Beauty

Helen Keller, author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer, offers a profound insight into beauty. Blind and deaf from the age of 19 months, Helen had extraordinary insight into understanding that whilst beauty is often described through our senses, it is far deeper than that. Our senses are the gateway to true beauty, they bring us to the edge of what Helen Keller says ‘must be felt with the heart.’ As was suggested in our Parish School Spirituality Days this year, ‘Beauty should do more than provide a “delight to the eyes,” like the fruit that tempted Adam and Eve; it should push us outside of ourselves to lead us to what is ‘true and good’. 

Richard Rohr suggests that, “Looking for beauty all around us is a contemplative practice, an exercise in opening our hearts, minds, and bodies to the divine image.”  

Children’s author Michael Speechley in his book The Gift wrote, ‘If you look long and hard enough, you’ll see beauty in everything.’

This week, let us open our hearts, minds and bodies to the divine image and see beauty in everything. Let us feel with our hearts and allow beauty to draw us to an encounter with Christ, the way, the truth and the life.