Read the preceding posts in the Micah6.8 series here: Part 1: never productive enough, Part 2: the food we eat.

It was hard for me to write this post. Ironically, it had to do with wanting to make it beautiful, perfect, have things fit together in sentences that resonated with me and made sense. You would think that with a blog like “beauty in the margins”, I would be expert at articulating what beauty is and how I search for it in the margins. And yet, the more I tried to articulate it, the more it became elusive. 

Last weekend, I tried to sit down and write, but ended up reading through some old poetry instead (which was good anyways and I ended up sharing it). I ended that (non)-writing session by reaching out to people whose thoughts I valued and asked them for their opinion on what beauty is, how they pursue it and how they hold that in tension with a cultural obsession with beauty (think Instagram, Korean pop stars etc.)

Out of the many thoughts that were shared with me, there was one idea that stood out in particular: beauty doesn’t mean perfection. Yes, the classical meaning of beauty may have something to do with symmetry, things fitting into place. And yet, we humans also find something beautiful in the unconventional, in the broken, in the idiosyncrasies of the people we have grown to know and appreciate. Beauty wasn’t in an untouchable, flawless painting, but rather in the ones we connected to the most. The ones that resonated with our spirit. 

And so it is with that idea of beauty that I now write this post – knowing that I won’t be able to express myself perfectly, but hopefully it is something raw and real that resonates with your spirit. 

What do you think of when I ask you to picture “beauty”?

Perhaps it’s a work of art by a famous painter, a quaint village with majestic mountains in the background, the face of the one you love.

For me, it’s this:

I’m sitting cross-legged on my pig prayer pillow in my Dad’s oversized navy sweater and black leggings.

Someone’s playing the guitar to a worship song I love.

I know the intro with my eyes closed. So, I keep quiet and let the beginning melody wash over me.

People start singing the words to the verse and I can recognize who voice it is as each one enters, a monophonic quiver in the still air.

Their words minister to me and I’m just receiving them as they come.

It’s an opening of myself, an entering into a space, a letting down my guard.

Then, like a changing of gear, I too now dive into the flow of the water as I continue to let it carry me.

I lock into a low harmony and something deep within me is resonating.

On a surface level, the actual resonating of the tones of my timbre with the others, the blending mellowing away my hard edges.

But on a deeper level, my soul connecting with the others’ connecting to God as we sing words almost too big for us to carry; rather we are being carried.

Thin places, I call them.

When the space between the material and the divine becomes small and if I’m quiet enough, maybe I’ll see through a bit better.

Most of the time, they happen upon me.

But mostly in the most fragile moments of the day.

That’s why I like the mornings, I believe.

I breathe better when the air is chilly and I hear simply the padding of my socked feet down the corridor.

I see better – what roads look like without any cars on them. The black canvas of sky at the cusp of daybreak.

I don’t create them; rather I create the spaces where I am open to when they happen upon me.

Those thin places.

That’s what I think of.

The book of Genesis starts with the repetition of one word: TOV.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very טוב tov. (Genesis 1:31)

Pleasing to the senses, working the way it was created to – beautiful.

So, I think ‘beautiful’ has to do something with the way things were intended to be in the beginning.

An order of creation, of sorts.

Scientists and philosophers alike have attempted to put their finger on how exactly we humans decide what is beautiful.

There is some science that points to certain characteristics that humans broadly agree on as more beautiful.

We find symmetric faces more attractive, for example. There is evidence that we are geared to recognize something appealing about the golden ratio of phi.

The question of ‘why’ is more complex.

Evolutionary theory would tie beauty to signs of health. We find well-built males more attractive because it was a sign that they were strong and more likely to pass on favourable genetics of increased survival to our offspring. Or females with wider hips more able to carry offspring.

But this theory of beauty can only account for a small portion of male-female attraction.

It cannot explain why humans experience awe in the face of the beauty of grandeur, when they look at the stars or the Rocky Mountains for example.

