by Michael Winters
Garden of the Garden #001 by Michael Winters
“It’s very hard to be grumpy when you’re looking at a beautiful rose—try it. It’s turning to what is good that fills out the life of the emotionally and spiritually mature person. As you step into spiritual maturity, you step into the wonderful world of God so rich with good things that we won’t have enough time to concentrate on them.” - Dallas Willard in Renovated: God, Dallas Willard, and the Church That Transforms by Jim Wilder
At Arts Feedback Group we generally begin each session by going around the circle answering the question, “What is something beautiful you’ve experienced recently?” This question is a joy to ask because it brings forth joy. People light up as they share the beauty they’ve experienced.
We become like what we behold.
While we pay attention to a rose, we become a little more like a rose. Grumpiness becomes less possible. If we lovingly pay attention to Jesus, we become more like Jesus. In a world competing and scheming for our attention we must learn to exercise authority over our own attention. Don’t let algorithms and the media giants (or the Christian publishing industry for that matter) decide for you what is worthy of your attention. God has made you sensitive to beauty, truth and goodness. The apostle Paul encouraged the Philippians, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” Dallas Willard adds, “That’s what the spiritually and emotionally mature person’s life is filled with.”
This is not to deny or ignore the reality of injustice, tragedy and sin. Instead, attentiveness to the beauty of God and God’s creation helps prepare us to be the kind of spiritually mature people who can enter the real, broken world and create into what Makoto Fujimura calls “the New”, healing some of the fractures in our broken world.
What is something beautiful you’ve experienced recently?