On Beauty

I am reading a book entitled A Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, and just finished a portion when she describes running frantically, kitchen apron still tied, dinner waiting to be served to her family of 6 kids, into a field behind their farmhouse toward the moon – running magnetically toward beauty, transcendent Beauty, then falling down, kneeling first, then lying with heart pounding beneath the moon, fully fed and energized and ALIVE.

From the book:

“Is worship why I’ve run for the moon?  Not for lunar worship, but for True Beauty worship, worship of Creator Beauty Himself.  God is present in all the moments, but I do not deify the wind in the pines, the snow falling on hemlocks, and moon over harvested wheat.  Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things.  I know it here kneeling, the twilight so still: nature is not God but God revealing the weight of Himself, all His glory, through the looking glass of nature….

“And whether I am conscious of it or not, any created thing of which I am amazed, it is the glimpse of His face to which I bow down.  Do I have eyes to see it’s Him and not the thing? …. True, authentic Beauty requires of us, lays claim to us, and it is this, the knees bent, the body offered in obedience. A pantheist’s god is a passive god, but omnipresent God is Beauty who demands worship, passion, and the sacrifice of a life, for He owns it.  Do I have eyes to see His face in all things so I’m not merely dazzled by the trinket…?”