Beauty vs Cuteness

The Church is full of beauty. I don't say this lightly. There is nothing more beautiful than Christ in the Eucharist, and from that monumental beauty has flowed paintings that takes your breath away, sculptures and figures that bring you to your knees, and music that can make you sob until you have no energy or tears left. Yes my friends, God is the most beautiful thing in the world, and I cannot forget it.

But my soul mate (who was married and died about 80 years ago), G.K. Chesterton, had some lovely things to say about a more child like view of all things fancy and nice. I don't know if I could ever speak too much about God's beauty, so this is certainly not a competition to see which gets spoken of more, but I think Chesterton made a good point in his book Orthodoxy, about God's delight in precious and cute things. Here is a small bit from the book:

"All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. this is a fallacy in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but my death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or because he is tired of sitting still. But is his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put that matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again repeatedly until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike, it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinner and grown old, and our Father in younger that we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore."

I have not read the rest of this book yet. In fact, it would be imprudent of me to do so, seeing as how this is my exam week, and I have already taken time out of my precious and limited study hours to share. Please pray for me, and for all students who are taking exams right now. Help them carry their cross of student-life with joy, and to make sure prayer is always a priority. I don't know if I will be able to re-read my notes over and over again with the same delight as a child, or with someone with an "eternal appetite of infancy", but I will try.