It speaks in a soft gentle voice, never shouting, never angry, but always opening my senses to what is, here and now. Beauty knows every language and speaks in them all fluently, intimately and tenderly. She speaks to brokenness and hopelessness, despair and anxiety. She is never in a hurry, waiting always for you to stop, look, listen, smell, taste, touch and be present.
I cannot explain why she is speaking so gently and tenderly to me in this present place in life but I cannot ignore the voice that is so visible in every single day. Nor can I explain why my soul is so eager to become more familiar with this voice except for the fact that it is in beauty that the Almighty places the most healing messages of hope, love, awakening and redemption. It is in beauty that I encounter Sophia, Lady Wisdom, who constantly invites me to the simplicity where She holds out her treasures for me to encounter.
Dostoevsky says that ‘beauty will save the world’. What does he mean? I do not know what he meant but I do see that beauty, being very present to all that is living now, within, around, and unfolding, is so very redemptive. It offers hope and wonder and a return to living simply, sharing all that is around you. Can that save us? It could be a start.
Dan Allender wrote that ‘beauty leads the heart to hope’. What is hope? What do we wait for or long for that is to be changed? Could hope simply be allowing the beauty of the ordinary becoming a balm on the wounds and letting us see that what lives is what will speak to us and call us to awaken?
Becoming aware of beauty often involves motion and stillness being held together. Awareness of beauty can depend on pain, woundedness, healing, open heart, stillness, sensuality, connectedness. Perhaps my soul has begun to hope in a way that it never did before. I know my heart is learning to live as it never has before. It is mysterious and continually invites me to find the Almighty, The Beloved in a place of no words, no defined sounds or expressions, a sweet language that I can hear but not necessarily speak.
Beauty speaks in the midst of death, of loss, of pain and anguish - yet how do I hear it? I often hear it in the fatigue, in the stopping, and watching. I hear it in the limitations. What is mysterious, and what is Divine are realities. This language of infinite patience and tenderness continually catches me by surprise. I watch a friend bravely living vibrantly in the knowledge that her cancer diagnosis has given her a shorter time to live. She radiates beauty in her living! Conversations that are hard to have, that speak truth, hold beauty when they call us to offer life to each other in spite of differences.
She is so mysterious - she only reveals this moment, waiting for us to encounter her. Beauty holds so much more and invites us to seek, to linger, to let go, to heal, to hear the Beloved speak of love that will always remain.
