'Let's not be sentimental about beauty.'
James K.A. Smith on Beauty, Gregory of Nyssa, and a quietly stunning poem.
Let's not be sentimental about beauty - James K.A. Smith on Beauty, Gregory of Nyssa, and a quietly stunning poem.
What Gregory of Nyssa teaches us, [Natalie Carnes] argues, is that we need to become the kind of people who perceive beauty rightly. That requires a transformation of our perception that only the Incarnate Christ could effect. And to see Christ is to recognize suffering. “To see Christ is to see God coming in love to save the wounded. To see rightly the Christ who is God, then, one must rightly see the wounded. ... Perceiving the beauty of Christ requires the right attention to the ugliness of affliction.”
and this:
“Any attempt to find a beautiful unmixed with the ugly is in danger of becoming a love for beauty that disdains the suffering of this world.”