The
Language of Beauty
Prayer
is a fine, delicate instrument. To use it right is a great art,
a holy art. There is perhaps no greater art than the art of prayer.
Yet the least gifted, the uneducated and the poor can cultivate
the holy art of prayer.
0. Hallesby
On
thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in
the house of the Lord all the days of my life, and gaze upon the
beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.
King David (Psalm 27)
A
thing of beauty is a joy forever, its loveliness increases; it will
never pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for
us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
John Keats
Like
Love and Truth, Beauty is another inseparable attribute of God.
Authentic prayers express the beautiful. When you read the spiritual
prayers and poems of great souls, you sense their reverence for
the magnificence and glory that outpours from God.
God's
holiness and glory is given form though beauty, and is revealed in
the beautiful. The experience of the beautiful is sacred,
for it is here that we directly experience God's goodness and wonder.
When meditating on the beautiful prayers of poets and mystics, God
becomes revealed to us in the deepest manner.
As
we are created in God's image, we are enlivened by that which is
beautiful. In a sense, prayers can be the purest
of all art forms, for prayers directly connect us with Our Source
of Beauty.
Like
art, the beauty of a prayer is something sublime, - something that
transcends facts and logic. Or as the philosopher Rudolph
Steiner stated, "it is not an objection to say that we must
understand a prayer if it is to have its true effect. That simply
is not the case. Who understands the wisdom of a flower? Yet we can
take pleasure in it."
Like
art, appreciating and deepening this practice takes time to develop.
Just like an artist learns and develops more and more through the
application and mastery of certain basic skills, so is our mastery
in prayer.
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