Beauty

Aristotle speaks of beauty as one of the essential truths.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder to be sure, a very subjective interpretation of a person, place or thing, event or experience.   Whether it be the elongated ear lobe of the Borneo head hunter or the multi-colored tattoo of the North American college student….the cave painting of a Neanderthal or a da Vinci statue….a ballet or a breakdance…..humans seek out, create and interpret beauty as they understand it.   Beauty informs and inspires.  Cultural patterns of beauty bind communities together from the stained glass windows of a cathedral to the majesty of the memorials of the Mall in Washington DC.  Beauty empowers our own creativity and passion.  As subjective and capricious it might be, beauty is an essential human value.

While visiting the de Young museum’s Post Impressionist exhibition in San Francisco the other day I was over whelmed in a beautiful moment.   Standing in awe of Vincent Van Gough’s “Starry Night” with audio guide earphones on, the art director’s voice describing the work was backed with a recording of Debussy’s “Claire de Lune”.  Following her words, the recording went on for a couple of minutes until this classical masterpiece concluded.

Out of the blue I found myself in tears.  I was stunned.  I couldn’t move.

It wasn’t a cognitive realization.  I wasn’t thinking about Van Gough’s life and intent as represented in this painting of a starry sky above the Sienn in Paris.  I wasn’t thinking about Debussy as his passion to find peace with nature while enduring such a troubled life.  In fact, I wasn’t thinking at all.  For a transcendent moment I was lifted out of myself; words fail me here. 

How is it that some paint on canvas or some recorded musical notes, both 120 years old, can do this?  Of course, they aren’t ‘doing’ a thing.   It is what I the interpreter bring to the moment that opens such a door.   I am sure thousands of others had stood at the same place that day and listened to the same music and had a variety of their own experiences…or not. 

Yet for me at the moment, for whatever reason or unconscious agenda, I encountered something greater than myself within myself, something very human and very real.   Beauty.

Now that I have time to reflect I can put all sorts of words to this moment.  Creative transcendence is what I understand as a God moment; one would expect a preacher to say such things!  And yet I don’t want to make too much of it other than to celebrate a moment of beauty.

In so doing it gives me a hunger to experience more!