A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty……Albert Einstein

this thing, concept, desire we call beauty is a calling….a connection to the sacred will, an inner renewal, and a path to wholeness…..it is good to remember that beauty is not about “pretty,” but about real, earthy, gritty “realness”……

Our hearts yearn for beauty. In the Kabbalah, beauty, called tiferet, is where spirit and form meet and the human and divine are in balance. Linked to compassion and harmony, beauty is at the very center of the Tree of Life. In Wim Wenders’s eloquent film Wings of Desire, an angel falls in love with a beautiful airborne trapeze artist and chooses to become a man, at the same falling into life and delighting in its substantiality. Despite his wisdom, the angel has never known what  it is like to experience the joy and suffering of physical existence. Once he lands on earth, he finds life immediately different than he has imagined, and in the film the elegant black-and-white of eternity becomes the brash color of our time. In his first moments as a human, he bleeds and exclaims that blood has taste, he feels the weight of a stone, he breathes in the cold air and rubs his hands together to warm himself. He identifies the color red and excitedly confirms his discovery with a passerby. So many things we take for granted are strange and wonderful to him, and with exuberance and innocence he begins to figure out how to make the transition from witness or participant. In the wholeness of human experience he praises love, “true in the day and true in the night.” By falling in love with a woman, the angel has fallen in love with the beauty of the world……J. Ruth Gendler

when the angels come

 The human soul is hungry for beauty;

we seek it everywhere,

in landscape, music, art, clothes,

furniture, gardening, companionship,

love, religion, and in ourselves.

No one would desire not to be beautiful.

When we experience the beautiful,

there is a sense of homecoming.
…..John O’Donohue