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20080822-beautys-extravagant-generosity-by-peggy-rosenthalMy husband George Dardess & I are writing a book together on beauty. Specifically on beauty as core to Christian faith and to Muslim faith—and to the arts inspired by each of these faiths. George’s special interest for over a decade has been Muslim-Christian relations, mine has been spirituality and the arts; so teaming up on this topic is a natural. We knew that the writing would be challenging and fun, and it is. What we hadn’t known and have been delighted to discover is the wealth of reflection going on these days about beauty.

One of my favorite discoveries has been a small gem of a book called For the Beauty of the Earth (Paulist Press), by Christian theologian Susan A. Ross, who is on the faculty at Loyola University in Chicago. And one of my favorite points that Ross makes is this: “A central dimension of genuine beauty is the quality of generosity.” Ross even goes so far as to assert that generosity is “intrinsic” to beauty. “Real beauty does not exclude; rather, it invites. Real beauty does not ‘count up,’ but rather flings its gifts to anyone who asks.”

Ross is interested in the effect that beauty has on the person who experiences it, whether the beauty is of nature or of art. “Real beauty invites exploration and depth; it does not shut the door prematurely to the questioner. Beauty is always ready to give more. When we encounter a beautiful work of art, we find ourselves unable to exhaust fully the beauty that it offers.”

This is why, I’d say, we find ourselves unable to move away from a certain sculpture or painting in a museum. Or why, when I read a fine poem, I experience it opening to draw my whole being into itself, holding me suspended in its expansive mystery. This expansive mystery into which beauty welcomes us would be explained by Ross as God’s very self: “the God whose love is so immense that this God is with us in our very flesh” as Jesus Christ.

All of which makes me wonder (and George and I are probing this in our book): does the intrinsic generosity of art’s beauty act on our everyday lives? When I leave that museum, am I a bit more generous than when I entered? When I’m “moved” by a performance of Mozart, what am I moved to? Do I “fling my gifts to anyone who asks?” There is a panhandler who stands outside my city’s main concert hall at the end of every event, counting on exactly that effect of art on those with enough disposable income to enjoy it. I always see him as calling beauty’s bluff: “well, if art is so expansive in its generosity, let’s have a share in it!”

If beauty speaks to our souls—as I truly believe—then our spirits do expand in its presence. Ross gives the example of women in an impoverished African village who decorate their homes and their bodies with beautiful hand-made fabrics, as a gesture of defiant hope against their fate. When Ross visited with a delegation, the women lavished what little they had on the visitors, flinging their gifts with a literal extravagance.

The very image makes us smile with grateful assent. Yes, this is how we are meant to live: in extravagant beauty. “Beauty is always ready to give more.” I take it as a measure of our fallen natures that we so often hold back. (In fact, I do not usually put money in the panhandler’s hat; I skirt around him, head bowed, eyes turned away.) To live beautifully is hard. To be aware that one is not living beautifully is humbling.

I would love to hear your take on whether and how art does “move us.” Does your own experience of art shape you into a different (say, more extravagantly giving) person?

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The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Written by: Peggy Rosenthal

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