An Appreciation of Beauty

As the day dawns here on this little planet, I wonder if I appreciate beauty enough in this life. Of course, I appreciate that model on television or in the magazine advertisement, but that isn't the kind of beauty I am writing of today. Well, in some way it may be a part of that beauty, but I tend to view it with the wrong filter on my lens so to speak. Too often we look at lovely things with the filter of lust or greed in front of our eyes. We see this exquisite vase in the antique store and want it for showing off to others or to resell at a higher price. We look at the model and want our mental image of the person, not the person as he or she really is with spots and wrinkles and old age creeping up on their bodies. That brings up the changing filters over the ages. People have not always agreed on what is beautiful or attractive in a body or in a thing. Priceless antiques may have been dug up from a previous society's trash dump. What was considered the long-dead artisan's best work did not survive a cataclysm, but his junk pile made it to Sotheby's for the rich people to bid on. What did that best piece look like in comparison to the junk? We will never know. Would it matter? What was considered best then may not be viewed the same now. Our appreciation of beauty seems to change with the years.

A society might agree that asymmetry is the thing for them. Both sides exactly the same? How boring! How dull! they exclaim to our best construction and artwork. We look at their art and wonder what unfortunate disaster befell one side or the other. If we found it buried in the earth, we might speculate for years what happened to the piece. The child might look at it and say, 'Maybe they made it that way.' The adults would of course laugh at the innocence and ignorance of the poor child, but just maybe they did make it that way. In all of this, I have to wonder if God is not trying to teach us true beauty. We might say that God accepts even the disfigured and ugly, but how can we say that God sees the person or thing in that way? To us a particular animal may seem ugly, or rather comical, not our ideal when compared with the other animals in God's creation. In Job, God asks "Who made the wild donkey wild?" Why didn't our Lord choose something cool like the wild tiger or maybe a the wild horse? A donkey? But I don't see with the Lord's vision. Perhaps in Heaven the donkey will be exalted and the tigers and lions and other 'cool' animals will serve under the donkeys. Does a wild donkey have a better appreciation of beauty than I do? We may never know.

Bucky