Readings 27 September 2024 St Anne's Church, Glenholt - Beauty
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Welcome, and opening prayer
Dear God, open our heart to beauty Help us see the beauty in the world In the gifts you gave us In art, in our imaginations Help us reach for you And to fill our hearts with your love And your will To live our lives in beauty And love for you, our creator Amen ‘ Art is the grandchild of God’ Dante’s Inferno |
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‘Only from the heart can you touch the sky’
Rumi, https://www.art-quotes.com/auth_search.php?authid=1603
Readings and Reflections
The theme today is ‘beauty’ and the relationship between beauty, our hearts and our longing for an entity greater than ourselves. Beauty can be seen in many forms, such as art, music, our imagination, the natural world, a kind word between strangers, a new life, the love between two lifelong partners. And I am sure you can think of many more examples. John O’Donohue has written a whole book on beauty - ‘Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace’ which I can very much recommend and you will find some extracts from this.
We find that these moments of beauty are hard to describe – they happen in the innermost part of our hearts. I find this feeling of beauty when I am in the mountains. I remember travelling into Austria by coach – from the lowlands of Bavaria the land gently rises and you enter Austria. A few times the mountain tops have been shrouded in mist and suddenly when it all goes clear you see the huge snowcapped peaks. I cannot describe the feeling – other than being intense and in my heart. Perhaps you can think of examples during our silence. We will start with an extract from a fictional book - ‘Chasing Francis’ by Ian Morgan Cron’
Readings
Chasing Francis
Two of the fictional characters Chase and Carla attend the performance of a philharmonic orchestra in Rome. After the performance, the fictional character Liam Cutter, a musicologist and ordained priest in the Church of England held a lecture. His character stated:
‘I am always brought to tears when I hear a marvellous performance followed by a standing ovation he said. I feel that at the climax of our cheering we cross a boundary, and unwittingly begin applauding some other reality, a performer we know is there but who cannot be seen. We want to thank beauty itself
Let me be bold for a moment. Is it possible that during this evening’s performance we unconsciously sensed someone standing behind the beautiful? Someone who is it’s source and we were moved to praise him as well.
I am a musicologist but am also an ordained priest in the church of England. For years I have tried to separate the hats I wear but have been unsuccessful. I would like to conclude my remarks by suggesting there is a distinct relationship between beauty and the heart’s search for God.
In Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak describes one of his main characters like this:
‘Laura was not religious, she did not believe in ritual but sometimes to be able to bear life she needed the accompaniment of an inner music. She could not always compose such a music for herself, that music was God’s word of life and it was to weep over it that she went to church.’
What was it about music that awakened the spiritual in Pasternak’s Laura? It is this. The object of all great art is beauty and it makes us nostalgic for God. Whether we consider ourselves people of faith or not, art arouses in us what Pope John Paul called a universal desire for redemption
All of us are meaning seekers, we approach every painting, novel, film, symphony or ballet unconsciously hoping that it will move us one step further to answering the question of why are we here.
People living in the post-modern world however are faced with an excruciating dilemma. Their hearts long to find ultimate meaning whilst at the same time their critical minds do not believe it exists. We are homesick but have no home. So we turn to the arts and aesthetics to satisfy our thirst for the absolute. But if we want to find our true meaning in life our search cannot end there. Art or beauty is not the destination, it is a signpost pointing towards our desired destination
CS Lewis puts it so elegantly in the Weight of Glory.
‘The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them. It was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through was a longing, for they are not the thing itself they are only the scent of a flower we have not found. the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.’
My hope is that through out future encounters with music and the arts we will discover this heavenly country we have not yet visited but long to find.
Ian Morgan Cron, Chasing Francis, A Pilgrim's Tale, 2011 Oasis Audio, Audible, Chapter 7
The Heart as a Tabernacle
‘THE HEART IS WHERE THE NATURE, FEELING AND INTIMACY OF A life dwell and without heart the world grows suddenly cold. In its desire for beauty, it reaches towards the beyond. This poignant straining suggests that beauty is the homeland of the heart. When it can dwell in beauty the heart is home. The human heart is the masterpiece of the primal artist. When God created it, it was fashioned for an eternal kinship with beauty; God knew that the human heart would always be wedded to him in desire; for the other name of God is beauty. The heart is the tabernacle of divine beauty. St John of the Cross puts this poetically:
‘I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted
because of all the desires I have ever known,
just one did I cling to
for it was the essence of all desire: to know beauty.’
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (pp. 219-220). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
Stillness and Quiet
Sharing
Blessing
A BEAUTY BLESSING
As stillness in stone to silence is wed
May your heart be somewhere a God might dwell. As a river flows in ideal sequence
May your soul discover time is presence. As the moon absolves the dark of distance
May thought-light console your mind with brightness. As the breath of light awakens colour
May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder. As spring rain softens the earth with surprise
May your winter places be kissed by light.
As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance
May the grace of change bring you elegance. As clay anchors a tree in light and wind
May your outer life grow from peace within. As twilight fills night with bright horizons
May Beauty await you at home beyond.
