Exodus to Beauty

Lately I have found myself absent of hope. Specifically I have been pondering what "change" actually is, and if it is even possible. I have been shown pictures of a man in red, white, and blue, and he is labeled as "hope". He had a slogan something like "change we can believe in" or "the change we need". I don't know, the slogans all run together in my mind. The election year left me so bombarded with advertisements of "hope" and "change", that I have forgotten what these things actually are or mean. They have become cliche and ugly to me. Today I feel I might have had a bit of a break through...

I was thinking about how I love to lie. Well, tell stories, I mean. Most people think I'm a pretty big bullshitter. Really it's one of my forms of creation. When you think about it all writers are liars. While I am certainly not a writer, I do love trying to convince people that bizarre things are real. Like a monastery murder mystery, or tales about a mysterious hotel owner. Really I like to do it because it is beautiful to me.

Then I got to thinking about "creation" in general, as in the universe. We have been working our way through the Panet Earth TV series, so it has had me thinking about creation in that sense a lot. I could proabably write a whole blog about the great white shark. Anyways, I view the universe as something that has been created by a Being more powerful than it. Which means all of creation is subject to this Being.

Hmmm...what am I getting at here? Picasso said "Art is a lie that shows us the truth." Let me expand on this idea by saying that Creation is a lie that points us back to Beauty. I decided today, and experienced it for a few moments, that the material universe we live in is illusory at best, and a lie at worst. When compared to the Aritist, or Divine Reality, it is basically artificial and not as real as it's Creator. It is like comparing the Mona Lisa to Da Vinci, or Thriller to Michael Jackson. However, Creation is a beautiful lie. It is God's masterpiece.

I was at a christian-anarchist conference about two years ago. This one fellow was describing his faith in action and he put it this way: "I believe it is our job to point people back to Beauty." I have no idea why, but this has haunted me ever since. I don't think a created thing can understand Beauty. Would we ask The Godfather trilogy to explain chiaroscuro, or for the Mona Lisa to describe her ambiguity, or for Hermione Granger to dissect the inner workings of J.K. Rowling? So how can we be expected to see the Beauty? How can the created describe the Creator?

Today I felt like this impossible act was possible. Today, if only for a few moments, it felt like I was able to shed myself and everything around me, and be one with that Thing which is truly real. And this is what I find hope in. This is what I find is true and lasting change: The great opportunity presented before us, to turn away from these ill phantoms, and enter into the mass exodus to Beauty.