{"id":4955,"date":"2017-02-15T13:09:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T21:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/?p=4955"},"modified":"2017-02-15T14:32:39","modified_gmt":"2017-02-15T22:32:39","slug":"february-15-2017-beauty-will-save-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/dev\/life-stories\/february-15-2017-beauty-will-save-world\/","title":{"rendered":"February 15, 2017 – Beauty will save the world"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We watch as we rotate away from the sun – a daily event and it still gathers us and draws us to it.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sometime in the past few weeks I heard my coach Lissa say that she just read a book called \u201cBeauty Will Save the World.\u201d\u00a0 These words \u2013 just the title of the book – entered me and they\u2019ve been not far from my consciousness since.\u00a0 Without even considering how this might be, I so<\/em> want this to be true.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s just a wish \u2013 a wistful fantasy:\u00a0 that we would all orient towards beauty and all the troubles of the world would evaporate.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There\u2019s so much darkness.\u00a0 Yes, there is. Then there is the whole question of what does it actually mean to save the world<\/em>?\u00a0 It is a big question.<\/p>\n

The next thought is that, of course<\/em> this would appeal to me \u2013 a simple glance at the art that comes through me and you can easily see the stock I take in beauty.\u00a0 So, naturally I\u2019m all for the possibility that my painting \u2013 and writing – contribute to something as great as saving the world.\u00a0 We all want what we do to be validated, to have its place.\u00a0 So, what about this idea of beauty saving the world?\u00a0 I had to know more.<\/p>\n

Digging into it I found that it\u2019s an often-quoted phrase from Dostoyevsky;\u00a0 he gave the line to a character in the novel \u201cThe Idiot.\u201d\u00a0 Google reveals two books (one of which Lissa read) with this phrase as their titles and several articles.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got pretty much zero literary background, so that this is, is all new to me. But, it\u2019s an idea people have been giving lots of thought to for a while.\u00a0 One article<\/a> pulled from Dostoyevsky\u2019s book that it is beauty with suffering<\/em> that is the world-changing formula.\u00a0 Our own suffering transforms our capacity for mercy \u2013 without it we cannot see another as ourselves.\u00a0 I\u2019ve written before on suffering \u2013 and the wisdom in cultivating our capacity for it \u2013 ours and others.\u00a0 So, I am all on board with this idea.\u00a0 But is a world of just suffering worth saving?\u00a0 We need beauty too – beauty gives us the reason to save it.<\/p>\n

The nugget that Lissa pulled from the book she read was this (from an email she sent me):\u00a0 \u201c\u2026in whatever is felt to be beautiful is a connection to the divine.\u00a0 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’.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having the kind of consciousness that can experience beauty is part of what makes us human.\u00a0 I read somewhere that humans are the only animals that gawk \u2013 that experience awe and wonder.\u00a0 Being presented with beauty can wake us up, bringing us to an altered, transcendent place.\u00a0 I\u2019m coming home today from a two-week trip to Kauai.\u00a0 Of all the places I\u2019ve visited so far on here on our Earth, this is the one where I feel surrounded by beauty the most.\u00a0 Largely it\u2019s in plant life \u2013 especially vibrant flowers. But it\u2019s also the color of the sea, the mountain shapes, the sky, the ever changing clouds.\u00a0 There\u2019s 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.\u00a0 The other senses \u2013 sound, smell and taste are offered beautiful experiences too. Being here is a beauty immersion.<\/p>\n

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I may not get this done – hubby is rushing me to get packed up!<\/p><\/div>\n

We make a ritual here most evenings of watching the sun go down.\u00a0 One afternoon last week we stayed at the beach until it was nearly time.\u00a0 We packed up our things to walk around the point to get a better view from a spot on the grass.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the things that I love most about being here – we are more connected to the rhythms of the natural world.\u00a0 It feels instinctive.\u00a0 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 \u2013 facing the ocean.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We are drawn to beauty.<\/p>\n

The change in our world has catalyzed a lot of action \u2013 people are talking about resistance and doing the important work of speaking up and showing up to support our democracy and protect the vulnerable.\u00a0 In the face of this, it can sometimes seem like what we artists are doing is simply making pretty pictures \u2013 one could say we are re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.\u00a0 I mused about this to my friend Vicki who said, that we must<\/em> keep creating beauty \u2013 without it we are sunk.\u00a0 All you have to do is imagine a world without beauty: grey and lifeless – bleak, like some post-apocalyptic world out of a movie.\u00a0 The fear of a world like this is alive in many of us right now.\u00a0 This fear is part of the suffering that we are building our capacity for.<\/p>\n

And<\/em> – there is<\/em> still beauty.\u00a0 As long as there are human hearts beating to experience it, there\u2019s great hope. An encounter with it does something to us \u2013 connects us to something deep and primal.\u00a0 We will arise to preserve it – and we must continue to create it in whatever way we are called to.\u00a0 Art can capture and transmit an experience of beauty that endures beyond the artist\u2019s lifetime.\u00a0 I\u2019m coming home with a whole bunch more images in my contribution to this ocean of beauty.\u00a0 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<\/em> about them.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been more certain that seeing, capturing, making beauty \u2013 and supporting others to do the same – is what I\u2019m here to do.\u00a0 There is a beautiful world to save.<\/p>\n

With my love,<\/p>\n

Cara<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometime in the past few weeks I heard my coach Lissa say that she just read a book called \u201cBeauty Will Save the World.\u201d\u00a0 These words \u2013 just the title of the book – entered me and they\u2019ve been not far from my consciousness since.\u00a0 Without even considering how this might be, I so want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFebruary 15, 2017 - 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