Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Beauty. It’s a word that often gets conflated with notions of prettiness. But beauty, as a theological phenomenon, is an entirely different thing.

I’m pondering this today as I leave the parish art auction. It was delightful and a gift of Sue Cross and our Murphey Gallery committee. We shared in appreciating art of all kinds and also saw the generosity of so many here at Saint Philip’s who donated from their collections.

Back to beauty. Beauty is nothing if not suffused with love. That is what takes it beyond the realm of mere aesthetics into the realm of theological exploration. Without love, beauty becomes either hedonistic or utilitarian. It becomes another form of self-indulgence or exploitation rather than something more.

Beauty though expresses love by its essence. It is the appreciation of the depth and complexity of the subject. It is the recognition of the interplay of light and mystery, of despair and hope, of future and not quite past. Beauty takes all of this into account as it expresses the best of what it means to be fully alive.

Beauty is the attempt to hold for a moment all the forces of nature, emotion, perception, and creation. It’s a snapshot of the heart’s longing. All of this is from God. All of this is the appreciation of the profundity of a bird’s wings or the whole of the cosmic order flashing in us for a heartbeat. We try to draw out that heartbeat into one long moment of rapt appreciation.

That is the pursuit of beauty and the beginning of love—that ability to seek and hold onto what is deep, important, true, and lasting. It is the deepest form of prayer because it is the laying out of all of our gifts of creativity and perception—the focusing of our senses—in the disciplined exercise of gratitude for what lies before us, within us, and around us.

This week, let’s all look for those long heartbeat moments. Those times when we try to hold onto something beautiful in our lives simply for love’s sake.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert