My dear Madame W. shared this chapter, 'Beauty in the Light of the Redemption,' which relates to previous posts about beauty, completion, perfection.
It was a wonderful post which I will still be mulling over- it is hard for me to accept that this Highest Beauty can be a real, true thing that I am allowed not to shun. I have been damning it in my mind for a long time because I have most strongly desired it. I felt as a child that beauty could not be God, but I also knew that I was 'overthinking things.' It is an odd situation. I told myself that what I wanted could not be what was.
I was playing a kind of self-hatred game with myself my whole life, trying to bereave myself of everything that made life worth living, as if that makes one righteous.
I know that if I opened myself to believing Beauty to really be Good, I would have to deal with my tendency to make Beauty and other un-primary things primary. I probably am doing it subconsciously even as I am 'damning' it within myself.
If I am indeed damning it within myself, and it is truly 'of God,' then that would mean I am sinning in that respect. I'm not afraid of this: it is actually a relief to realise it might be wrong, but I am 'damning' Beauty because I imagine it to be for some higher good that I am damning it, but I think it is going about things the wrong way. The way to put Beauty in its actual place is to seek first the Kingdom of God. Then 'all these things' will be added unto me. God created this world and all that He intended is meant to be. He did not create an accident that is to be 'put away' when some process is done with. The world is part of the end. The goal, the telos. We are creaturely things, the world our setting.
I immediately think: then I must fight with myself, make myself see Beauty as good! But again, this is looking at this wrong. I look at everything as a fight, as me having to punch myself around till things fall into their proper place. I need to stop it. Stop looking at myself as something to be pushed around and forced into its place. To be sorted, to be dealt with. It is very, very hard to shed this... and at this very moment, I am in a bit of a rut and can't for the life of me see how I would begin to relax into not damning Beauty.
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