Meal From Below: A Lenten DevotionalExemplo

Beauty and Affliction

The French philosopher and Christian mystic Simone Weil wrote, “Two things can pierce the human heart—beauty and affliction.” The landscape of Lent presents itself as open, empty, deserted. Traditional Lenten observance, following Christ into the wilderness, emphasizes relinquishment. Following the One who emptied himself, we give up a familiar pleasure or comfort for forty days until Easter. Alcohol and meat are traditional standbys for doing without, but these days it might be Instagram or TikTok. Maybe with less clutter, we’ll detox a bit and have a few more moments reaching toward God in prayer and reflection.

That much will do. We all could use a little more simplicity, and a little more spiritual connection. Especially for those of us who are activists, Lent proves worthwhile for re-centering and renewal.

If Weil and the mystics are right, the desert experience of the soul holds the possibility for a shift of entirely different magnitude—tearing open the human heart. There is no adequate preparation possible. The assault of affliction or of beauty is upon us before we can collect ourselves. We are practiced in the skill of averting our gaze, distracting ourselves, of forcibly resisting. We’re ready for joy only in trickles, and anguish not at all.

But the wilderness lures us into unguarded spaces. For Jesus, this space was the natural world. Silence invited new hearing. The wide sky offered new sight. The mystic poet of Psalm 19 sings it this way:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In the heavens God has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom from God’s wedding canopy,
and like an athlete runs their course with joy.

The psalmist moves seamlessly from being awestruck at God’s creation to delighting in the dazzling beauty of God’s own ways and the heart’s capacity to apprehend them. “I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world,” writes C. S. Lewis. Perhaps only poetry, art, and music can begin to hint at beauty’s penetrating power. A modern lyricist* states it this way:

Maybe to those who love is given sight
To pierce the wall of seeming night
And know it pure beyond all imagining...
like a big fist breaking down my door
I never felt such a love before...
Maybe to those who love it’s given to hear
Music too high for the human ear
And clear as hydrogen to go singing.

There will, however, be tremendous cost for such sight, hearing, and even singing. “Your servant is warned,” acknowledges the psalmist (Ps. 19:11). For Weil, the big fist breaking down the doors to our souls wrecks our defenses with an ambidextrous, devastating punch in turns: beauty and affliction. Beauty breaks our various falsely constructed selves and lays open the possibility of discovering our truly created and unfolding self. Beauty compels desire for beauty, into which we are becoming. 

*Bruce Cockburn, “After the Rain,” Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws (Myrrh, 1979).