Beguiled by Beauty

The beauty of nature and of all beautiful things lets us experience the world without a why. It has no reason other than itself. “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice . . . . Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall the trees of the wood sing for joy. . . .” (1 Chr. 16:31–33). This

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.

Our minds are deeply shaped by the ideas we carry around in our heads about “God,” often images we absorbed in childhood. It is therefore important to use wildly creative language about divine reality, to use words and images that will help to unpin our minds from ingrained images. It is not that images are bad; we cannot think without images. Thou

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

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

God thirsts for us and will never be satisfied without deep intimacy with every human being. This intimacy already surges and dances through every molecule of the universe—pulsing through stars and tiny lipids. But for whatever reason, human beings have trouble keeping up with the dance. God’s yearning for us is why we can practice, the difficulty

Diversity is the fundamental quality of creation and of all beauty. No single note makes a song. No single sound captures the chant of a moving creek. No flower exhausts the possibilities of color and fragrance. We humans like to keep things small and limited—two genders, one race, one religion, one nation. But the divine creativity is infinitely e

For our purposes, contemplation refers to a wide variety of spiritual practices, including but not limited to meditation. One might take up a contemplative attitude toward cooking or walking or nursing a baby. One might sing or dance, chant or exercise in a contemplative way. One might engage in works of social justice from a contemplative frame of

Desire is our trustworthy magic lamp that never goes out. When we are led in a direction that does not serve us, desire stands back up, dusts itself off, and tries again. Desire desires our deepest good and will not give up through all of our crazy wandering.