I love it when I am put into other people's shoes, feeling and experiencing other people's temptations, ideas, sorrows, desires. I have become (over time) grateful for when this happens because it has humbled me so much, it has also caused me to sympathise with people I would have very quickly judged.
The other day I was driving through town. I had many different tasks to do, appointments, time constraints, on top of sleep deprivation and just general anxiety which I'm prone too get when stuck in town anyway. I'm sure I have sensation issues, lights, noise, crowds.... just effect me in a bad way, anyhow....
Emmy noticed this beautiful V line of geese, make it's way across the sun mottled sky above us and pointed it out to me.
Beauty has always been so important to me. It stops me hard. I am compelled by it. I have, on occasion, been caught frozen solid in the middle of a crowded street by a glint of sunlight through the branches of a tree, or forgotten my bag on a bench to wander into a little grove of dappled light on the path ahead.
But for some reason that particular day, the juxtaposition of this sacred ritual of flight in the heavens and the stress of the streets reacted toxically within me.
I felt nauseous and irritated.
I simply didn't want the distraction!
Oh, how beauty has become devalued in our highly industrialised world. We simply don't want the distraction. Everything has become streamlined to manage the practicalities of life efficiently. The sacred journey of the geese, the lichen of every green hue imaginable upon the bark of a horse chestnut tree, and the little spider upon the quivering leaf are left unnoticed by most. The deep truths that speak to our very soul within the natural world are not penetrated for the sake of gleaning a breadth superficial knowledge with the questionable agenda of our mental trawling.
Art always reflects it's society. These days even the art we see hanging out upon the walls of modern galleries has become almost utilitarian in it's aesthetic approach. Soulless and aspiring to look factory made, image after image betrays the mark of a Warhol print from his own pre fab style "factory" line productions.
In many ways, art has become about image rather than intent.
With the constant noise of technology buzzing around us and the demands of a life that turns upon it's dizzying axis, children (adults too) have very much, lost the ability to notice, to observe, to recognise beauty.
For economies sake houses are losing their individuality and workmanship. Products, estates, high streets and interiors emphasis the contemporary twin attributes of being streamlined and functional. Our cities are built, not to reflect the art and civilisation of a nation anymore, they are set into the hardened mould of capital gain.
But we humans are not soulless robots.
A thing done for nothing more than the sake of beauty is surely valuable indeed, within it's own right. It's usefulness or economy should not be it's primary reason for existing.
Is it ours?
The Bible tells us that we have been made to know, love and praise the God of heaven and Earth.
Problem is that these days, these high ideals have become relegated to the sidelines of life. The edges and the hard shoulders, for making small pit stops only when we break down completely.
Life is liturgy. It is discovering of the essence of God within all things. It is the fibonacci sequence within nature, ratio's golden rule!
It is harmony, both inner and outer. Yet we are losing segments of the sequence, we are messing with the DNA of the liturgy. The liturgy of life itself, the Word made flesh.
Noticing, observing and recognising beauty in the natural world around us and in the reflection of this in art was what the great philosopher's of the past saw as the very purpose of life.
Education and life wasn't about the repetition of tasks for the sake of both the individual and national economy, it was for the nourishment and expansion of the soul.
How many people take wonderment. How many people have been taught, or shown how through example, to take wonderment from the simple beauty's within nature.
Children, I truly have come to believe, need to been in nature regularly. They need to be taught the liturgy of life.
I'm glad Emmy noticed. It is becoming a gift, noticing. May I always be able to slow down, stop and stare at the sun glinting through the shivering branches of a city tree lifting it's leaves in praise from the 2 by 2 sqaure patch of dirt along the road.
Photo credit: NaPix -- Now in Sapa VN
