauty; a graciousness which recognizes and encourages the call of individuality but invites it to serve the dream and creative vision of community. Without beauty the Eros of growth and creativity would dry up. As Simone Weil says: “Desire contains something of the absolute and if it fails…the absolute is transferred to the obstacle.’” John O’Donohue, Beauty, pp. 222-3.