Beauty

Beauty is truth, truth beauty?

Since I usually post Church on Sunday afternoons that makes this one late. My excuse: I was in the hospital and failed to bring my computer. So, my apologies.

On to some words about Beauty:

A problem with language is, words can be defined in so many ways. Even what we call concrete words, such as a truck or a table, a thing our senses can perceive. A table can be a tiny and fragile platform upon which we can barely fit a tea setting, or a massive wooden slab surrounded by a dozen of King Arthur's knights.

Abstract words -- such as honor, love, courage, truth, dignity, or beauty -- each of us may understand differently. And those of us intrigued or perplexed by a certain word might spend a lifetime considering the options and still not feel quite convinced by the definition we picked as most useful.

So when we read "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and find John Keats contending that "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'– that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," we might applaud in agreement or recoil with skepticism.

I find those lines not only valid and profound, I believe they are words to live by, largely because they require us to reconsider our definition or definitions of "truth" and "beauty." They demand that if we hope to understand life and our place in it, we need to go deeper than surface impressions and consider what moves us to a heartfelt, perhaps transcendent appreciation. They demand that I see my daughter's pitching as an expression of who she is, the time and effort she has devoted and all she has learned in order to master the skill, what that says about her and -- going deeper still --about the miracle of life. If I venture even deeper, I might glimpse a clue about eternity. And along the way I will discover that true beauty often includes an element of sorrow, pain, struggle, anger, hardship, or loss, as well as joy, because life is brief, and evil and all kinds of bad stuff are true.

Not every experience of beauty will send us on a deep inward and/or transcendent journey. But everything beautiful in the sense Keats uses the word holds the potential to lead us that way.

St. Paul warned some Galatians against wicked actions and emotions among which are adultery, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, envy. In my view -- and I suspect, in the view of John Keats -- anything that can arouse such emotions can only be  beautiful if and when it can also lead us toward one or more of the '"fruits of the spirit,"  among which are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I imagine John Keats would agree that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." So the validity of Keats' declaration that beauty and truth are something like synonyms depends upon whether or not the beholder is on the lookout for truth. Because if the beholder is instead more interested in gratifying a desire like lust or greed or revenge, to that fellow, Keats' conclusion may look preposterous.

Right?

Anyway, happy forever,

Ken