February 15, 2017 – Beauty will save the world

We watch as we rotate away from the sun – a daily event and it still gathers us and draws us to it.

Sometime in the past few weeks I heard my coach Lissa say that she just read a book called “Beauty Will Save the World.”  These words – just the title of the book – entered me and they’ve been not far from my consciousness since.  Without even considering how this might be, I so want this to be true.  Maybe it’s just a wish – a wistful fantasy:  that we would all orient towards beauty and all the troubles of the world would evaporate.  A cynic would scoff at this, and remind us of all the ugliness, greed, self-serving-ness at work in the world – causing so much pain and suffering.  There’s so much darkness.  Yes, there is. Then there is the whole question of what does it actually mean to save the world?  It is a big question.

The next thought is that, of course this would appeal to me – a simple glance at the art that comes through me and you can easily see the stock I take in beauty.  So, naturally I’m all for the possibility that my painting – and writing – contribute to something as great as saving the world.  We all want what we do to be validated, to have its place.  So, what about this idea of beauty saving the world?  I had to know more.

Digging into it I found that it’s an often-quoted phrase from Dostoyevsky;  he gave the line to a character in the novel “The Idiot.”  Google reveals two books (one of which Lissa read) with this phrase as their titles and several articles.  I’ve got pretty much zero literary background, so that this is, is all new to me. But, it’s an idea people have been giving lots of thought to for a while.  One article pulled from Dostoyevsky’s book that it is beauty with suffering that is the world-changing formula.  Our own suffering transforms our capacity for mercy – without it we cannot see another as ourselves.  I’ve written before on suffering – and the wisdom in cultivating our capacity for it – ours and others.  So, I am all on board with this idea.  But is a world of just suffering worth saving?  We need beauty too – beauty gives us the reason to save it.

The nugget that Lissa pulled from the book she read was this (from an email she sent me):  “…in whatever is felt to be beautiful is a connection to the divine.  In other words, our relationship with what’s beautiful to us is an unwitting relationship with the divine, and the deeper that relationship becomes, the more room there becomes for the divine to move/work through us in the world, thus the ‘saving’.”

Having the kind of consciousness that can experience beauty is part of what makes us human.  I read somewhere that humans are the only animals that gawk – that experience awe and wonder.  Being presented with beauty can wake us up, bringing us to an altered, transcendent place.  I’m coming home today from a two-week trip to Kauai.  Of all the places I’ve visited so far on here on our Earth, this is the one where I feel surrounded by beauty the most.  Largely it’s in plant life – especially vibrant flowers. But it’s also the color of the sea, the mountain shapes, the sky, the ever changing clouds.  There’s also felt beauty in the balmy air brushing against my skin and the feeling of being immersed in the just-cool-enough salt water and bobbing with the wave swell, warm sun on my face.  The other senses – sound, smell and taste are offered beautiful experiences too. Being here is a beauty immersion.

I may not get this done – hubby is rushing me to get packed up!

We make a ritual here most evenings of watching the sun go down.  One afternoon last week we stayed at the beach until it was nearly time.  We packed up our things to walk around the point to get a better view from a spot on the grass.  It’s one of the things that I love most about being here – we are more connected to the rhythms of the natural world.  It feels instinctive.  I looked beside and behind us, and before too long there was a whole crowd of people who had gathered – locals and tourists all together – facing the ocean.  Simply our proximity to a western horizon over a large body of water draws us to witness – we watch the color and light change in the clouds and on the water as we rotate away from the sun, ending the day.  We are drawn to beauty.

The change in our world has catalyzed a lot of action – people are talking about resistance and doing the important work of speaking up and showing up to support our democracy and protect the vulnerable.  In the face of this, it can sometimes seem like what we artists are doing is simply making pretty pictures – one could say we are re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  I mused about this to my friend Vicki who said, that we must keep creating beauty – without it we are sunk.  All you have to do is imagine a world without beauty: grey and lifeless – bleak, like some post-apocalyptic world out of a movie.  The fear of a world like this is alive in many of us right now.  This fear is part of the suffering that we are building our capacity for.

And – there is still beauty.  As long as there are human hearts beating to experience it, there’s great hope. An encounter with it does something to us – connects us to something deep and primal.  We will arise to preserve it – and we must continue to create it in whatever way we are called to.  Art can capture and transmit an experience of beauty that endures beyond the artist’s lifetime.  I’m coming home with a whole bunch more images in my contribution to this ocean of beauty.  It seems to me that one of the gifts of this time we are living in is that we are being given the impetus to decide what our priorities are and to get real about them.  I’ve never been more certain that seeing, capturing, making beauty – and supporting others to do the same – is what I’m here to do.  There is a beautiful world to save.

With my love,

Cara