Further, beyond perfect ratios and lines of symmetry, humans are also attracted to an element that disrupts harmony.

We groan at predictable Barbie-and-Ken chick-flicks. Instead, we long for a tension that reflects the reality of the broken world we live in.

I found more beauty in the decrepit shacks haphazardly lining the potholed streets of my village in Shadi than in glinting skyscrapers in grid-like New York.

In the fragile bodies of the children born with cerebral palsy, the narrow alleyways of overgrown moss and gratings that smelt like fried noodles.

In the cracks of brick and the crack of dawn and the cracks that creased the faces of the grandparents as they watched the children leave the fading village for the bright city.

Philosophers like Kant posit that beauty has to do something with intention and purpose. We deem something as beautiful when we are able to weave meaning from it, tie it to a bigger story.

On a trip to a modern art museum, for example, we may find no beauty in observing a seemingly random arrangement of broken chairs, but when we read the plaque and learn that the artist was memorializing the scene in her room the day the Japanese invaded, we connect with the artist’s intention.

We reach across that thin space and suddenly find the installation beautiful.

It becomes beautiful when we are able to make meaning from it.

When I think about the ways beauty is portrayed in society – the enormous pressure for girls to have to adhere to unattainable standards of beauty, the incessant comparison on Instagram, the photo filters, plastic surgery, anorexia – my heart hurts.

I remember the days – not too long ago – when I felt acutely the sense of longing watching the troupe of “I woke up like this, we flawless” troupe of girls dominate the high school hallways.

Then, going out to buy a pair of Ugg boots only to find that melted snow seeped into the seams, leaving me with soggy socks for the rest of the day.

In a Black Mirror episode on what the world would be like if we took our image focused society to an extreme, Lacey is reflecting with a truck driver on how her social ratings had decreased dramatically over the past day.

She is distraught because she wants to be popular and well-liked.

The truck driver asks her what she is looking for.

She is caught off guard by the question and in a way I found so fittingly mirrors our current generation, stammers:

“I don’t know. Enough to be content? Like, to look around and think, well, I guess I’m okay. Just to be able to breathe out, not feeling like, like -“

The sentence hangs in the air, unfinished, and the truth is, we don’t really know what we’re looking for.

We search for beauty because we think it will make us feel more okay with ourselves, and we end up still feeling out of sorts because we have no idea to what end we are aiming towards.

A body with perfect ratios? A wrinkle-free face? A feeling that we’re okay?

“Beauty is but the sensible image of the infinite,” George Bancroft once said.

Could it be that we’re all just really searching for one thing?

I’m not going to try to define here what beauty is. It’s been one of the most enduring and controversial themes in history, debated from Plato to Augustine to contemporaries like Elaine Scarry.

Trying to define beauty seems tantamount to defining the essence of God – nothing ever suffices.

Although I love the concept Scarry lands on, that beauty prepares us for justice, and I would highly recommend reading/listening to some of her work.

So instead of trying to philosophically land on a definition of beauty, I believe it would be more instructive to talk more about the actual pursuit of beauty, how it informs my life and if we are to steer away from a thwarted, anorexic perception of beauty, where I believe we should be headed.

Because ultimately, I don’t think beauty is a defined end to which we are to strive, a perfection we somehow attain.

Rather it is a means to connect to what is beyond ourselves; it is an invitation to see ourselves, others and the bigger story more clearly.

So, these are the ends towards which I pursue beauty:

To see myself: a mirror

One theme that emerged from the opinions I polled was that beauty (fashion, makeup etc.) is a way to discover and enhance the beauty God has put in each of us, being created in His image.

He is the most beautiful one, so by cultivating such beauty (not just by physical appearances, but also in making beautiful things like art/music etc.), we imitate Him.

I think of the ways that my forays into beauty have become a means of self-expression.

Starting with this blog, which is a continuous effort to meld creative prose/poetry with real, raw stories of where I’m currently at.

But then, also in other endeavours like fashion.

