A Brighter Light

Tags

Beauty, Celebrities, Celebrity Culture, Culture, Faith, Glory, God, Life, Meaning, Truth

So small the glitterings that satisfy

our little minds, the fading glamor

which captivates our child-eyes,

the sparks we take for stars eternal,

entrancing flickers in the night.

We are too satisfied,

too soon bewitched

by shadows vague and fading fast.

How brighter, fuller, shines celestial

the fiery pillar everlasting;

how brighter burns that majestic

Light of all light,

Light unending,

which alone can satisfy.

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Beauty’s Prophecy

Tags

Beauty, Creation, Eschatology, Nature, Poem

Thank you, Lord, for this world

that you have made;

for the glory of its spreading skies

and every leaf and tree

and bit of painted paradise,

green fields of morning mist-veiled

or dew-bejeweled,

proud trees boastful with verdant plumage,

and every leaf and flower,

harbinger of that new age

and worlds renewed.

The gift of beauty prophesies

in fields and trees and spreading skies.

Strangely Beautiful

Tags

Aesthetics, Beauty

I was just observing my cup of tea–which is a wonderful thing in any case–more wonderful by the lighting that enables me to see the steam swirling about, wispy as a ghost.  Isn’t steam a lovely thing, playmate of the air?  And it makes me reflect on God the artist, who fills this world with ordinary things strangely beautiful.

An atheist could appreciate the beauty, but only so deep, for the beauty of coiling steam above his cup would only be an accidental side-effect of the laws of nature.  And surely it is a side-effect of those laws.

But I can’t help thinking that God might have designed a more pragmatic universe, a world where function did not bring about such superfluously lovely forms, or a world without beings who had a sense of aesthetics, beings who saw strange beauty in ordinary things.

Here, then, a mug of tea testifies to an extravagantly generous and artistic God.

But it is my seminary mug.