Message from Tim

Beauty...

‘I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company.’ Film buffs might recognise that line as coming from The Shawshank Redemption. A prisoner, Andy Dufresne, is talking about how he coped with two weeks in solitary confinement, his punishment for playing Mozart over the loudspeaker system in the prison where he is confined. His fellow prisoner describes the men’s reaction to the music: ‘It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away. And for the briefest of moments, every man in Shawshank felt free.’

During these weeks when our liberty is curtailed, what is it that sets your spirit free? Is there is a film, or a book, or a piece of music, or a work of art that has fed your soul? If you would like to share its spiritual significance to you in 250 words, then Paul Moulange has kindly agreed to make space in the bulletin for us to do this. Where have you found ‘Christ in culture’? Sharing your experience could help the walls dissolve away for some of us who are confined within four walls for the next few weeks.

Our capacity to enjoy beauty, to wonder at creativity, reminds me that we are spiritual beings. For us to flourish, we need more than just the basic necessities of life. After all, we have been made in the image of the God who filled the world he created with so much gratuitous beauty. Why did he do that? Perhaps for no other reason that it brings him delight, and maybe our capacity to share that delight is part of what it means for us to be made in his image.

In his book, The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis pondered the significance of beauty: ‘We do not want merely to see beauty, though. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it…At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of the morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which nature is only the first sketch. We are summoned to pass in through nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.’