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (p. 249). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
Rumi, https://www.art-quotes.com/auth_search.php?authid=1603
Readings and Reflections
The theme today is ‘beauty’ and the relationship between beauty, our hearts and our longing for an entity greater than ourselves. Beauty can be seen in many forms, such as art, music, our imagination, the natural world, a kind word between strangers, a new life, the love between two lifelong partners. And I am sure you can think of many more examples. John O’Donohue has written a whole book on beauty - ‘Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace’ which I can very much recommend and you will find some extracts from this.
We find that these moments of beauty are hard to describe – they happen in the innermost part of our hearts. I find this feeling of beauty when I am in the mountains. I remember travelling into Austria by coach – from the lowlands of Bavaria the land gently rises and you enter Austria. A few times the mountain tops have been shrouded in mist and suddenly when it all goes clear you see the huge snowcapped peaks. I cannot describe the feeling – other than being intense and in my heart. Perhaps you can think of examples during our silence. We will start with an extract from a fictional book - ‘Chasing Francis’ by Ian Morgan Cron’
Readings
Chasing Francis
Two of the fictional characters Chase and Carla attend the performance of a philharmonic orchestra in Rome. After the performance, the fictional character Liam Cutter, a musicologist and ordained priest in the Church of England held a lecture. His character stated:
‘I am always brought to tears when I hear a marvellous performance followed by a standing ovation he said. I feel that at the climax of our cheering we cross a boundary, and unwittingly begin applauding some other reality, a performer we know is there but who cannot be seen. We want to thank beauty itself
Let me be bold for a moment. Is it possible that during this evening’s performance we unconsciously sensed someone standing behind the beautiful? Someone who is it’s source and we were moved to praise him as well.
I am a musicologist but am also an ordained priest in the church of England. For years I have tried to separate the hats I wear but have been unsuccessful. I would like to conclude my remarks by suggesting there is a distinct relationship between beauty and the heart’s search for God.
In Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak describes one of his main characters like this:
‘Laura was not religious, she did not believe in ritual but sometimes to be able to bear life she needed the accompaniment of an inner music. She could not always compose such a music for herself, that music was God’s word of life and it was to weep over it that she went to church.’
What was it about music that awakened the spiritual in Pasternak’s Laura? It is this. The object of all great art is beauty and it makes us nostalgic for God. Whether we consider ourselves people of faith or not, art arouses in us what Pope John Paul called a universal desire for redemption
All of us are meaning seekers, we approach every painting, novel, film, symphony or ballet unconsciously hoping that it will move us one step further to answering the question of why are we here.
People living in the post-modern world however are faced with an excruciating dilemma. Their hearts long to find ultimate meaning whilst at the same time their critical minds do not believe it exists. We are homesick but have no home. So we turn to the arts and aesthetics to satisfy our thirst for the absolute. But if we want to find our true meaning in life our search cannot end there. Art or beauty is not the destination, it is a signpost pointing towards our desired destination
CS Lewis puts it so elegantly in the Weight of Glory.
‘The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them. It was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through was a longing, for they are not the thing itself they are only the scent of a flower we have not found. the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.’
My hope is that through out future encounters with music and the arts we will discover this heavenly country we have not yet visited but long to find.
Ian Morgan Cron, Chasing Francis, A Pilgrim's Tale, 2011 Oasis Audio, Audible, Chapter 7
The Heart as a Tabernacle
‘THE HEART IS WHERE THE NATURE, FEELING AND INTIMACY OF A life dwell and without heart the world grows suddenly cold. In its desire for beauty, it reaches towards the beyond. This poignant straining suggests that beauty is the homeland of the heart. When it can dwell in beauty the heart is home. The human heart is the masterpiece of the primal artist. When God created it, it was fashioned for an eternal kinship with beauty; God knew that the human heart would always be wedded to him in desire; for the other name of God is beauty. The heart is the tabernacle of divine beauty. St John of the Cross puts this poetically:
‘I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted
because of all the desires I have ever known,
just one did I cling to
for it was the essence of all desire: to know beauty.’
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (pp. 219-220). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
Stillness and Quiet
Sharing
Blessing
A BEAUTY BLESSING
As stillness in stone to silence is wed
May your heart be somewhere a God might dwell. As a river flows in ideal sequence
May your soul discover time is presence. As the moon absolves the dark of distance
May thought-light console your mind with brightness. As the breath of light awakens colour
May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder. As spring rain softens the earth with surprise
May your winter places be kissed by light.
As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance
May the grace of change bring you elegance. As clay anchors a tree in light and wind
May your outer life grow from peace within. As twilight fills night with bright horizons
May Beauty await you at home beyond.
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (p. 249). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
Thoughts To Ponder
Genesis 1:1-2
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
Psalm 150:1-6
"Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness. Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord."
2 Chronicles 5:13-14
"The trumpeters and musicians joined in unison to give praise and thanks to the Lord. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, the singers raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang: ‘He is good; his love endures forever.’ Then the temple of the Lord was filled with the cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God."
