The Beautiful

Being of rural Nova Scotian Scots Presbyterian (heavy on the Scots, a little lighter on the Presbyterian) extraction, I was exposed to a very frugal, utilitarian, waste-not-want-not mindset. This is perhaps why my grandmother insisted that the moldy cheese was perfectly fine (cheddar, not stilton which is meant to be moldy.). In her defense, no one became ill from ingesting the stuff. It is perhaps also why my father never threw anything out. Contra Jesus' suggestion, he just built larger barns to hold the goods, including the horse-drawn sleigh that was notably missing the horse.

All that to say usefulness and practicality were the measures by which an object's value was measured. Beauty was a secondary or even tertiary concern. A thing need not be beautiful. It needed to be inexpensive and useful. That it was beautiful was not considered necessary. We were not art collectors (although Dad collected almost everything but.)

The Presbyterian-rooted church I went to as a child was UNADORNED. Pale blue walls were accented by exactly nothing except perhaps the standard-issue burgundy church carpet down the aisles. In my adolescent years there was a great debate about the addition of a (very) plain cross. One would have thought this a Rococo addition by the controversy. (By the way the Rococoans won.)

In my anemic rebellion against the Scots Presbyterian roots, beyond becoming Anglican, I have utterly rejected the notion that beauty is unnecessary. Beauty, be it visual, musical, literary or natural, is needed. Without beauty the soul withers. Beauty enlarges us. I remember driving from the Laurentians back to Montreal one day. As I rounded a curve in the road my vision (and soul) were filled with an impartation of Beauty in the trees and mountains before me. It overwhelmed me to the point of tears. It was the moment, the light, the trees and the rocks together in visual symphony. I was, for a time, larger more gracious, more human as I took it in.

Shriveled souls starved for beauty make for a shriveled and mean existence. The Beautiful changes us. St. Paul, without using the word beauty, exhorts us to the practice of dwelling on the good, the true and the beautiful:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
-Philippians 4:8 (NIV)