George Friedrich Handel lived from 1685-1759, was German by birth but lived a great deal of his life in England. He is considered one of the greatest composers of the Baroque period and was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1742, during the space of just 24 days, he produced the score for his “Messiah,” the grand composition laying out the life and significance of Jesus Christ. In full orchestration, with choir, it lasts almost 2 1/2 hours. I remain captivated by its magnificence, literally stunned by the genius it must have taken to produce something so complex and absorbing in such a brief timeframe. I never tire of listening and being transported by the interplay between instruments, human voices and lyrics. I place its last five minutes at or near the top of the most beautiful and compelling pieces of music I’ve ever heard. I know because I never want it to end. If asked, I could probably come up with my top 5 or top 10 list of most beautiful music pieces. I know Mozart’s “Requiem” (choral 1791) and “The Lark Ascending” by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (solo violin and orchestra, 1921) would easily make the cut.

Early yesterday, this topic came to me. Not music. Not beautiful music or even beauty, but the languages God uses to speak to us. To connect with us and help us to see who and what we are and what the whole thing is about. I’ve been aware of this topic for quite some time now and have grown into the knowing, more as life goes on.

I suspect this will be another multi-parter, especially as I’ve concluded there are at least four or five languages he uses (for me at least) and I haven’t started a full exploration.

Two points to make at the beginning. First, language doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with words, although it does on occasion. And, second, I think this is a pretty big deal, especially for those who believe there is a God or might be kind of on the fence. For those who flat out don’t believe there’s a God, this may seem misguided or silly or something else.

A very bright guy named Tom Wright, against whom my intellect is quite impoverished, writes of “four areas which in today’s world can be interpreted as ‘echoes of a voice’: the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships and the delight in beauty.”

He takes this general theme as a starting point to a powerful book that has stuck with me for many years. His “echoes of a voice” is a subtler way of what I’m generally calling the languages of God.

At the risk of starting off by eliciting all sorts of objections, I want to talk about beauty.

And, lest we get absorbed in the objections, I’ll say that I’m well aware of how the concept of beauty can breed idolatry and I’m well aware that many people will struggle, based upon their circumstances, to identify beauty in their lives and experience. And, I’m well aware that the problems of the world (both real and perceived) can drown out most apprehension of things beautiful. I could go on but I’ll stop there.

No, I still want to talk about beauty because I believe that God, via beauty, gives us glimpses of who he is and why we’re here and all sorts of things around those two things.

Can we think of moments when we have been almost stunned as our senses have connected with something we can only describe as beautiful? The picture or experience is so profound that it creates kind of a tunnel vision and we call it good in a way that dwarfs normal experience? It’s like a tapestry that weaves together individual threads that collectively take our breath away? And that this thing or moment co-incidentally points us to something greater than ourselves while simultaneously connecting us with that something greater?

I know that sounds like a tall order and maybe it is. Have we had any of those moments? I have. But maybe we’ve had moments that may not rise quite to that level but are in the ballpark. Same idea, perhaps not quite as intense.

I wrote recently of one powerful experience of beauty during my early adolescence that put me on notice that beauty can be transcendent and show us who we are in remarkable ways. But I recall some others.

After two or three days of blizzard conditions, camping on the floor of Yosemite Valley with my friend Mike during Christmas break 1975 (learning the definition of cold), waking up to a sunrise in a cloudless sky over Half Dome, with the virgin snow, and a park virtually empty of people … a site indelible in my mind … that was beautiful. I’ve seen a lot of nature, yet that image remains. I felt both tiny in comparison and completely connected in its element. I imagine there’s such beauty in the next life. (But maybe not as cold!)

Seeing Diane walk toward me, down the wisteria-draped arbor on June 21, 1986. There has never been a more beautiful bride or setting. She actually loves me. Warts and all. I was pulled in and completed by her beauty but, more importantly, the beauty of those moments.

Watching as our sons were born, messy and painful as that was. They were real human lives, gifts to us. Beautiful.

