Tag Archives: Beauty

“Living with Beauty” is Back!

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Feeling the need for an immersion in Beauty? As we begin the season of coats and hats and busy holidays, perhaps a “Beauty Break” is in order. Spirituality and Practice just informed me that my e-course “Living with Beauty” is returning on Monday, November 10. It would make a great gift to yourself or to a friend:

“Beauty is that which glistens on the edges of our yearnings and lures us into the depth of things.”
— Patricia Adams Farmer, Embracing a Beautiful God

Whether we are contemplating a work of art or the striking form of a red cardinal against a snow laden tree branch, the experience of beauty involves us in something larger than ourselves. We feel pulled into the experience as if called into another world. Suddenly, we are attuned to a deeper reality that is both welcoming and transforming. The experience of beauty, in this view, is a taste of heaven on earth, the very dream of God for all creation. The early twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead suggests this when he states: “The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty.” Seen in this light, beauty can transport us “into the depth of things,” serving as a catalyst for meaning, gratitude, hope, and planetary well-being.

This e-course, “Living with Beauty,” explores how the experience of beauty found in nature, art, music, poetry, religious ritual, and the quotidian of daily life can enlarge our souls and offer great solace and delight — even as it “lures” us into new ways of thinking, creating, and imagining a better world.

You will receive 12 emails, sent on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays starting on November 10. In each e-mail you will find:

  • Insights into the nature of beauty from the great wisdom traditions, philosophers, poets, mystics, and religious texts.
  • Reflections on beauty’s transforming possibilities, even in times of darkness and tragedy.
  • Artistic prompts for contemplation (and discussion in the online Practice Circle), including nature photography, paintings, poetry, and links to music.
  • Practices for taking regular “Beauty Breaks” as we explore ways of tapping into the hidden beauties all around us.
  • An invitation to share in our online Practice Circle where you can respond to each session.

Patricia Adams Farmer (patriciaadamsfarmer.com) is an ordained minister and author of several books including Embracing a Beautiful God, Fat Soul: A Philosophy of S-I-Z-E, and Replanting Ourselves in Beauty: Toward an Ecological Civilization (co-editor with Jay McDaniel). She has led retreats and conferences on beauty and the spiritual life in both the US and Canada. After a recent five-year adventure of living and writing in Ecuador, she now lives in the Midwest and writes for several websites, including a co-authored blog for Spirituality & Practice called “Process Musings.” She lives with her husband, Ron Farmer, and two feline studies in beauty, Alfie and Raindrop.

Click here to register!

When You Don’t Feel at Home in the World Anymore

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When you don’t feel at home in the world anymore, 
       sit down by a flowing brook.
Open your palm to the wet, smooth stones.
Listen to the gurgle of water against rock --
        the music of quiet resistance. 

When you don’t feel at home in the world anymore,
        revisit old friends in books you treasure,
        or familiar melodies that break your heart.
Most of all, remember the wise ones now gone:  
       those who dared to swim upstream
       and imagined a better world.

When you don’t feel at home in the world anymore, 
       find friends who laugh, 
       write a song,
       bake bread,
       love your neighbor. 
Create a footprint of defiant joy -- 
       and walk that path. 

When you don’t feel at home in the world anymore,
        do not close the door, as tempting as it may be. 
Take the gifts of your history,
        what you love,
        and move forward into the unknown -
         the uncertain, 
         the undiscovered. 
Be a pioneer if you have to.

When you don’t feel at home in the world anymore, 
       at least feel at home in yourself.
Ground yourself in the flow of 
       the good, 
       the true, 
       the beautiful: 
       the poetry of God.

You see, the world has not ended.
Nothing is finished.
The universe flows on —
       and so do you. 

Patricia Adams Farmer, 
       In memory of two “wise ones” who dared to swim upstream:
        Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr.
       and President Jimmy Carter

I Want to Bathe in the River of Beauty

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I want to bathe in the river of beauty,

to dip below the surface of a world

in perpetual strife.

I want to dive into the depths

and rise again with understanding

and grace.

I want to bask in the trilling of a songbird

I cannot name,

serene, secure,

singing atop an ancient ash:

a tree made stronger by storm and stress.  

***

I want to float in midnight waters

and awaken to the moonlight of awe:

To dip my toes in pure wonder

and wish upon a star.

I want to feel the gentle undercurrent

of a deeper, wider,

undiscovered hope

tugging me along to landscapes I have not seen,

and music I have not heard,

and colors not yet combined and contrasted —

transformed into new creations.

I want to be amazed and humbled

by all I do not know.

***

I want to cleanse myself with compassion,

to feel again the depth of Soul,

to swim against the current of our time

and understand the pain in another

without judgment.

I want to be the river,

the wind,

the mackerel and the blue heron,

each struggling to survive,

and know the world

through them.

***

I want to bathe in the river of beauty,

to immerse myself in the divine waters of

tenderness and togetherness,

and feel again

the joyful connection of earth and sky,

creatures and me.

–Patricia Adams Farmer

Death is a Kind of Gravity

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Death is a kind of gravity,

a letting go, a natural tug down --

down toward the earth,

toward dust,

toward the heart of the world.


So too for those left behind.

The gravity of grief pulls us,

against our will,

down into Earth’s Heart, 

the essentials, the center:

what matters.


