To participate in Beauty is
to come into the presence of the Holy.
​–John O’Donohue

Beauty as a Holy Sanctuary

Beauty is a holy sanctuary where heaven and earth greet each another with gladness.  It offers us glimpses of something more:  the promise of a “a hidden wholeness” underneath the brokenness of this world. Beauty, I believe, is where we find our true home with God and the world. 

And God is beautiful.

So many have been injured by the very word “God” and so cannot use such language; that is understandable.  I use the word “God” throughout this Spiritual Alphabet Series in the sense that Alfred North Whitehead wrote of God as the “poet of the world.”  And as a progressive Christian minister, I also embrace the vision of Jesus as a lens through which we can imagine what God is like: Not an all-controlling king “up there,” but Love incarnate—in the world—weeping with those who weep and transforming our brokenness into novel possibilities for wholeness.  As a process thinker, I believe in a beautiful God.

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