No. 7 Nourishing Ourselves with Beauty
This week’s audio reflection circled around a theme I keep returning to: the deep nourishment beauty offers our hearts and minds--not as escape, but as invitation, not as luxury, but as essential.
I shared a quote by John Erickson that’s been lingering in my thoughts:
“What is a story? What is art? What should they accomplish, and why does it matter?
When I began my journey, I didn’t realize how important those questions would be, nor did I anticipate the answers. They relate to something C.S. Lewis said, that art should attempt to reconstruct patterns and harmonies that were here long before we arrived. We don’t create the designs embedded in our world, but discover them and try to describe them in the language of our time. The first sentence in Genesis assures us that a design is there.”
There’s something so grounding in this—this idea that beauty isn’t something we conjure up on our own, but something we uncover. It’s already there, already singing. Our task is simply to learn how to listen. To notice. To translate what we’ve found into the language of our own lives.
Whether it’s through color on paper, the shape of a story, the rhythm of a day well-lived—making becomes a kind of witnessing. A way of saying, “Look at what I’ve found.”
May your week be filled with small discoveries.
May beauty meet you in the in-between moments.
And may you be reminded that the patterns are there—waiting to be traced.
