AND ONLY BEAUTY:

Starting with Plato through Plotinus and on to Augustine, the idea emerges that beauty points to something higher, the Good with a capital G. Man is drawn out of himself. Yet the idea that beauty somehow rescues the individual is a form of vulgar Platonism, according to George Harne. Fine art and other such works of beauty are not simply, nor solely, about the individual. Harne, citing Etienne Gilson, believes it is just this absorption with self that is the pathological illness of our time. Art now attempts to fill a void that it never sought before. It has become aggressive, pushing a political agenda and worldview. Harne offers a way to fight back against this encroaching tide. Follow the inexorable tug of beauty! Introduce "two minutes of beauty" into your family life. What might this look like? Memorize poems; take walks in nature; listen to beautiful music; view picture books. Harne emphasizes this as the practical and accessible education that both parents and children need to cultivate an appreciation of beauty.

Particularly enlightening is what an artisanal cheesemaking nun has to offer on the topic of beauty. Sister Noëlla Marcellino is both a contemplative religious as well as an intellect, holding a Ph.D. in microbiology. Cheese, especially during WWII, was deeply connected to charity and love of neighbor. It was a way of sharing one's life and handiwork with others in need. Cheese is a mold that comes to perfection in dark caves. There is a death that is always being observed in microbiology and there is a lesson to be learned here. "Don't be afraid of the tomb!" Sister Noëlla exhorts. Daily changing and dying to self is part of life, whether monastic or familial. Even the act of chanting reveals that though the individual is present, beauty arises when each individual melds together to create a community. This kind of singing, she claims, joins heaven and earth in a very real way.

When beauty is divorced from truth, the consequences are disastrous. James Matthew Wilson describes this divorce as an appreciation of art, but no understanding of being. When a man views his particular expression as the highest good then he is no longer a true artist, but rather, in the words of Aldous Huxley, a "propaganda engineer."

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