Beauty in whose eye?

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" -  or so say all of us. Well, actually, (a quick google says), so said (sort of) 3rd Century BCE Greeks and so said Shakespeare in "Love's Labours Lost" (well sort of, but why not attribute it to him because he said something like that once - that's what we do with any common phrase). The first person to write this down in the form written above was, according to the quick google, actually probably a female writer called Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, who in her book "Molly Bawn" written in 1878. Does it matter though? Perhaps a little. It's a concept that is ancient, but a phrase that is more recent. 

As a beholder of beauty, as it seems the phrase says all human beings are, my eyes have been caught by many beautiful things over the last few days. I've stopped and had chance to look around. My eyes have started to reopen from the shock of getting Covid in Holy Week and the exhaustion I've been feeling since the beginning of the year and as I head out on the long pause of sabbatical, I have had time to simply stop and look. 

The first I want to mention is in St Paul's Cathedral. When you are not joining with your own church family to worship because one of the points of a sabbatical is to get space from all that has put demands on your limited energy and spiritual resources to refresh and rebuild, the question of where to worship is a perplexing one. However, as someone not averse to choral evensong, I felt taking the opportunity to worship under the dome of St Paul's had to be taken up (with the added bonus of an excellent preacher). 

You're not meant to take photos when you go to worship in a Cathedral - it makes sense - it's as distracting as when someone tried to put a camera in my face when I was taking a wedding, but I took a sneaky one.... phone flat on knee in selfie mode looking up... because I like to take photos of beautiful things.... and looking up at the dome caught my breath. There is something about worshipping in a place where thousands and thousands have worshipped before and a place that was built so beautifully because its very purpose is to glorify God. Sitting in that place, looking up at the beauty above and listening to the Vicar's Choral, I couldn't help but be awestruck at the greatness of God speaking through those things. 

The second I want to mention is when I arrived on retreat. After my cup of tea and getting my bearings, I decided to explore the grounds. I walked towards the views surrounded by the songs of birds and sheep declaring so much of who they are. I then walked into the woods - it was early evening and there is something about that time when everything is getting ready to go to sleep. I stumbled across an open air theatre that I had seen on the map but had forgotten about. It looked like it hadn't been used for a while, the grass growing and tumbling down the tiered seating punctuated by flowers of purple and pink and white. I ascended the steps into the woods from the theatre stage, the steps were almost hidden, like they were designed to not interrupt the flow of the forest floor, instead absorbing a field of wild garlic flowers and bluebells that took my breath away. I couldn't help but be awestruck at the greatness of God speaking through those things. 

The first designed and realised by creative humans using the gifts given to them by the one who created them. The second revealed as the seasons and the ways of the woods took hold, a beauty that is timeless, yet intricately woven by the the one who developed the natural systems that made it all possible. 

Beauty - in the eye of the beholder. Beauty - to glorify God and celebrate all He has made. What we see takes our breath away because God made it that way. In the hands of the artists and craftspeople who built St Paul's massive dome and painted the art it holds mightily, in the hands of the seasons and the spreading of the roots and the seeds. God places his gift of beauty to grow and to flourish and to form and become all it can be. 

Into our hands God gives the ability to create something beautiful, something to be gasped at, something to enjoy. To our eyes he gifts ready made beauty to inspire, to celebrate and to stop and wonder. 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the ultimate beholder, the creator, beholds us, and from the beginning of our lives, before anyone had even met us, he beheld us and declared 'very good'. When we look at the world around us, and are awestruck by its beauty and value, we need to remember time and time again that that is how the creator looks at us too. 

I've gone through all the emotions the last few months and years - feeling like I'm brilliant, feeling like I've done good work, feeling like I am the worst person in the world, feeling like I am useless, feeling like I will never live up to expectations, feeling like I'm winning, feeling like I am failing, and perhaps I've been all of those things .....but.... when I look at that dome and I walk through those woods, it reminds me, that however I am feeling, however I am winning or however I am failing, God is there, and he is helping me be the best he created me to be, wherever I am (I might have to listen better sometimes, but he is, he really is).

And he is doing the same with you too. It's him that makes you and the work of your hands and your mind and your heart beautiful, and where it feels no-one else can see it, he does (and you'll probably find that there are others that have seen it too). 

(I'm now off to be creative in the art shed.... good job God sees the beauty in that....).