By Wayne Allensworth
These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire…They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
I have my own personal art gallery that I visit and survey every day of my life. But it is not a place separate from myself, for I live in it and it lives in my experience of it. But in saying it is “mine,” I can only hope that it will be “ours,” for it’s available to all who are open to it. When I walk on a trail near my home, I see wonders of an order that cannot be surpassed. Not by the grandest projects of technologists. And not by the most talented engineers. For God is not an engineer, constructing projects, piecing together segments like Legos. The universe that is His expression and means of realization is not a structure like a building, but a work of art, one in which we can both sense His presence but not see Him directly. His presence is veiled, but it is there for those with eyes to see. An artist is present in his creation. We are very much part of His realization, indeed one of its chief aims, for we are His witnesses and share in the deepest mystery of all, that of consciousness. Part of the wonder is in its mystery, its hiddenness. And it is all the more real for not being a representation of something else, but in its being, its becoming, its living.
I see flowers of wondrous intricacy, animals of vast variety, living, spawning, dying. And the leaves of trees and plants that shimmer in the smoky sunlight of early fall, the sun sneaking behind clouds that appear as moving brush strokes of an artist of great vision. I do not believe for a minute that this grand artist, the most visionary of them all, paints by the numbers. Think of a Cosmic artist working with a large block of marble, a conglomerate of elements that can be molded or shaped to create something that is expressive of the things we hold dear: Love, Truth, Beauty, Goodness. The imagination of the Cosmic artist begins the process of shaping, guiding, but not directing, His creation. He does not know precisely what will take shape, only its possibilities, its potentialities that are brought into being by His imagination, His desire, His need, for creating, for movement and evolution are Him, part of what is becoming and what will be and what can be. For the visions of human artists, or great people of genius, are extensions of His talents and imagination, and of His desire for their freedom. Freedom in His self-expression, in the development of His being and becoming a grand personality. God expressing Himself.
Like a storyteller, He may not know exactly where the story will take Him or His creation in all details, only the possibilities of what it can be, what He hopes it should be and could be. And we, like waves in an ocean, are individuated expressions of the vast sea of becoming. We are both distinct entities within it and part of it as well. As a spectator in the Cosmic gallery that is my home, I survey the beauty and thus can partake in it, while at the same time myself being an expression of the Great Artist. I have only to drop the scales from my eyes and see. To see with new eyes, and become something I had lost, a child again in the sense of feeling awe, wonder, and joy in what I see, as if for the first time. I accept that birth and death are necessary, inescapable passages in a universe that finds every path it can take, every road it can follow to make something, to express Being. The Tyger whose eyes burn bright. The gentle Lamb. Blake’s call for us to awaken to it all. Limitations in temporal existence lend meaning to our lives as the constraints allow for freedom to make choices for good or ill.
In living our lives that are spent to a great extent within a cocoon of technology, of a controlled environment, we can, and often do, lose the sense of wonder, of enchantment, and of fear, fear in the sense of awe. But moderns especially fear death in the vulgar sense, as we retain only an echo of our ancient intuition about eternity. Lucifer is the bright one, the Morning Star, our intellect that is so necessary to our understanding and our getting through the maze of life. But the bright light can also be a flame of resentment and a different kind of longing—to be the one who is in charge, to dethrone the great artist who we imagine to be a tyrant when we fail or suffer. It is no accident, as they say, that militant atheists began calling themselves “The Brights.” In our technological bubbles, we have the illusion of omniscience in its most manipulative sense. An illusion of total control. Power and control trumping Truth and Beauty. Pascal once wrote that such people hate religious faith because they fear it may be true. He wisely stated that reason’s supreme function was to “show man that some things are beyond reason.” Prideful intellect does not want to acknowledge the mystery of being.
In nature, God’s presence is evident in abundance. Materialists wish to reduce all entities and their purposes to functional utility. To an instrumental “purpose,” but not to a metaphysical sense of Purpose. One of the most mysterious and wonderful behaviors in nature is that of the pufferfish: the male builds an intricate mandala, a work of art expressing beauty itself. The fact that it helps him attract a mate begs the question of why it should be beautiful in a way that both humans and, apparently pufferfish, recognize.
The fish that builds a mandala:
Beauty is a quality, but also a value that is built into the cosmos—and beauty, or, rather, the experience of it, is its own purpose. It is gloriously “useless” in itself. Yet it attracts us. We are drawn to it. It is not a mere toy or pastime. It enriches our lives. It calls us to our spiritual journey. We are here to see it, to express it, for it is a fundamental element to Being. Its source is the foundation of all Being. God, who is the source of all, at the same time is expressed in all that we see.
Creation is an artistic act of love, of giving life to creatures who experience it. Thus, God realizes His purpose, His desire, His expression of self by interacting with creation in its constant unfolding. In Christianity, the Incarnation is the ultimate expression of that interaction. And we act as co-creators through our experience of it, through the means of perception that we are endowed with. How can one make others see? Go and visit your local natural art gallery. Open yourself to experience. Do something entirely without utilitarian purpose, that is also of great value.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood. For thirty-two years, he worked as an analyst and Russia area expert in the US intelligence community.
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