Defiance

Beauty defies disorder. It is the defiance of destruction because it is its opposite.

Beauty is the defiance of the forces of evil, disorder and destruction because it is its opposite. Evil tears down but beauty creates. Where there is emptiness and absence, creative beauty fills. Beauty is an act of defiance against the illegitimate rule of spirits and powers in the world. The death and sin legacy of the twisted, unfocused distortion and corruption still present.

Beauty is not the domain of the privileged that can afford the quiet. It is the free gift of the Holy Spirit and the legacy privilege of being made in the image and likeness of God. The endowment that enables and guides us to be able to pay attention to the movement of the Spirit within and to the enchanted creation works without.

The Holy Spirit is ceaselessly, quietly and constantly inviting everyone and indiscriminately, anyone, into that place of inward quiet (in spite of the outward chaos), to the place of knowing. The knowing of being beloved. The discovery of being the target of love and goodness that continually and perpetually gives birth to streams of beauty. Not only to glimpse this vaguely, but to nestle and stay in that place, make a home there.

Amongst a world that does not embrace limits and limitation, but pushes exhaustingly for more, for bigger, for better. More fear, more worry, more lack, more need, more vandalism, more alienation from contentment, more discomfort with ourselves and foreigners from others. All just dark chaos and disorder.

On offer is the constant envelope of God’s tenderness towards our fragility and need. The invitation to tether our attention to something else. To untether from the frame of the uproar of the world. Into the peace of beauty, and come aware of the multitude of possibilities to pay little attentions to the tiny goodness and the pervasive goodness all around and within all the time.

Whatsoever is good, pure, wholesome and beautiful, set your attention on these to the strengthening and the nourishment of your entire being.

Or focus on Palestine and Israel, on Ukraine, on corruption and ineptitude, on disappointments and irritations, on hassles with close people, on your faults, on the empty gaps of your life or pocket, on the graffiti and pollution, on hopes distorted or unfulfilled hope. Rave in despair. If that is what you want. But Jesus told us that it’s messy, live is noisy and burns with friction. Yet right here, right now, we can turn towards, which is not turning away, but is an enveloping of a better offer made sure. Of beauty and of its defiance against chaos.