Beauty

As I relax on my living room loveseat in the evenings, the background behind the book in my lap and my feet propped up on the arm of the sofa is sometimes a bit distracting. It’s lovely. At least, it’s lovely to me.

There’s a big metal clock on the wall – just the circle outlines with Roman numerals in their places. It’s simple, but beautiful. In front of it is a scraggly little artificial tree that I’ve had for years and that is much the worse for wear, but it still adds a touch of "nature" to the spot.

In this corner sits my family piano – a simple old instrument that could use a tuning. On the back of this, I have an ivory piece of faux pottery with a bunch of flowers in it. Fake flowers. With fake greenery. (My black thumb keeps me from attempting any live vegetation in the house.) But the colors are rich, and I love them. There are simple picture frames on each side of the flowerpot – a senior photo of each daughter and a black and white picture of my family when I was three. These are all perched on a lace crochet piece I found in my mother’s stuff after she passed. There is also the word “Hope” in black painted wood – a gift, I believe, from the cast after the first production of my play “Hope is a Meeting Place.”

Nobody else would be impressed with anything in this corner. Well, the clock gets some comments occasionally. And kind people say kind words about the photos if they are brought to their attention for some reason. But there’s nothing special here. The piano has knicks on the corners, the tree has twigs glaringly empty of their artificial leaves, the picture frames are cheap and unstable, and the flowers are clearly fake. Plus, there’s usually a layer of dust over everything mentioned.

But I find it beautiful.

Something about the simplicity of it all. The layers and textures – even the shadows. The bright blue background in my eldest’s photo, the three shades of green in the flower arrangement, the rich brown wood of the piano reflecting the light . . .

I’m re-reading N.T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope. In a chapter talking about “building for the kingdom”, he addresses the topic of beauty. “Beauty matters,” he says, “almost as much as spirituality and justice.” I don’t remember encountering this idea the first time I read the book. Maybe I wasn’t ready to hear it then. I am now.

At the end of the play I’m directing this month, Betsie ten Boom tells her sister Corrie her dream of a healing place for those hurt by the ugliness of the extermination camps. And of course, we assume she’s referring to the Jews . . . but no, she’s thinking of the guards. “If people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love.” And Corrie does eventually build such a home for these people, just as Betsie dreamed of before her death in the camp. “With gardens – gardens all around it where they can plant flowers. It will do them such good, Corrie, watching things grow. People can learn to love from flowers . . .”

Yes. Yes, they can.

There is beauty in a flower, whether it's real or fake. There is beauty in music and in laughter, in the roar of a lion and in the squeal of an old door hinge. There is beauty in the soft, textured folds of my blanket and in the hard smooth wood of my dresser. There is beauty in the chill of winter, and there is beauty in the heat of summer. I have friends who find beauty in the order of a complex mathematical equation. Beauty comes in so many different forms in so many different places.

And I am finding that I can often gauge my current spiritual condition by how easy it is for me to see beauty around me.

Because beauty is the home of God. When I see the beauty, I’m seeing him.