Sunday 18 December 2011

The 'duty' of delight


"Look at the world around you. It supplies all your bodily needs. It feasts your eyes with its beauty. Its glory is a reflection of the beauty of God. This is why such a reflection truly feasts our souls".

John Chrysostom











Simple Pleasures. Model: Peltigera.

It's probably the oldest evil - seeing beauty, and wanting to malign, mar, decimate it's charm out of sheer spite and jealousy. The beguiling of Eve in the maginficence of Eden came about through a creature that envied the naked splendour of beings intended for the greatest pleasures - union with each other, with the majesty of the creation they had before them, and with the giver of all good things. It has always been easier since to destroy (to murder what is good) than to create in a manner that affirms all that is excellent and true.

For much of its history, due principally to the incursion of dualistic concepts inherent to Hellenic schools of thought in the 2nd & 3rd centuries, Christianity has often placed itself on the wrong side of such issues, neglecting its cardinal marriage to the 'rightness' and goodness of creation.
Perpetuating the lie that true spirituality amounts to little more than the manner of moralism which covers us in the fashion that Adam and Eve employed after the fall, we fail to realise that such paltry disguises do nothing but alienate us from the true depths of both our plight and our joys in being human. Christianity defines both the malady and remedy to our exile from the natural delight of God's handiwork, so if the true aim, as the New Testament says it is, of faith, is a confidence in Christ's reconciling of the world, why do we so often fail to 'have life, and have it abundantly' - to really work through the value and goodness of the natural?

C S Lewis once observed the sheer joy that we can encounter in the straightforward 'normality' of life - the comfort and richness of the 'fit' of all that is normal and commonplace, and how this gives us a true insight into our real communion with being alive. There is, however, a 'jailer' who conjures against such charm, who worries to be busy when such moments are close, stealing such glints of wonder from us. That is why, I believe, it is imperative, as Paul writes, that we focus on ALL that is good, and pure, and lovely around us.















Splendour. Model:Kari.


Beauty, when properly seen, allows us to step, if but for a moment, beyond the narrowness of our present troubled lives and truly 'touch, taste, and feel', if but vaguely, the true, deliciously earthy splendour of all that was, is and will forever be good in the reconciliation that already 'is' in Jesus Christ. The jailer wants us to remain in our dark cave, to see all such cravings and insights as mere myth - shadows, at best, to mock us, upon a cold wall, but the work of God, in creation and redemption, say totally otherwise.

For much of my own life, I have been so very aware of the beauty, but in recent years, as I discovered a means to actively 'connect' in a more immediate way through photography, the 'fragrance' and the vital value of the message this brings have become far more vital. It is as we engage in this manner that we truly begin to hear and see the majesty of God's work, and thereby appreciate and esteem both the art and the artist, who's greatest desire is to share that wonder, and thereby true affection, with us.



















Contemplation. Model: Joceline.