Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

John O’Donohue was a modern prophet. Every word he writes is beautiful and poetic. What a loss to the world that he is gone- his work will live on forever.

A beautiful book written by a beautiful man, John O'Donohue’s Beauty is filled with such inspiring words I found it difficult, almost inappropriate, to read even a chapter straight through since many lines invite us to reread and linger with their fragrance for days. Here are several such lines coupled with my brief comments, taken from two of my favorite chapters – The Call to Beauty and The Music of Beauty:

"Indeed, the subtle touches of beauty are what enable most people to survive. Yet beauty is so quietly woven through our ordinary days that we hardly notice it. Everywhere there is tenderness, care, and kindness, there is beauty."

During this past year I have been reading ancient Greek philosophy. Turns out, one of those Greek philosophers I especially enjoy is Epicurus, one big reason, Epicurus was famous for his kindness, caring and sensitivity, encouraging us to transform our life itself into a work of beauty.

"Yet beauty's visitation affects us and invites us into its rhythm, it calls us to feel, think and act beautifully in the world: to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful."

I have been involved in the creative arts for many years but I have come to realize our greatest creation is to become ourselves a being radiating beauty.

"Even, and perhaps especially, in the bleakest times, we can still discover and awaken beauty; these are precisely the times when we need it most. Nowhere else can we find the joy that beauty brings. Joy is not simply the fruit of circumstances; we can choose to be joyous independent of what is happening around us."

How true! John O'Donohue invites us to raise our own inner vibration and experience the inner joy of simply being alive, especially needed when we are facing our biggest challenges.

"If our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary."

Thank you, John. `Beautify our gaze' - the experience of beauty is an inner transformation not a change of scenery.

"To behold beauty dignifies your life; it heals you and calls you out beyond the smallness of our own self-limitation to experience new horizons. To experience beauty is to have your life enlarged."

Again, thank you, John. There is a rightness and clarity when we see beauty in the world and become fuller and more attuned to not only the outside world by also to ourselves.

"Beauty is not to be captured or controlled for there is something intrinsically elusive in its nature. More like a visitation than a solid fact, beauty invests the aura of a person or infuses a landscape with an unexpected intimacy that satisfies our longing."

Intimate, mysterious and, on occasions blissful and ecstatic, an experience quite beyond any words.

"To the human ear, however, music echoes the deepest grandeur and the most sublime intimacy of the soul."

I find this true to my own experience. Music hits me at a much deeper level than the other arts. It is like an internal dance with my nervous system.

"In contrast to most other forms of art, music alters your experience of time. To enter a piece of music, or to have the music enfold you, is to depart for a while from regulated time. Music creates a rhythm that beats out its own time-shape."

Music has a deep connection to Eros and love, expressing an energy short-circuiting reason, an energy that is transporting, absorbing, sensuous, kinetic, and involves our whole person, body and soul.

"There is a profound sense in which music opens a secret door in time and reaches in to the eternal. This is the authority and grace of music; it evokes or creates an atmosphere where presence awakens to its eternal depth."

I never tire of reading these words over and over again.

I read this on the plane back from Ireland/Scotland, and I just sat there underlining nearly everything. It really is that beautiful. This is one I’ll keep on my bookshelf for awhile.

Our identities are constrained by own imagination! Here’s a creative writing blog just to get the “juice” flowing. What’s the juice you say? Well it’s the life force that ebbs and flows all around us, good juicy life goodness. It’s the stuff that makes you want to taste rain, to get on a bicycle, to make a cuppa for someone you care about. The best part about the juice? Everything makes it grow. There’s an old saying around my parts. We say “If you want to grow you’ve got to take a little dirt”. After all, the route of determination is ultimately our perfect gemstone; it might be shiny through all the grit, but at the end of the day it’s still a gemstone. Ever looked upon glowing alexandrite? Changing it’s beautiful colours? Well it might be the colour you are seeing but it’s those atomic particles called electron dancing up and down finding where the feel comfiest in the light. Those electrons actually absorb the light they need and simple reflect all the other light they don’t need. So the bottom line is, when you gaze upon a object you are seeing all the light the object isn’t. Isn’t that neat? It’s lovely to imagine the soul like this, absorbing all that it needs to feel comfortable whilst simply reflecting back the rest of the beauty that is not necessary. John O’Donahue in his book “Beauty: The Invisible Embrace” explores this concept thoroughly. This blog piece could almost be a long winded review for the book itself, and that would be most worthwhile indeed.

Heard this author interviewed on the CBC and was so moved I had to read this book. A great and beautiful reminder of the joy of being alive!

John O’Donohue was life changing for me when my life needed changing. A trusted companion in coming back from grief as well and finding out what’s truly mine. Also check out his book, Belonging, for the same reason.

This one got my heart's attention.

A book to read meditatively, over and over.