Healing Beauty

My theme for Sunday was beauty and how beauty heals. 

The scene from the Tom Hanks/Denzel Washington movie, Philadelphia, framed the first part of the sermon.  I quickly communicated enough of the story to have this scene make sense, and then described the scene in some detail.  My concluding remark was that Denzel had been transformed by the beauty of the opera:  something that at the beginning of the scene he acknowledged did not particularly interest him.  I told the story yesterday, but you may link to the clip here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b0p9mTJOJI 

All beauty in the world is either a memory of Paradise or a prophecy of the transfigured world.  —Nicholas Berdyaev, Russian religious and political philosopher (1874–1948)

Beauty surely is in the eye of the beholder.  For me two of the most beautiful moments in my life were when I got to see pink and blue squirming lumps covered with blood that had just emerged into our world.  It is a feeling I have not had since but it was a moment of transcendent beauty: they were, and are, prophecies of a transfigured world.

Beauty can take many forms.  Literature, drama, art, photograph are just examples.  I confess for me, music is a special place, a special moment.  I can truly feel whatever is physiologically going on with my body enzymes when I am surrounded by music I like.  Love of the created beauty is also clearly something that engenders moments of transcendence.

I wonder if Jennie’s question to Forrest Gump, near the end of her life isn’t an inquiry into how he dealt with his own fear.  She asks were you ever afraid in Viet Nam?  And Forrest, begins to talk of the beauty of God’s creation:  night skies, sun on the bayou as it is getting ready to go to bed, the skies reflection on a lake where it looks like two lakes, and finally, in the desert mountain west, where the sky and earth seem to come together and one doesn’t know ‘where heaven ends and the earth begins.’  Jennie laments to Forrest that she wishes she ‘could have been there with you’ and Forrest says to her, ‘you were.’  In a moment of intense fear of the unknown, Jennie is showered with a narrative of beauty and a reminder, like the Philadelphia opera excerpt, that love allows us to see that beauty around us.  

Beauty is something that we can and should seek out at moments when we are feeling awful so that we can be full of awe – awe-full. 

Psalm 8 might help to frame for us how we can biblically grasp that moment of  awe-full transcendence. 

LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!   You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants 
   you have established a stronghold against your enemies, 
   to silence the foe and the avenger. 
   you have established a stronghold against your enemies,     to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, 
   the work of your fingers, 
the moon and the stars, 
   which you have set in place, 
   the work of your fingers,  the moon and the stars,     which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them,    human beings that you care for them?

That transcendence can lead to transformation.


Francis Collins in his book The Language of God speaks to how beauty moved him to take a leap of faith. You can hear him talk to this on how beauty transformed his soul ...  He talks to it here:  Collins and his transcendent moment of beauty.

There are clearly times we all have holes in our souls.  Beauty is one of the things that can surely be used to fill those holes.  Seek beauty when we experience moments of brokenness, point to it when others are shattered.  Beauty is a 'foretaste of Paradise or an opportunity to see the world as it can be.' 

Beauty is something that we can and should seek out at moments when we are feeling awful so that we can be full of awe – awe-full. 

Selah.