Partly Cloudy
Seeing the beauty in the terrible is an exercise of faith.
The same tornado that devastates a town is in itself a thing of terrible beauty to behold, the swirling clouds and debris, the immense power and irrefutability of that funnel that bounces along, touching here and there, sparing there and here. The tsunami that destroys a coastline or a coastal village is another example of powerful, terrible beauty. As is the lightning strike (something we're able to appreciate as beautiful more easily because it generally is not destructive on a wide scale).
This last bit strikes at the heart of how we often define - or if we can acknowledge - beauty. How are we affected? The tornado destroys a town and kills people. The tsunami wipes out a coastline of property or an impoverished village, wiping out lives and livelihoods. So we don't often describe these things as beautiful - unlike lightning.
The Pixar short animation feature Partly Cloudy is a beautiful summary of this. This is the short that was released with their latest film, Up. And if I haven't mentioned it in a previous blog, one of the most powerful interpretations of this short, beautiful work is found here. Read it.
Read it and be challenged in how you think about beauty, and what you see as beautiful as opposed to ugly, or frightening, or threatening. Read it and perhaps think differently about the world around you, and those things that you might not be able to see the beauty in, because you're so obsessed with how those things affect you. It's not that the effects aren't real, and may not be terrible. But that doesn't mean that, even in the midst of loss or suffering, there is not an exquisite and terrible beauty at play.
Along these lines, I found the artwork of this gentleman to be incredible. He witnesses to the beauty of these terrible, tiny things. And the beauty does not alter the tragic impact of these things on the lives of millions of people. But this witness allows us to see another dimension that we don't often consider in our insistence on having things just the way we want them - safe and secure and unsullied.
The same tornado that devastates a town is in itself a thing of terrible beauty to behold, the swirling clouds and debris, the immense power and irrefutability of that funnel that bounces along, touching here and there, sparing there and here. The tsunami that destroys a coastline or a coastal village is another example of powerful, terrible beauty. As is the lightning strike (something we're able to appreciate as beautiful more easily because it generally is not destructive on a wide scale).
This last bit strikes at the heart of how we often define - or if we can acknowledge - beauty. How are we affected? The tornado destroys a town and kills people. The tsunami wipes out a coastline of property or an impoverished village, wiping out lives and livelihoods. So we don't often describe these things as beautiful - unlike lightning.
The Pixar short animation feature Partly Cloudy is a beautiful summary of this. This is the short that was released with their latest film, Up. And if I haven't mentioned it in a previous blog, one of the most powerful interpretations of this short, beautiful work is found here. Read it.
Read it and be challenged in how you think about beauty, and what you see as beautiful as opposed to ugly, or frightening, or threatening. Read it and perhaps think differently about the world around you, and those things that you might not be able to see the beauty in, because you're so obsessed with how those things affect you. It's not that the effects aren't real, and may not be terrible. But that doesn't mean that, even in the midst of loss or suffering, there is not an exquisite and terrible beauty at play.
Along these lines, I found the artwork of this gentleman to be incredible. He witnesses to the beauty of these terrible, tiny things. And the beauty does not alter the tragic impact of these things on the lives of millions of people. But this witness allows us to see another dimension that we don't often consider in our insistence on having things just the way we want them - safe and secure and unsullied.
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