HOUNDS OF BEAUTY
Saying things about beauty falls far short of experiencing it. I took a course in the Philosophy of Art, and one of the ways beauty was defined was “that which, being seen, pleases”(id quod visum placet).
I’m afraid our world today isn’t much ‘into’ beauty. To most minds, it refers to the designer clothes and jars of glop that women think they need to be beautiful. Girls, you don’t need that stuff! You’re beautiful, that’s the way God made you, that’s how it is, get real!
So if we are looking at “that which being seen, pleases,” we clearly aren’t talking about women, because they aren’t ‘that’s,’ inanimate things. Inanimate beauty is a quality, a quality that a woman, or a beautiful animal like a snow leopard, can possess, but not be. Even a man can be beautiful, like it or not.
There is a famous poem about the persistance of God seeking us by Francis Thompson called “The Hound of Heaven”; sometimes I think we are, at some deep level, ‘hounds of beauty.’ But the damn stuff (beauty) is so etherial, diaphanous and elusive that we keep getting off on other scents (to retain the hound image).
Maybe seeking, finding and enjoying beauty is what life is all about. But it’s not what we’re all about, usually. We are caught up in such exercises in futility, chasing not-so-beautiful rabbits which we seldom catch.
Be alert to God’s Beauty. It’s all about us.
