Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
The House Where Beauty Lives

The House Where Beauty Lives

Last updated on: January 30, 2015 at 1:18 am by Peggy Rosenthal

The House Where Beauty Lives 2015-01-29T19:23:20-07:00 Peggy Rosenthal

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

Art collector Roberta Ahmanson quotes this famous challenge by the late nineteenth century British artist William in her interview with Greg Wolfe in the current issue of Image (issue 83). Morris’s imperative naturally moves me to make a mental inventory of the stuff in my house.

In my clothes closets, I instantly fail his test; too much there is no longer useful. The hand-woven blouse that I bought in Guatemala and don’t wear passes because of its beauty.

On my bookshelves? Well, among all my hundreds (thousands?) of books, many contain beauty and all are certainly useful, though I can’t honestly say they’re still useful to me.

But on my walls? Yes, there’s beauty aplenty. Not prettiness, necessarily, but beauty as Ahmanson conceives of it. She’s careful not to define the beauty of visual art narrowly. Art’s beauty resides in the spirit in which it was made, the spirit that it imparts to the viewer.

Here on the wall above my desk hangs a sketch that my husband drew for me decades ago. It’s of Mary “pondering all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:19). She’s pictured as a very young woman, a peasant scarf loosely over her hair, her eyes gazing not at me but beyond.

“Beauty,” Ahmanson says, “gives you a window into eternity.”

Downstairs on the living room wall is a parallelogram-shaped colorful oil canvas mounted at an angle onto a metal parallelogram. This painting was created by a friend of ours, Ginny Cassetta.

We bought it at one of her shows, because the humor in it makes us smile. The show was called “My House,” and in the abstract shapes of our painting, Ginny told us she was representing her house as her own body.

Amid angular shapes, a red half circle joins visually with two large green juxtaposed circles; together they could be, Ginny said, the Trinity of her childhood Catholicism. But those two green balls also look strikingly like boobs. The beauty in this painting lies in its playful joy.

“Beauty,” Ahmanson says, “opens a door to hope.”

On the wall facing Ginny’s painting hangs a small quilt created by a Cambridge, Massachusetts fiber artist. The muted shades of maroons to reds shape themselves into tilted asymmetrical almost-squares: image of the fine line between imbalance and balance.

This quilt was a gift from our son and daughter-in-law after we’d helped out during a family illness. So the beauty of family love hangs in this art object, and the imbalance/balance fragility becomes for us an image of life’s fragility, of sickness/health.

I was glad to read that Ahmanson includes folk art in her own collection, because I have several pieces of it on my walls. I’m looking now at the balcon (balcony) given to us by Columbian friends about twenty years ago. They’d taken us to Cartagena, which is famous for the large balcons on the upper stories of houses.

Ours is a miniature, of course, protruding from the wall about eight inches.

But the miniature size doesn’t keep it from being chock full of tiny carefully crafted objects: potted plants, parrots, an armoire, and an elderly couple sitting next to each other, she winding a skein of yarn around his hands. This gift was prophetic; George and I do now sit together and knit in the evenings.

Another work of folk art hangs in our guestroom: a large quilt made by the descendants of slaves in the tiny village of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. George and I bought it there from one of the quilters during a trip through the Deep South, and I see its beauty as the beauty of hope through long suffering.

It’s a testament to the “glory of God” that Ahmanson finds in all beauty.

“Every time the people of Israel are theologically sound, they make beautiful things,” Ahmanson says of the Bible’s historical books. She explains:

The good kings like Josiah restore the temple—this three-dimensional icon of the glory of God.…God understood something about human beings, both their being created in his image to create glory, and also their need for…tangible evidence of the glory of God. Beauty opens a door to hope. It tells you there is something more, something beyond. It takes you out of yourself.

It takes you out of yourself and into the divine beauty that Augustine famously apostrophizes in his Confessions:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created…

You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

Roberta Ahmanson persuades me that the Beauty ever ancient, ever new that Augustine longed for makes itself tangible, accessible in works of art:

The temple was God saying, “Yes, there is something else out there, and you can engage with it—because you made these beautiful things that give me glory. And these things bear witness to your gifts and talents, which mean you were created in my image. We’re in this together.”

To me, art objects bear witness to the image of God in whoever made them.

Peggy Rosenthal is director of Poetry Retreats and writes widely on poetry as a spiritual resource. Her books include Praying through Poetry: Hope for Violent Times (Franciscan Media), and The Poets’ Jesus (Oxford). See Amazon for full list. She also teaches an online course, “Poetry as a Spiritual Practice,” through Image’s Glen Online program*.*

Painting by Ginny Cassetta. Photo by Peggy Rosenthal.

Previous Post

January 29, 2015

The Sublime and Beautiful

Next Post

February 2, 2015 Seeking Mystery in a Secular World

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What Christian tradition requires confession to a priest for forgiveness of sins?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Roman Catholic Baptist Quaker Methodist