Most of us who are blogging here at Metamorpha have been through the Institute for Spiritual Formation at Biola University in La Mirada, CA. For those of us who went through the practicum sequence to become spiritual directors, we became acquainted with what are known as "beauty projects," a type of spiritual discipline in which an individual engages with and becomes immersed in some form of beauty. That beauty may be in the form of the visual arts, poetry, film, architecture, or simply the beauty of God's creation. For my first beauty project, I visited the Getty Center for both the art, and for the architecture of the place, and Joshua Tree National Park. I never tire of beauty projects.

Frankly, beauty is one of the more ignored aspects of modern evangelical spirituality and worship. Being more "word-centered," we tend to focus on the importance and centrality of truth to the Christian faith. And indeed it is. But truth divorced from beauty might convince a person's mind, but it will never deeply move that person's heart.

The late John O'Donohue, an Irish poet and philosopher, wrote an exquisite book on beauty entitled simply Beauty: The Invisible Embrace. In it, he has this to say about beauty's impact on the human soul:

"When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. Some of our most wonderful memories are of beautiful places where we felt immediately at home. We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul. For a while the strains of struggle and endurance are relieved and our fraility is illuminated by a different light in which we come to glimpse behind the shudder of appearances the sure form of things. In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness. Without any of the usual calculation, we can slip into the Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that this embrace will hold us."

As we consider the spiritual journey, and what spiritual formation should look like in the church and in the believer's soul, the wild, disarming embrace of beauty must suffuse our means and methods. For despite our best efforts, beauty will not be tamed, nor can it be controlled. Rather, it bids us to both awaken and surrender, and to be transformed by the One who is Beauty.