beauty will save the world

song of the week: U2's "Beautiful Day."

it really is beautiful today, and has been the past several days . . . sky so blue it hurts, air crisp but not cold, red leaves flaming out among pines.

and of all things in the world that i don't understand, beauty is the top of the list--the strange, wild ache of it, that makes you full and empty at the same time. how is it that you can feel most satisfied while filled with boundless longing?

last week a pianist named Jon Kimura Parker came to perform here, and his playing was like that. he played a Schubert fantasy that took my breath away--i almost wanted him to stop just so i could breathe, but i didn't want the piece to end. i came away feeling a joyful hollowing, like all the heaviness in me had been lifted away, and i was light enough to fly.

"Beauty will save the world," Dostoyevsky wrote--an enigmatic sentence, profoundly puzzling. Image, being Image, has adopted it as a slogan of sorts, a proclamation of why they are.

a few weeks ago, two opera singers came to perform. i couldn't afford the concert (even at student rates), but i went to the master class the afternoon before. "Music will save you," one of them said, in answer to a question i have forgotten. She went on (and i paraphrase loosely): "There have been times in my life when people have failed me, when relationships have fallen apart, when I have been given terrible advice about the business aspects of my career. You will have times like this, when everything fails you--but music will never fail you. Music will save you."

at first i thought she was wrong, that she expected more of music than it could ever give . . . but there are many kinds of salvation, many paths of grace. our minds, our hearts, our souls, our imaginations--all need saving, all rebel against ugliness, all seek glimpses of the world as it was meant to be--all struggle with the problem of evil, and stare bewildered at the mystery of beauty.

where legislation and diplomacy fail, where war brings destruction and despair, where grief and abandonment overwhelm--beauty remains to quietly break our hearts, and give us hope.

Requiem aeternum dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetuum luceat eis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram.
Agnus Dei, qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, dona nobis pacem.

Requiem aeternum dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetuum luceat eis.

"the real question"

I ran across a link to this article by Mark Shea on Jeffrey Overstreet's blog, and thought it was worth sharing.

Shea, an editor of CatholicExchange.com, opens with a reference to Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic rant back in July. Unlike most people who've discussed the incident, though, he goes on to thoughtfully explore the underlying theological question: "whether we are truly ourselves when we are sinful." Shea suggests that most Christians would answer "yes"--and that this answer is profoundly (and dangerously) wrong:

We believe that the fall is identical with nature, and therefore believe that when you see a man in sin, you see him as he “really” is. Goodness is the mask, corruption is his true nature . . .

The reality is quite contrary. Sin is the mask. It is not what names us but what makes us anonymous.

Sin, because of the fall, is normal. But sin is never natural.

It does not constitute who we are, it destroys who we are. It is only when the human person takes his place as the redeemed creature God made him that we begin to truly see his face and know his name.

More here.