Beauty in its many forms sings a love song to my soul. Michelle Pfeiffer's porcelain face and Michelangelo's David are both stunning in their perfection (well, as perfect as mere mortals can be or create). I also respond to unorthodox beauty: a broken down fence in a field of messy wildflowers and Mother Teresa's face, loveliness that the Japanese, who have multiple words for beauty, refer to as wabi. What Randall Wallace, author of The Touch, reinforced for me on today's "Author! Author!" Mid-Morning is that everyone -- male, female, young, old, college professors, high school dropouts, Americans, Zambians -- all of us respond to beauty.
Why is that true?
As Faith, the medical student in The Touch, who is proposed to by Andrew, her medical student boyfriend...while laying on the floor of the Sistine Chapel... gazing at "The Divine Touch," Michelangelo's famous rendering of God igniting life into Adam (talk about the proposal to end all proposals), says, beauty is love, and love heals.
That explains why, for me, drinking in a sunset, assembling a fruit salad and tucking in a couple of sassy sprigs of mint, even decorating the Christmas tree all act as a healing balm. They are things of beauty, prescriptions for a soul that's anemic, feeling a little under the weather, or longing to rest my head on Beauty's shoulder.
What forms of beauty sing a love song to your soul?
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