Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God—but only he who sees takes off his shoes Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In a recent interview (details here) Leigh McLeroy is recored as saying
Both beauty and holiness are “other than.” In their “otherness” they have the ability to transport and transform. They move and change us, evoking in us powerful response. When the prophet Isaiah saw his breathtakingly beautiful vision of the Lord’s holiness he was moved to say “Woe is me!” and then his guilt was removed and his sin atoned for with a searing hot coal. Thus transformed, he enlisted in the Holy One’s great cause by saying “Here am I. Send me!”I've been wrestling with similar concepts how the aesthetic is not the same as the spiritual. They share a similarity in a sense of transcendence but they are not the same. Sadly my education Phd student discussion partner is leaving to return to his home country. Our conversations have revealed for me this exact issue. But I find myself wanting clarification from McLeroy. Beauty and the sublime follow very similar paths but I think only holiness disappears off on to the horizon, off to the Holy One. McLeroy sort of says this when he quotes the late Pope John Paul II who called beauty “a key to mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God.”
No longer will Jacob be ashamed; no longer will their faces grow pale. When they see among them their children, the work of my hands, they will keep my name holy; they will acknowledge the holiness of the Holy One of Jacob, and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.
Is 29:22-23
