"Beauty will save the world."

One of the 20th century's leading catholic thinkers, the great G.K. Chesterton had this to say on women and beauty: "Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue." I must concur, as a woman, I don't just appreciate beauty (as well as order) but feel drawn, maybe even called toward it in a way that is proper to my femininity and I believe this expresses itself in nearly every aspect of my life from the way I decorate my room to the route I chose to take on my early evening walks. There is something about beauty that makes me feel close to God and passionate about both Him and His creation. Isn't it true though? Think of how you feel when you read a poem by Hopkins or look at a Botticelli or make a dinner that not only tastes good, but is arranged in a way that is visually pleasing or stroll through a botanical garden or hear Schubert's Ave Maria sung by a perfectly pitched soprano voice. It changes you. Someone not to long ago asked me what I wanted to do, and I replied, "I want to make things beautiful because beauty is the splendor of truth!" Stratford Caldecott wrote somewhere that Christianity is all about a beauty that saves and beauty is that quality in something which attracts us towards itself and calls us forth out of ourselves towards this other or another. Hence, the aesthetic experience is a self-transcending one. Here ugliness is a sort of imprisoning while beauty is freeing. I want to evangelize the culture and I am going to make this world more beautiful by bringing Christ to the center of it, one embroidered pillow case at a time!!

Mary, Mother of the man Jesus Christ who embodied beauty, you are the most beautiful of all created persons. Pray for us that we may be remade, rewoven and rebuilt so that we may become dwelling places for all that is good, true and beautiful in the world!

As a side note, any of you aspiring Shakespeares who wish to contribute to the beautifying of our culture through the written word, check out the new Young Adult Catholic Literary Magazine called Dappled Things. It's first publication was released online in December and they are hoping to have a printed edition soon. The deadline for the Lent/Easter edition is February 10th and they are looking for submissions from young Catholics. Here's the link