Beauty and Who We Are Becoming

When thinking about what it means to be human, it seems like a lot of theologians begin with the doctrine of the imago Dei (that we are made in the image of God).  In contrast, biblical theologian, Walter Brueggemann, does not start his theological anthropology with the imago Dei. Instead, it is the kiss of the Holy Spirit that brings Adam and Eve to life that is the foundational relationship between humanity and God. We are literally kissed by God into life, thus, Brueggeman contends, we should begin our theological anthropology with intimacy and relationship rather than with our "likeness" to God.  


I think that Brueggemann's model goes well with the idea that the doctrine of the imago Dei is much more about beauty and resonance than about whether or not we are inherently good or inherently bad. We are already in the image of God, but we need to play and practice into the fullness of that image. As my priest, Mother Melissa, preached this Sunday, the banquet is set but we are starving. The invitations were sent out, but we refuse to come to the wedding feast for one reason or another. What keeps us away? Shame, forgetfulness, busyness, indifference? 


One reason we avoid the feast is that beauty requires something of us. Many forms of beauty are not immediate to our senses. The deepest forms of beauty "pull us in" but are sometimes initially repulsive or strange. To know beauty we need learn its language and be transformed by its 'otherness'. Just like with a foreign language, we can never really know the meaning of even the simplest words until we are fluent. Here is Annie Dillard's take,

“Beauty itself is the language to which we have no key; it is the mute cipher, the cryptogram, the uncracked, unbroken code. And it could be that for beauty, as it turned out for French, that there is no key, that ‘oui’ will never make sense in our language but only in its own, and that we need to start all over again on a new continent, learning the strange syllables one by one." (Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 107)

Beauty, in a spiritual sense, requires us to learn its "strange syllables one by one." We are transformed in the process but it is a long road to travel. If we go back to the metaphor of the feast, perhaps we need to learn to savor the good food offered to us rather than the junk food we may crave. We need to grow into the nourishment of this spiritual food, and to crave that which will make us flourish: body and soul. 

I am reminded here of the ending lines of George Herbert's poem, "Love": " 'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat,' so I did sit and eat."