“your slightest look easily will unclose me
~ e.e. cummings, from the poem “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously)her first rose”
In divine moments, by the Holy Spirit, nature’s beauty uncloses us. Tightly wrapped, we are unbound. The bonds of anxiety, fear, wounds, fatigue and apathy are loosed. Our hardened hearts are softened, made pliable, receptive. Beauty opens the eyes of or hearts and heals our blindness. In Luke 4:18 Jesus says “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free…”
And by the Holy Spirit, the beauty of art, architecture, music and the loving gestures that form a community of faith release us from our captivity, set us free and heal our blindness. As we know the wind by its power to move things, we know beauty by how it moves us and works on us. Beauty is not primarily a thing or a quality of things but a movement, an unclosing of the heart. When we say music is beautiful, we are speaking of how it moves us. As music ministers, we seek beauty, for beauty is the opening of the heart to God.