Vol. XXV, No. 5
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Greetings and Beautiful Blessings, dear friends! It is easy to find beauty everywhere we look as the earth bursts forth with new growth and lovely blooms. Beauty makes no demands on us at such times except that we open our eyes and look about us. But in other seasons of our lives, more may be required of us. It can be necessary to first find beauty within ourselves in order to perceive it without; and sometimes our search is not easy. We may feel at times that we are filled with darkness, that there could not be anything but ugliness inside us. But beauty is there, too, and we will find it as we turn our gaze deeply inward and silently ask that the beautiful light of the sacred fill us and radiate outward in all directions. Once we know it within, we will find it everywhere we look; for, as Nan Merrill once said, "Beauty and love cut through illusion."
God's beauty is expressed whenever we of earth so desire to seek for it. It shall not be difficult for us to behold beauty, when we behold the beauty of God within our own consciousness. . . . Beauty is everywhere to those who would behold it. When God reigns supreme in the consciousness of humankind, the tiniest blade of grass speaks of God's beauty.
~ Frater Achad
To wonder at beauty,
Stand guard over truth,
Look up to the noble,
Resolve on the good.
This leadeth us truly
To purpose in living,
To right in our doing,
To peace in our feeling,
To light in our thinking.
And teaches us trust,
In the working of God,
In all that there is,
In the width of the world,
In the depth of the soul.~ Rudolph Steiner
The Navaho word hozho, translated into English as "beauty," also means harmony, wholeness, goodness. One story that suggests the dynamic way that beauty comes alive between us concerns a contemporary Navajo weaver. A man ordered a rug of an especially complex pattern on two separate occasions from the same weaver. Both rugs came out perfectly and the weaver remarked to her brother that there must have been something special about the owner. It was understood that the outcome of the rugs was dependent not on the weaver's skill and ability but upon the hozho in the owner's life. The hozho of his life evoked the beauty in the rugs. In the Navaho world view, beauty exists not simply in the object, or in the artist who made the object; it is expressed in relationships.
~ from NOTES ON THE NEED FOR BEAUTY, by J. Ruth Gendler
Too late I loved you, O Beauty so ancient yet ever new! Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.
~ St. Augustine, Confessions, X, 27
Straight is the line of duty;
Curved is the line of beauty;
Follow the straight line,
thou shalt see
The curved line ever follow thee.~ William McCall
Who walks with beauty has no need of fear;
The sun and moon and stars keep pace . . .
Invisible hands restore the ruined year,
And time, itself, grows beautifully dim.~ David Morton in "Heron Dance" # 38, May 2003
In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are God's gift to all alike.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
The surfaces of the world are aesthetically uneven. You come around a bend in the road and the world suddenly falls open. When we come upon beautiful things . . . they act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space.
~ from ON BEAUTY AND BEING JUST by Elaine Scarry
But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw
her there shining in company with the
celestial forms; and coming to earth, we
find her here, too, shining in clearness
through the clearest aperture of sense.~ Plato
We ourselves possess Beauty when
we are true to our own being; ugliness
is in going to another order;
knowing ourselves, we are beautiful;
in self-ignorance, we are ugly.~ Plotinus
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.
~ Ralph W. Emerson
. . . Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her
unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her
except she be the weaver of your speech . . .
beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.~ from THE PROPHET by Kahlil Gibran
Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and respect for strength, in search of my mother's garden, I found my own.
~ Alice Walker
Beauty transforms the beholder.
~ Br. David Stendl-Rast, thanks to Liz Stewart
PRAYING WITH THE PSALMS, a Friends of Silence Retreat, July 12 - 15, 2012
"One thing have I asked of Love, that I shall ever seek: that I might dwell in the Heart of Love all the days of my life, to behold the Beauty of my Beloved, and to know Love's Plan" (from psalm 27 of Nan Merrill's Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness). Nan's soul-stirring renderings of the Psalms published in 1996 continue to draw many hearts into the Heart of Love, awakening us to our true nature and purpose. Through all of life's joys and challenges, we are invited to "live in a spirit of cooperation, cocreation, and companionship with the Beloved." Wherever you are, come and be nourished by the beauty and mystery of the psalms, Silence, mountain wilderness, and loving community. Thursday dinner - Sunday lunch.
For more information, please see our website, www.friendsofsilence.net, email lindsay.rollingridge@gmail.com, telephone 304-724-1069, or write FOS Retreat Ministry, c/o Lindsay McLaughlin, 120 Jubilee Lane, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425. Scholarship assistance is available.