To be defrauded of beauty is like being deprived of education or medicine.

But beauty has a twin sister from whom she is never parted. Delight in the beauty of beings walks with compassion for suffering. It is not that suffering is primordial, and so compassion and justice are the first spiritual fruits. Suffering is present wherever feeling, living beings exist. But it is not first. Sacred worth, vibrant zest, interconne

We are creatures of spirit and made for the Beloved, for the ultimate mystery that has no name. As creatures of spirit, our longing for the sacred is not only a private relationship with the holy other. It is a call to honor the sacred worth of every creature.

The beauty of beings is not their external “prettiness.” The man on death row, the old woman dying in her bed, the bleached coral reefs are not pretty sights. But this man, this woman, this coral are beautiful and sacred. They are irrevocably woven into the family of being.

Through images like these we are reminded that we are of a noble lineage and we are called to great things. We are beloved of the Beloved. Poor, troubled children of Eve, we have become confused and lost our way. If there is such a thing as sin, it is not the stain of guilt we cannot wash out but forgetfulness that we are held with tender mercy by

Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century anchoress who lived during one of the worst centuries in human history. The black death wiped out more than half of the population of Norwich. Famines and floods were worse than anything in memory. Wars ravaged the land, and wandering mercenaries ravaged its people. The church was roiled by corruption. The

We often dull down our capacity for beauty because we cannot bear to stay awake for the atrocities that we encounter when we love fragile creatures. It requires so much courage and strength to endure love for the beauty of the world. As Galway Kinnell points out, love requires courage: “perhaps it is courage, and even perhaps only courage.”5

Poverty is being deprived of basic goods that human bodies and minds need to thrive. Lacking a beach front house may not be a form of oppression, but the absence of beauty is a socially produced impoverishment of the spirit.

Beauty is not for something else, a dose of sugar to help the medicine of responsibility go down a bit easier. It is the sacred vitality of beings and of creativity. It is the unique and unrepeatable wonder of each existing thing and the infinitely complex webs of relationship in which we are all embedded.