I’ve talked about the importance of beauty before, but never where it led me. I homeschooled my children using a classical, history-centered method. As we were studying Ancient Greece I was struck by the heights their society attained. The more we read the more I came to realize it was their pursuit of beauty that made the difference. Beauty in art of every kind was highly valued – including the beauty of the human spirit.

I began looking for beauty in my own life and especially my faith life. I mean, if God is the author and creator of all things, then he is the origin and source of beauty. I assumed that religion, then, would be the most beautiful thing, right?

What I found was not beautiful. I found a lot of guilt (no, I wasn’t Catholic, LOL!), a lot of anger, a lot of judgement, and a lot of fear. Especially fear of beauty and joy. Some of it flowed from my own brokenness and some of it flowed from trying to live out an incomplete theology. My faith was not beautiful and was actively discouraging the pursuit of beauty in my own life.

That couldn’t be right?!? But it was. The more I strove for truth, beauty and goodness (all three together, not one or the other) the more miserable I become and the more I realized the people around me were as broken and as joyless as I was, and none of us were getting any better. Indeed marriages were ending, children were walking away from the faith and anxiety attacks were increasing. Something was definitely not right.

Finally, full of anger and bitterness, I walked away from faith altogether. For years. It was the most awful season of my life. I have always desired God. To have known him and the consolation faith can bring and then to have lost every shred of my spirituality was painful. But trying to live the spiritual life as I understood it then was more painful…

What I did not give up was the pursuit of beauty. I found it in drips and drabs. Never enough to satisfy or to hold on to, but always enough to fuel the search. Then one random day I found myself in the Religion section at Barnes and Noble. I missed God so much. Even after years of actively rejecting faith, there remained an emptiness in my life that God used to fill at least a little, sometimes a lot. Standing there with my empty ache, I read book jacket after book jacket. Not with any real hope of finding hope, but just out of homesickness. But Oh, the Mercies of God. I pulled The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton off the shelf.

Something piqued my interest. At this far remove, I don’t remember what, but I knew I had to have this book. I bought it. Read it. and Found my hope. Raised in a home void of faith, Thomas expressed the same emptiness I felt. Until he found Jesus waiting for him in the Eucharist – in the Communion of the Catholic Church.

Entranced, I bought the Catechism of the Catholic Church. From the first page I was struck by the way it talked about God and about me – an individual person. This was so high and lofty and BEAUTIFUL – yet very present and very available. I read for 5 long years, everything I could get my hands on, Protestant and Catholic. In the end, beauty won my heart; goodness soothed my soul; and truth set me free to really live.

The Ancient Greeks made me do it…

And I’m so very glad they did.