Sitting here on my balcony with a breathtaking view of the Mediterranean Sea, I am overwhelmed with beauty and its capacity to fill us with unexplainable wonder. My first impulse is to want to share this beauty with everyone, because it is the nature of beauty to move us beyond ourselves and our self-absorption. Beauty also moves us beyond our struggle for survival and infuses life with joy and hope. It softens the heart and enlightens the mind. In both religion and romance, beauty is what we are truly seeking.
I know we are living in challenging and even dark times. Interestingly, in movies reflecting post-apocalyptic themes, the landscapes always reflect the unhappy bedfellows of ugliness and darkness. Rather than being seduced by the darkness, we need to allow ourselves to be seduced by beauty. Beauty is a form of heavenly light that disperses darkness. Beauty is the hinge that opens the door to the experience of God’s love. Authentic beauty is a literal force that harmonizes and elevates us. My fundamental presupposition is that God is the source of beauty; in fact, we can rightly say that Beauty is God and God is Beauty. Thomas of Celano, friend and biographer of Francis of Assisi, said of Francis, “In everything beautiful Francis saw God who is beauty itself, and he followed his beloved everywhere by his likeness imprinted on creation.”
Divine Beloved,
In beauty, you seduce me.