Ephesians 5:19
"Speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord."
Psalm 27:4
"One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple."
Job 12:7-10
"But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind."
Rumi
‘In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.’
Rumi, https://www.azquotes.com/author/12768-Rumi/tag/art
“That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”
Rumi, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?q=rumi+beauty
“True beauty is a ray
That springs from the sacred depths of the soul,
and illuminates the body, just as life
springs from the kernel of a stone and
gives colour and scent to a flower.”
Rumi, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?page=2&q=rumi+beauty
John Muir
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
John Muir, https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/spiritual-beauty.html
The Lampedusa Cross
This wood comes from a boat that caught fire and sank off the small Italian island of Lampedusa, not far from the Tunisian coast, on 11 October 2013. Its cargo was some 500 people seeking sanctuary in Europe. 311 of them lost their lives on that fateful night.
The islanders rescued 155 people and, and without waiting for authority or funding, compassionately fed and clothed them and buried those that had died, despite their own limited means. Local carpenter Francesco Tuccio who met Eritrean and Somali survivors in his church was moved by their desperate plight but with nothing but his carpentry skills to offer them, Francesco decided to make each person a small pendant cross using wood from the wreck. These were gladly accepted as tokens of welcome and compassion, reminders of the hope of new life amid the destruction. Earlier in the year, he had made a larger cross, chalice and plate for a penitential mass on the island led by Pope Francis. The cross I wear is an object that reminds me of hope. KG
William Blake
‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour’
William Blake, https://www.spiritualarts.org.uk/william-blake-and-the-blake-society/
Einstein
‘I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.’
Einstein https://www.spiritualarts.org.uk/mel-stephenson-unearthing-deeper-truths-through-art/
Links
Neville Goddard
‘The secret of imagining is the secret of God.
Neville Goddard https://www.spiritualarts.org.uk/mel-stephenson-unearthing-deeper-truths-through-art/
Kinship with the Beyond: Love of Beauty
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (pp. 218-219). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
The Heart: Prism for Beauty
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (p. 219). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
Beauty: The Radiance of the Eternal
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (pp. 220-221). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
The Methodist Art Collection https://www.methodist.org.uk/faith/the-methodist-modern-art-collection/browse-the-collection/
Genesis 1:1-2
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
Psalm 150:1-6
"Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness. Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord."
2 Chronicles 5:13-14
"The trumpeters and musicians joined in unison to give praise and thanks to the Lord. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, the singers raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang: ‘He is good; his love endures forever.’ Then the temple of the Lord was filled with the cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God."
Ephesians 5:19
"Speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord."
Psalm 27:4
"One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple."
Job 12:7-10
"But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind."
Rumi
‘In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.’
Rumi, https://www.azquotes.com/author/12768-Rumi/tag/art
“That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”
Rumi, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?q=rumi+beauty
“True beauty is a ray
That springs from the sacred depths of the soul,
and illuminates the body, just as life
springs from the kernel of a stone and
gives colour and scent to a flower.”
Rumi, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?page=2&q=rumi+beauty
John Muir
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
John Muir, https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/spiritual-beauty.html
The Lampedusa Cross
This wood comes from a boat that caught fire and sank off the small Italian island of Lampedusa, not far from the Tunisian coast, on 11 October 2013. Its cargo was some 500 people seeking sanctuary in Europe. 311 of them lost their lives on that fateful night.
The islanders rescued 155 people and, and without waiting for authority or funding, compassionately fed and clothed them and buried those that had died, despite their own limited means. Local carpenter Francesco Tuccio who met Eritrean and Somali survivors in his church was moved by their desperate plight but with nothing but his carpentry skills to offer them, Francesco decided to make each person a small pendant cross using wood from the wreck. These were gladly accepted as tokens of welcome and compassion, reminders of the hope of new life amid the destruction. Earlier in the year, he had made a larger cross, chalice and plate for a penitential mass on the island led by Pope Francis. The cross I wear is an object that reminds me of hope. KG
William Blake
‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour’
William Blake, https://www.spiritualarts.org.uk/william-blake-and-the-blake-society/
Einstein
‘I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.’
Einstein https://www.spiritualarts.org.uk/mel-stephenson-unearthing-deeper-truths-through-art/
Links
Neville Goddard
‘The secret of imagining is the secret of God.
Neville Goddard https://www.spiritualarts.org.uk/mel-stephenson-unearthing-deeper-truths-through-art/
Kinship with the Beyond: Love of Beauty
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (pp. 218-219). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
The Heart: Prism for Beauty
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (p. 219). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
Beauty: The Radiance of the Eternal
O'Donohue, John. Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (pp. 220-221). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
The Methodist Art Collection https://www.methodist.org.uk/faith/the-methodist-modern-art-collection/browse-the-collection/
Our next meeting will be 10.30am on Friday 25 October at St Mary’s Church, Plympton
