Fragments of Light

Monthly Archives: March 2014

Beauty’s Campaign to Win the Soul

The beauty of this world is Christ’s tender smile coming to us through matter.
–Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right to the soul. It constitutes, then, another way in which the divine reality behind the world invades our lives. Where affliction conquers us with brute force, beauty sneaks in and topples the empire of the self from within.
–Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

A Lenten take on Beauty and her power to win the day over the “empire of self.” How ironic that artists, traffickers in beauty, maintain such a reputation for inflated ego. Perhaps as it finds itself going down in flames, that interior nemesis must blaze out ever brighter before it is transformed.
How can we relinquish our control and be the servant of our art?

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