A Thing of Beauty

That Which is Sacred

To me sacred means too beautiful to be harmed or destroyed.  So what do I mean by beautiful?  John Keats expressed beauty in his poetry when he wrote A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever.  I have a bi-fold glass painting of this saying confirmed by a floral stained glass symmetrical design above my desktop.  It serves to remind me that the numbers I am compelled to compile in my daily work are trumped by the sacred geometry of the flower by virtue of its beauty alone. 

Keats’ poem itself is sacred and not to be held along side something so bane as the ten commandments.  I can find no evidence that beauty is necessary for survival even though it empowers some soft souls with the will to live when all else becomes meaningless or crass.  In fact survival may often be at odds with beauty.  Yet I personally would choose the physician with the better bedside manner over the expert who does not care whether I live or die, because my existence in not predicated upon survival.  After all, none of us get out of life alive.  My existence as a human being only has meaning if there is beauty in it.  Survival only serves to bide me the time to find the life that is worth the living for the beauty it holds.

Science is not a mystery.  It is a discovery.  Survival is not a mystery.  It is a process of evolution.  Beauty is the mystery.  It is the “flowery band that binds us to the earth”. 

"Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast
That, whether there be shine or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die"

Are we spiritual beings?  The word spiritual has become as tainted as the word sacred.  We are beings.  Beings that either seek to destroy beauty or to preserve it at all cost. It may be that this fragile essence we know as beauty does not need my defense but I need to defend her in order to possess her.  It may be upon the soft and gentle wings of beauty that my soul will one day take its departure unto the regions of her permanent abode.  Yet it is not by reason of hope that I honor her, but out of respect.  That, and I find her music irresistible.