I think of the Universe

as God’s body,

beautiful and tragic as it is.

So perhaps God is not

a remote king, judging, controlling,

manipulating from on high,

but earthy, involved, feeling the

pain of everything,

like the suffering and compassionate Jesus –


Like Michelangelo’s La Pietà:

a mother, grieving --

a loving heart who cradles us

in the tender embrace that is both

earth and sky,

spirit and soil.

tragedy and joy.


The great Heart of the Universe sings to us in our grief

a dreamy melody, luring us down into

the depth of things –

a sacred song that winnows out the chaff

of busyness and striving,

all that distracts us from our inner lives.


Then we can finally slide down into what matters:

truth, beauty, goodness,

and, most of all,

forgiveness,

love.


The Divine Tenderness is that welcoming embrace

that catches everything as it falls:

dragonflies and people,

flowers and dreams,

all to be reborn, restored, resurrected

in the great womb of God.


Gravity takes us home.


--"Death is a Kind of Gravity" by Patricia Adams Farmer, in memory of Mary Farmer Wiebe

Beauty in the Dark

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Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

What batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

–Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29

On my last Sunday as a working minister, the choir in our congregation sang the soulful Irish hymn Be Thou My Vision. I sat rapt behind the pulpit, deeply moved, juxtaposing my own struggles with advanced glaucoma with this spiritual invitation to a wider vision. For the truth is, my physical vision is narrowing into darkness, year by year, despite all medical interventions to date. The encroaching darkness has grounded me from driving, nudged me into unplanned retirement, and makes it difficult to read or move about without fear of bodily injury. There’s no getting round the natural human reaction of distress and fear of going completely blind, feelings which I know must be fully felt as I “move back and forth” into the change. 

But there is more to vision, isn’t there? Perhaps this is where “the bitter drink” transforms me into wine, After all, there is the unseen, the spiritual, the inner vision that transcends our five senses. Helen Keller displayed remarkable vision and hearing even though being deaf and blind. She could “see” the beauty of the world in ways we can’t imagine and she “heard” music through feeling vibrations. Beethoven heard music in his mind when he grew deaf, creating the Ninth Symphony, his magnum opus. Keller and Beethoven were drawn to the spiritual world and the world of beauty and music. Such luminaries remind me of the untapped possibilities beyond the five senses. This is possible because the reality we live in is much larger and more interesting than we once believed.

In the world of David Hume, rock star of the Scottish Enlightenment, we can only know what we perceive through our five senses. But after the revolution in science in the early twentieth century, we see that quantum physics opened us to a much more interesting view of reality for both scientists and philosophers. The great philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, taking this new reality of the invisible world of quanta into account, proposed that the world of knowing (epistemology) is much larger than the five senses, and includes the Divine presence, too.

God is present in the world in a most intimate way, but is also more than the world (panentheism). That “moreness” may be something we experience more fully after this life: a holy reality called by many names: heaven, paradise, the depths of God. I find it fascinating that so many of those who have reported Near Death Experiences reveal common stories not only of radiant light but also of a loving, embracing darkness at the core of everything. The womb of God? Perhaps.

But here we are, adventurers in this earthly experience, struggling to find our way together  —  some of us stumbling over furniture and cats as we lose light and clarity. We all struggle against the darkness, either metaphorically or literally. But there is good news, too, which was my joy as a minister to share with others:  Within this ever-expanding universe, God is present in every droplet of experience, luring us to incarnate possibilities for beauty and wholeness. God feels my experience with me — even the frustration and fear — and within this deep knowing, fashions fresh possibilities for ongoing novel experiences and new ways of knowing the world.

And so, if my visual darkness is to be a bell tower, then, with a little effort on my part, I can become the bell, ringing out a new song, enlarging my soul, discovering fresh adventures of the spirit. Part of this transformation includes the other four senses: will I learn to hear with more sensitivity? But more than this, there is an invisible realm to the world, and that includes the presence of divinity in every unfolding moment.

I love the God of process theology, who is “the fellow sufferer, who understands.” This intimate Companion — Soul of the world– is the source of novelty and creativity in the universe. And yet, God is invisible. So much of what matters is invisible, like the music of bells and the experience of love.

The visible and invisible unfold together inside a divine yearning for beauty — improvising, uncertain in every way, and often tragic. The whole cosmic process is enticingly mysterious. Besides the world of energy events that make up what we think of as matter, 95 % of the universe is dark matter and dark energy: dark matter holds everything together in an invisible embrace while dark energy hastens the expansion of the universe. What a contrasting pair of invisible friends! While science probes this mystery with the launch of Europe’s Euclid space telescope, we will perhaps find something that ignites the next scientific revolution. In this universe of wonder and beauty, we know that something important happens in the dark.

We continue to evolve with deeper insights in science, philosophy, psychology, theology, and in every area of human endeavor. But one thing we know now: we are not limited to the five senses. Reality is larger and more interesting than we can imagine! This gives me solace on bad days. Instead of feeling that I am losing something while my world gets narrower and darker, I can “look” with my inner vision to turn “disability” into possibility.

I really hope for a cure for glaucoma in my lifetime, but thanks to my moorings in process theology, I know that whatever happens, I have deep reservoirs for “seeing” with spiritual eyes, for expanding my soul, and for discovering a whole new realm of beauty in the darkness.