Beguiled by Beauty

Awakening to this “without a why” of creation has no purpose other than itself. It is to recognize and participate in what is—not to change it, interpret it, care for it, or adjust it. Being awake is to participate in the flow of what is as it exists for itself. As Sug says to Celie, “God must be pissed off if we pass the color purple in a field wi

Contemplation is not something separate and apart from ordinary life. It is a way to inhabit ordinary life.

Julian, like other contemplatives, acknowledges that there is a great deal of suffering that is simply part of being human. But what makes this suffering so soul-destroying is that we cannot see how beloved we are. We no longer remember that we are adored and cherished by God.

Desire is enormous soul energy. More than will power or good intentions, desire orients us to what is good. We can be confused about what is ultimately good or good for us in a particular situation, but the desire for the good is like a light that illuminates our steps.

“If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright” (Luke 11:36, RSV). In this saying Jesus invites us to remember who we are: we are light and are witnesses to the light. We are partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:3, 4).

These practices are not an escape from turmoil but disciplines that open our hearts wider to the world’s tragedy and beauty, however difficult times become.

Beauty reveals the relationship between the divine goodness and the world.

Beauty opens the door to the significance of beings, and having seen and recognized this, we can no longer be unmoved or indifferent.

Contemplation is distinctive because it shows us that we are not only in a subject-object relationship with God—parent to child, king to servant—but we are also in the process of reuniting our being with the divine reality. We are light. The “flowing light of the God-head” circulates from Love to each of us and through us to one another.15 As Jesus