Glory Indeed, it is important to remember that Gods
glory underlies all human sublimity. "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the
whole earth is full of his glory," cries Isaiah (6:3). All beauty is Gods beauty. The province of the Greek word
for this exalted state of the Divine Being, doxa, includes English words
like "radiance," "glory," and "honor." Hans urs von
Balthasar has suggested that the word "glory," reflecting doxa, is a more
complete concept of aesthetics than the traditional word "beauty." Often when we
use the word "beauty" we tend to restrict our meaning to things that are lovely,
sentimental, or merely cute. If we limit the word to those kinds of ideas, we end up
relying on other words like "sublime" or "powerful" to describe more
intense and disturbing experiences with art or nature. How else to describe the stange
mixture of beauty and hardness in section three of Seamus Heaneys "Viking
Dublin: Trail Pieces," a reaction to handling the remains of a long bog-preserved
Viking expedition?
Like a long sword
sheathed in its moisting
burial clays,
the keel stuck fast
in the slip of the bank,
its clinker-built hull
spined and plosive
as Dublin.
And now we reach in
for shards of the vertebrae,
the ribs of hurdle,
the mother-wet caches
and for this trial piece
incised by a child,
a longship, a buoyant
migrant line.
When we think about God's doxa, we reflect not only on his beauty and splendor,
but also the honor, reverence, and fear that are due him. Even tragic poems of loss and
longing can be glorious. "The fact that God is the horizon of every
experience of beauty," notes Richard Valadesau, "explains why even tragic
emotions can be experienced in art as beautiful" (149). The particular
power of loss can better reveal the imago dei in people and remind us that we are
beautiful creatures of God. Dana Gioia writes of the loss of his son in
"Pentecost." He speaks of what will not comfort him:
Neither the sorrows of afternoon, waiting in the silent house,
Nor the night no sleep relieves, when memory
Repeats its prosecution
Nor the mornings ache for dreams illusion, nor any prayers
Improvised to an unknowable god
Can extinguish the flame.
We are not as we were. Death has been our pentecost, (1-7)
This is great loss, loss that cannot be comforted. Yet it is beautiful. Such a loss is
human, understandable, and surprisingly noble. In glory, we not only have a sense of the
variety that potentially exists in glory, we also have a deep understanding of the
continuum of our responses -- from amusement to peace to joy to awe to fear to loss to
ecstasy. Since God is the ultimate source of all aesthetic experience, we better
understand that which is beautiful, glorious, sublime, powerful, and awe-inspiring when we
better understand the nature of God. This is the case for poetry as well. The glory we
experience in a story or a poem reflects the doxa of God. These experiences can not
replace our worship, but they can deepen it.
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