#contemplativejourney,#spiritualdirectionknoxville,#embracebeauty,#poetrydivina,#spiritualjourney,#beautyinthedepths,#discoverbeauty,#enterauthenticity
Currently on my contemplative journey I am making a practice of noticing beauty, and to accompany me on this journey is one of my favorite philosopher/poets-- John O' Donohue. I am reading two books in particular: " Walking in Wonder," and "The Invisible Embrace Beauty." On the contemplative day retreat I offered this past weekend we enjoyed poetry divina with one of John's poems.
The contemplative journey is a slow process in general and my reading has been slow and reflective allowing me to deeply notice where it connects with my life, or more accurately where it connects with my soul. This morning I am musing about a section of the book on beauty. Here it is: "The medieval mind did not believe that beauty was either the result of a mental attitude that longed to see beauty or a surface presence in Nature or a product of the artistic mind. They did not believe that a human person could simply create beauty. In the medieval view reality was a series of symmetrical levels issuing from God and culminating in God's perfection. All beauty derived ultimately from God....In saying that beauty was a transcendental, Aquinas was claiming that beauty dwells in the depths of things. The same notion is also put memorably by Yeats in his poem "The Rose upon the Rood of Time":
Come near,that no more blinded by man's fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way.
Come near,come near,come near, -- Ah,leave me still
A little space for the rose - breath to fill!"
