Poetess Piusha Singh : Beauty of Spirituality

Poetess Piusha Singh,

The subject, "beauty of spirituality" is a calm deep ocean. I wish to write on it as my above. Though my Haiku is only having (5x7x5) syllables, I feel this theme needs bit more explanation as I cannot insert my own verse in my column " POETS PEN ". Hence, this can be considered as a READ BETWEEN THE LINES  when we see beauty in any form , either in human or in any physical substances,  art or poetry of art or radiant sunset we are confronted with the mystery of its otherness in beauty we discover the face of God. The Greek for " the beautiful" is to kalon, a root related to the verb kalein - ‘to call.' Beauty calls, and our heart reverberates with delight. When we experience beauty, there is a sense of homecoming; we find ourselves in the place we have longed to be.

The great theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, saw beauty as a joyful experience that calls us out of ourselves to connect with others, and most importantly to connect us with the other. Beauty is a bridge to God, and art is a means of cooperating with the divine in creation's act. For von Balthasar, the aesthetic saturates all of creation; it is not one source of insight among others, with its own autonomy. The aesthetic is woven into the fabric of human experience and our knowledge of things. When we see a beautiful work of art, or a radiant sunset, we are confronted with the mystery of its otherness. Every person has an aching need for beauty; in beauty we discover the face of God.

Spiritual and aesthetic experiences are intimately linked. Both reveal the unutterable, the invisible, and the transcendent. Spirituality is about this longing for God, for a connection to the mystery dimension of life, the ultimate that fills our world with meaning. An aesthetic spirituality is one that recognizes this longing as a response to a call already issued, to an invitation always present in the world through beauty's presence. We are called to awaken to beauty, to see more deeply, to cultivate practices of attractiveness and attentiveness. We are invited to let beauty penetrate the heart, and to respond to it by creating further beauty in our own lives. That core of our being, created by God as whole and beautiful, is a wave in the ocean of God, a flame in God's fire, the sky, the sea, and the path of contemplation is the journey to this true self from the false one: I break through the superficial exterior appearances that form my routine vision of the world and my own self, and I find myself in the presence of hidden majesty.

Thanks for taking much time in reading my gospel of spiritual beauty.

Love, regards

WILLIAMSJI MAVELI