I experienced a great deal of beauty in my long career as a teacher and a supporter of teachers and their students. Moments of such delight as to make the fact that this was a job completely irrelevant. I should have paid someone for the opportunity to experience these things. 🙂 One moment stands out, quite humorous, but beautiful. A student named Margaret was struggling to understand the deep significance of a profound moment in our country’s history. One could easily have explained the thing without having to peel away all of the layers but she wanted to really get it and I kind of deftly pushed her thinking as the rest of the class departed. We carried the discussion out into the hallway which was choked with students during the passing period. She was so absorbed in trying to understand, she lost her balance and fell into a seating position, legs splayed out, never stopping the dialogue as I stood above her. And, then she got it and her whole face lit up with the insight. Blind to the kids going around either side, it was a thing of beauty. A young person wholly absorbed in discovery and experiencing transformation, seated on her tush. I suspect she has not forgotten it, either.

Taking a slightly different tack:

As a senior in high school, I was in a challenging English class and we had to memorize a poem, recite it to the class and dissect it for everyone else. I’m not sure how I arrived at my choice but it was “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” published in 1819 by the English Romantic poet, John Keats. I can still recall a large part of it but the final two lines are its most notable: “Beauty is Truth, truth Beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”

Those Romantics: Artists, composers and writers, were captivated by the concept of beauty but I’m sorry to say I believe they missed the mark.

And what they missed is the belief that beauty is an end in itself, hence the conclusion of the poem I just mentioned. They sought beauty for beauty’s sake and tried to represent it as best they could. No, beauty is not truth and vice versa. And, it’s certainly not all we need to know.

Rightfully, there was a reaction against this line of thinking and beauty fell into disrepute later in the 19th century. In fact, it all but disappeared as something worth considering. And, that’s understandable.

The world turned out to be quite a mess, the exploding Industrial Age shattering many values held for centuries, whether those values were good or bad. While music and art that followed can be considered interesting or even genius, I’d argue they were only on rare occasions beautiful. That continues to this day.

Perhaps this occurred because the intellectual pursuit of beauty or the cravings of the heart did not point to the real Truth but only “echoes” as Wright says.

Because isn’t most beauty transitory? The snow on the floor of Yosemite Valley turned to slush. The final five minutes of Handel’s Messiah gets forgotten not long afterwards, the many other images implanted in our brains get crowded out by a whole pile of stuff that is anything but beautiful.  People age and lose the beauty of youth, something thrust at us by unavoidable culture?

Or, is there something such as timeless beauty and … what is that, really?

I’ll toss out that it has a great deal to do with Love. Not love in a throwaway term sense but Love as an act of living beyond one’s self and for another.

Handel composed his piece to glorify God. That’s what he set out to do. Period. In that regard, he produced a thing of timeless beauty, weaving together great truths. Among those truths is that we humans are capable of creating great things. We are gifted with tools such as speech, hands, keen minds and so on. Of course we can use those same tools to debase and destroy … darken the lives of others with actions and behaviors that breed hopelessness and despair.

I’ve heard Love described as a beautiful dance that elevates the participants as they lift one another into remarkable places. The trinitarian belief in the nature of God is relective of this. A beautiful dance with the object as Love.

Quite an ideal. Not so easily lived out, unfortunately.

I believe God speaks to us through beauty of this nature. He calls out to us and says, “See here. This is what I’m talking about. What can you learn from this? Where does this take you and why?”

I have been gifted with “seeing” heaven three times. At none of those times did I set out with that as a goal. This was no attempt at repetitive meditation in order to arrive to a state of bliss. This was no, “Come on, God, show me!!” Instead, all three arrived completely unexpectedly and with a force beyond anything I can describe. One quickly followed the voice of God who, thankfully, spoke English at the time and I had no real awareness of the people around me. One other occurred in the midst of people expressing their love in a number of ways, including through song and music. To say that I experienced beauty would be both very accurate and wholly inadequate. The Beauty was so powerful in two of them that it virtually hurt … my take afterwards was that my human ability to fully understand the language of God is extremely limited but that its beauty pulls me forward to its object and I can almost burst with the enormity of it. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, let’s ponder on the things and experiences in our lives that we would call beautiful: Full of Beauty. What does that mean to be “full of beauty?” Does the echo lead us to a place where we can be filled with or fulfilled by Beauty? The beauty that reflects a reality much greater than ourselves and what we generally pay attention to. The beauty that makes us catch our breath and realize that it’s because love has a hold.

 

Lord, each day, please give me the eyes to see as you see, the ears to hear what you hear, the heart to feel as you do and the means to carry out your will. Please forgive me when I either don’t hear you or just turn away. Thank you for presenting us with things and moments that are beautiful and point to the truth of your existence and of what life with you can be like. Amen.