Thoughts on Beauty
When you hear the word ‘beauty’ what comes to mind?
Do you think of a certain person?
A certain kind of face?
A particular place?
Recently, I read what has become one of my favorite books, “Beauty: The Invisible Embrace” by John O’Donohue. This book is filled with insights and poetic observations on ‘beauty,’ and of my many takeaways and highlights in this book, here’s one thing I walked away with:
When we hear the word ‘beauty,’ we inevitably think that beauty belongs in a special elite realm where only the extraordinary dwell. Yet without realizing it, each day each one of us is visited by beauty. When you actually listen to people it is surprising how often beauty is mentioned. A world without beauty would be unbearable. Indeed the subtle touches of beauty are what enable most people to survive. Yet beauty is so quietly woven through our ordinary days that we hardly notice it. Everywhere there is tenderness, care, and kindness, there is beauty.” - John O’Donohue.
O’Donohue describes beauty as something that is not necessarily concerned with being tangible but an experience. An encounter. An embrace.
When you compare this language about beauty to what many of us may see online and in our everyday reality, or maybe even what we’ve been told about beauty, we may find this concept challenging to grasp. We may find it difficult to embrace ‘beauty’ that doesn’t just belong, to “a special elite realm,” as ‘O’Donohue says. Even if we feel like we see the beauty in a particular person or a place, we may struggle to see it within our own lives. How can we beautiful or make something beautiful, or be a part of something, if we feel all too ordinary, insignificant, or unseen?
Augusta Savage (1892-1962) was an African American sculptor and educator associated with the Harlem Renaissance who once said this about her work,
“I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work.” – Augusta Savage
Now, when I look at Savage’s work, I cannot help but see beauty, and perhaps, you see this as well. One of her most notable sculptures was the “The Harp,” which was exhibited at New York’s World Fair in 1939. However, the sculpture did not live on. In a YouTube video about Augusta Savage’s life and career,” Sarah Colado shares this story of the sculpture:
“‘The Harp’stood approximately 16 feet tall and was the most visited attraction of the fair. Although the fair made an unknown amount of money selling replicas of her work, Savage herself could not afford to store or ship the sculpture and it was subsequently destroyed.” – Sarah Colado
Learning of the unfortunate fate of this dynamic sculpture illuminates what Savage spoke of when she said she had “created nothing really beautiful.” For Savage, even though her work took years and great talent to make, her work was about how she could draw forth hope and inspiration in the next generation. Even in the photographs and replicas that remain of her work, the legacy lives on.
Savage’s words challenge the idea that beauty is something physical and glamorous that we can conjure up and make all on our own. To quote John O’Donohue again, (from his 2017 interview with OnBeing’s Krista Tippet)
“Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness...Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming...a deeper sense of depth...a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.” – John O’Donohue
If beauty is about depth then this means that beauty is not merely about how something looks. If beauty is about coming home and remembering what is true, then beauty isn’t just about something we can create or make up all on our own. Of course, what we make can be seen as beautiful by others, and we, ourselves can be seen as beautiful by others, but beauty is so much more than that, but beauty isn’t about waiting for someone else to see what’s beautiful about us. Perhaps, we encounter beauty not by trying to make the prettiest thing but by being present.
Art historian and nun Wendy Beckett once said,
"Art accepts all the sadness, and transforms it implicitly affirming that beauty is essentially the presence of God." –Wendy Beckett
And perhaps, this is why beauty often comes from brokenness. When it comes to our deepest emotions–even our sadness–when we feel validated and we feel seen, we are free to breathe. The heaviness of whatever kept us from encountering beauty begins to slip away.
In the book “The Beauty in Breaking,” Michele Harper writes,
“Brokenness can be a remarkable gift...It may seem counterintuitive to claim the benefits of having been broken, but it is precisely when cracks appear in the bedrock of what we thought we knew that the gravity of what has fallen away becomes evident.” – Michele Harper
In order to accept the embrace of beauty, old definitions of beauty have to fade away. For perhaps beauty is more round and full than the messages we often receive in the modern world or in our own stories. Perhaps beauty goes beyond a particular face or a particular place and maybe the same beauty we notice in others runs wild within us, too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,
“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty is more than about looks, but about looking. Looking closely, again and again. Realizing that we don’t have to go far off into the distance to encounter something beautiful. Right here, in this landscape, through the brokenness, Light gets in. Beauty is here. The question is, will we notice?
In the words of Danish-French Impressionist, Camille Pissarro,
“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.” - Camille Pissarro
I leave you with this question,
Where have you encountered beauty today?
– Morgan Harper Nichols