Good Lord, how much bs can I fit into one reflection, anyway...

On Beauty

For the beautiful objects designed by artists souls and realized by skilled hands come from that beauty which is higher than souls; after that beauty my soul sighs day and night.

-St. Augustine, Confessions

The good things which you love are all from God, but they are good and sweet only as long as they are used to do his will. They will rightly turn bitter if God is spurned and the things that come from him are wrongly loved.

- St. Augustine, Confessions

All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.

-Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

First, I apologize for the large amount of quotes; I am not merely using them to take up space in the assignment, I think they all tie together in the reflection.
This reflection was inspired both by the trip to the cathedral and ruminations over our current reading. When I visit a place like the National Cathedral, I am struck by its intense beauty- and I feel that the beauty has to reflect something higher than ourselves. I think that the abilities to create and appreciate beauty are too great to take for granted. Music, visual arts and architecture reflect prodigious talent and work and, according to my personal beliefs and the first quote of Augustine’s, a higher power.
So what does beauty mean in the light of religious thought, especially in the often harsh glare of thinkers such as Augustine? On the one hand, Augustine states that the beauty of crafts intrinsically reflects God’s beauty (this was simple to figure out, since things ascribing every good quality as intrinsically reflecting God is a big theme of Augustine’s’). This idea, that all things beautiful give praise to God is common in almost all religions; it can be found immediately in Islam in the Arabic word El-Musawwir, which means Shaper of Beauty, and is one of the 99 names of God (this word is important because God has numerous names that deal with him as a Creator, but one specifically as a creator of beauty).
Yet, earlier in the book Augustine warns his reader not to delight in beauty for the sake of the object, enjoy beauty only as a reflection of God; after all, beauty is a gift from him and is not to be spurned. What Augustine proposes is not easy for us accomplish. We are to delight in beauty, but do not enjoy the object itself? This paradox will supply us with an endless amount of temptation and guilt, and Augustine admits it does for himself.
I think that Gibran’s poetry supplies a proper balance. Although Gibran’s work usually flies over my head, I think I understand what he is trying to say in this poem. Leading up to the quote I borrowed, Gibran describes a scene where numerous people give their definitions of beauty. For tired people it is comfort, for restless people adventure. Gibran’s main character, however, reprimands those speakers for these words. You must identify beauty as a celebration; acknowledge that the way something beautiful makes you feel separates it from mundane wants and needs.
I think that beauty therefore has a place in faith. A constant exposure to lavishness will undoubtedly detract from the joy you should feel when you encounter something you believe to be beautiful, but a puritanical outlook will lead to a joyless life, one devoid of the celebration that should properly be there if one was truly to lead a rich spiritual life.