In search of Beauty

Living as Art in Search of Beauty

By Dan McDonald

 

Field Mouse on a Teasel Plant by @deanmason.wow on Instagram

 

            This photograph spoke to me a few days ago. At least I was impressed with a few quick thoughts upon seeing the photo. First I thought – wow what a neat photograph. Then it awakened my inner environmentalist in me, and finally I wondered if I was giving beauty its due in the way I live.

            My first realization was that this was an amazing photograph capturing the vivid yet muted colors of nature. There is purple, green, white, and brown mingled as if long planned to become a quiet scene in nature’s gallery. It would really disappoint me if I discovered this was photo-shopped. It would not however take away from me the importance of the impressions the photograph left upon me.

            Among our ancient ancestors who pursued an understanding through philosophy and theology, a triad of qualities became pre-eminent in their recognizing what composed the good life. There was goodness, truth, and beauty. We moderns often push beauty to the side as aesthetics, while holding goodness as ethics and morality; and truth as the study of science or revelation as explaining the foundations of our world and universe. In my younger days I thought of beauty as having little importance. I wanted to study theology, history, and understand how the world is and how we ought to respond. I had a strong Stoic flavor to my world view. It was a dragnet perspective, “Just the facts ma’am.” Beauty seems of little use to a strictly pragmatic modern lifestyle.

            This photograph’s beauty impressed upon me the environmental responsibilities of my human life perhaps as much, or in dramatic reinforcement of the statistics of what is happening to our world when the weakness of our environmental conscience fails to bring us to act in relationship with the world. Statistically most of us have heard how plastic is now found in a large portion of the digestive system of the fish in the seas. We know plastic almost never goes away and the animals of our world are at a loss of knowing what to do about it. Statistics seem to be only lukewarm in their ability to motivate. In this photograph seeing the mouse steady itself on a stem and seemingly sniffing the bloom of the plant – I see an image that reminds me that I as a human being share this world as my home with this field mouse and teasel plant. I have no doubt that humankind is the creature capable of managing the earth in search for resources to make human life fruitful. I am reminded by this photograph that our management of the earth should have built into it caring for the species of the earth and the many forms of wildlife. This photograph reminds me of why environmental responsibility in the way we live should be so important to us. It is beauty of the simplicity of a tiny creature enjoying a lush habitat that says to me, if you aren’t willing to protect and encourage the health of nature, what are you willing to protect and encourage? Beauty helps me see the environment as well as the fetus in a womb not as crusades needing to be won, but as part of the web of life needing implicitly to be protected and encouraged.

            We think of beauty as having less value than goodness or truth because we can so much more easily explain goodness and truth. They seem to have more objective substance to discuss, while beauty always bogs down into the subjective cliché of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I have seen attempts to lift beauty into rational discussions and to objectify beauty, which usually does to beauty what objectifying women does to the actual women we know. Beauty refuses to be neatly categorized into our rationalistic Enlightenment affected view of the universe.

            Perhaps we have in our attempt to categorize truth and goodness failed to see that beauty is essential to our understanding of life because it is beyond our categories and because it is such a subjective value. Beauty is perhaps more than truth and goodness the sacramental link to a world beyond our own world. Beauty suggests to us that there are things “eye has not seen and ear has not heard.” Beauty reminds us there are in those elements eye has seen and ear has heard which is not so much to be explained as enjoyed. Beauty has a quality eschatology imprinted upon it. I see the field mouse balancing on the teasel stem and innately realize that our world is confused today. It could be so much more beautiful, good, and closer to perfection. That is for those of us with an expectation of good future things, the imprint of eschatology. It is also the call to response in the sacramental world in which we live. If we have seen beauty we have heard a call to express praise, to protect the beautiful, and to live as if we have understood there is yet beauty in this world.

            Dostoyevsky wrote that beauty will save the world. This field mouse on a teasel plant seems to beckon me to see and be beauty. How are we to be beauty in the world? How much beauty does my neighbor see in me? Not just do I take care of my yard, but does my presence make the world seem kinder to my neighbors? The same is true for our work places, for our family members, for our houses of worship, for our places in political discussions, and community decision making. It took a field mouse to say to me, “Would you consider living life as an art in search of beauty?”