Athol Dickson writes on beauty.
Beauty is not always comfortable. Consider forest fires and lightning. Think of the summit of Mount Everest. Are they not beautiful in their own ways? Yet aren’t they also terrifying? Remember the great white shark again, or a black widow or a lion. Some beauty makes us so uncomfortable we feel the need to set ourselves apart from it. And our desire for distance from some kinds of beauty isn’t only due to danger. We were created to care for the garden. To work it. To organize it and arrange it. This explains the impulse many of us feel to make some kind of change in nature. We trim hedges. We separate flowerbeds from lawns. But what of those who take that impulse further? Who set fire to forests simply to destroy them, hunt for animals they do not eat, and fence off land they do not use? Beauty sometimes makes us sense our smallness. It reminds us we are not in control. It whispers “You are only mortal, and none of this is really yours.” Beauty is not always comfortable.
In contrast, I promote the great beauty of my wife as we enter our 60s. I’ve always marveled at the beauty of my children and grandchildren being born.
I awake each morning and thank the Lord for the beauty of His day that He has provided me with…no matter what it contains.
I am comforted by the beautiful friendships I have developed over the years; men I have grown to know and trust, aging together, knowing how fragile we are and how beautiful and strong God is within us.
You are right. Even with the above where we attempt to give God the glory, there are those who wish to act as gods themselves and give glory only to themselves. They step on the flowers the Lord has been so generous with!
I think Edmund Burke’s distinction between the Beautiful and the Sublime is more helpful than just saying forest fires, volcanoes, storms are beautiful. They are sublime. There’s an aesthetic fascination there, but we don’t have to call it “beautiful.”