"Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te." You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. -St. Augustine, The Confessions
As I read that line in yesterday's post, I couldn't help but think how true it was. Especially as I've been searching for knowledge and experiences of beauty, I've noticed a restlessness in my heart, and it is only quieted even slightly by returning to the understanding of God as beauty. I brought up the struggles I'm having to a couple of friends, who have both told me I'm looking for answers I can't have, either because they were not meant for this world, or because they may not exist at all. Something tells me the answers do, in fact, exist, but that perhaps they are not meant to be understood in this world. Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped me from trying to find them.
Over the past several days, I've turned to all the things I find beautiful, hoping that something would be that magic lightning bolt of understanding, but no dice. Listening to music hasn't helped increase my understanding, because there is beauty in both the discord and the harmony. Observing nature hasn't helped, because there is beauty in both the simple and the complex. Art is similarly unhelpful, because there are so many different styles which are beautiful and have little in common. Forget about literature, since it's different from author to author, and even piece to piece. There doesn't seem to be one quality or characteristic running through all these things which makes them beautiful, they just feel right. They speak to my mind, heart, and soul in that inexplicable way that very few things do, and that is how I know they are beautiful.
The only thing I can isolate that these things have in common is that when I experience them, there is some sort of release. When I hear beautiful music, or see beautiful art or nature, or when I read something beautiful, I can only be calm and serene, and it feels for a brief instant as if the present moment is all there is. As Marc Barnes so eloquently explains, the desire for beauty is infinite. There is no point at which a person says, "I've experienced enough beauty, and I'm done now." One experience of beauty leads only to a desire for another, and then another, and then another. Nobody ceases to desire to experience beauty, no matter how much he has seen or heard or read. It's like being an addict, except for one crucial difference; the addict has to experience the euphoric feeling of the first high from outside himself, which he will spend the rest of his life chasing, and will never attain again. The desire for beauty is innate. Something prompts a person from within to seek beauty, though he does not know quite what it is, and he will spend his life chasing it, only to truly experience it for the first time when he is face to face with his Creator.
Until that day, all we have are reflections of beauty. We see and hear and read things which mimic God's beauty and perfection, but are not it, and so we continue to seek that which we cannot define and will always desire. However, this is, I think, why people are moved to conversion by beauty. There is something in the beautiful which those people are able to recognize as God, and the painful longing for that beauty tells them that somehow God exists, and it causes them to chase after Him.
I haven't yet mentioned what this means for you, though. Forgive me, but I'm about to use a couple of very tired cliches. Marianne Williamson, a woman who is best known for her activism for peace, is also the author of a longer version of this quote, often incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?" It is that same tactic of Satan's which I talked about in Day 2's post, convincing us that we are not as like God as we are. So if God is beauty, then our greatest fear is being like Him, because the devil has assured us we are not.
The next cliche is much more recent, though no less overused, I think. In the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the main character (whose name I forget) was doing something outlandish (which I also forget) when he says this line to the reader: "And in that moment, I swear we were infinite." This has absolutely nothing to do with the book, but if the experience of beauty is infinite, then whether you are experiencing beauty or someone else is experiencing it through you, in that moment you are infinite, as well. Because of the fall, we have been convinced to be afraid of what we are as a reflection of God. We are frightened of being infinite as we will be in heaven, but we are still unceasingly drawn to the infinite experience of beauty because our souls were made for infinite union with beauty Itself. And so we are restless until then.
You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
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