My high-school experiences taught me that just because a popular girl wears Uggs and Hollister doesn’t mean I should too, because to be completely honest, Hollister never really felt like me.

Then, there was that one summer where I scouted out my Mom’s wardrobe and found these floor-length skirts that Mom used to wear when I was a toddler.

I was at a height where I don’t remember her tops, but I do remember the black-and-white floral of her skirts. The skirts that raised me.

And so, I started to wear the floor length skirts Mom raised me in, with crop tops I had fashioned myself (simply from snipping off the bottom of tops I didn’t care too much about – see the following tutorials for ideas on re-purposing clothes: Boat Vintage People, WithWendy, Crafty Gemini).

They felt most like me.

Or finding baggy sweaters of my Dad’s that I would wear over black leggings that reminded me of who I was.

Here’s a poem I wrote in March 2015 called “My Daddy’s Sweater [tribute to my Dad]”:

dear daddy,

i woke up today to a Narnia flurried in white

snow sillhouettes of trees, strong amidst prancing speckles

it’s a day for climbing into your bulky navy knit

curling into

lavender quilts, coffee cup warming my hands

the way you would sandwich mine in yours and rub the clamminess away,

like fire sparking on wood

me in my tangerine dinosaur-printed PJs

burrowing into that oversized sweater because i love the way it smelled like you.

my secret, whispered:

people think it’s one of those J-Crew baggy sweaters of cashmere

that look cool but cost a fortune 

but really, it’s just one of your memory-sweaters I hid in my suitcase the last time I was home

so miles of distance are now reduced to wool enveloping me in scents of home:

freshly brewed arabica roast 

and your favorite St. Ives green tea face wash.

And so I’m learning how to use pursuits of beauty – the poem-writing, skirt-hunting, and music-making – to gain deeper insight into who I was made to be, and express what had always been there.

To see others: a looking glass

The most unexpected find during my research on beauty was the connection between beauty and social justice.

Scarry argues in her treatise titled “On beauty and being just” that being struck by beauty should in fact compel us to act justly toward our neighbours:

“It is as though beautiful things have been placed here and there throughout the world to serve as small wake-up calls to perception, spurring lapsed alertness back to its most acute level.

Through its beauty, the world continually recommits us to a rigorous standard of perceptual care”

She calls this ‘radical decentering’, an idea first perpetuated by philosopher Simone Weil, who described it as this:

When we come upon beautiful things…they act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space,

or they form ‘ladders reaching toward the beauty of the world,’

or they lift us, letting the ground rotate beneath us several inches, so that when we land, we find we are standing in a different relation to the world than we were a moment before.

It is not that we cease to stand at the center of the world, for we never stood there.

It is that we cease to stand even at the center of our own world.

When we see something beautiful, it reorients us to our real place in the world – small, adjacent – but that by seeing ourselves as a part, rather than the center, we are then compelled to act in a way that considers the justice of others and the world, rather than solely our own.

It is the same feeling as when I spent my days in August wandering through the mountains of the Alps, hidden by its towering beauty, struck silent by the way they have preceded me for centuries and will continue to outlive me by many.

I am but a blip in its history.

Or when I’m lying on golf course grass, gazing up at a canvas of black dotted with a million brilliant specks, that are actually each flaming balls of fire that are more than 1.3 million times the size of planet Earth which is 3.5 million times larger than me.

Beauty makes me think about what is outside myself.

However, not only does beauty compel me towards social justice, but I in turn seek to incorporate such a justice-mentality in the way I pursue beauty.

What this means is being conscious of what I consume in terms of beauty products, and asking questions of stewardship.

As my good friend Rachel put it, is my pursuit of beauty hindering me from being less radically generous in other ways?

From a larger environmental standpoint, the mindless consumption of makeup and clothes in the rush to reach the unattainable pinnacle of beauty emits more greenhouse gases than ocean shipping and international airline flights combined.

What does pursuing beauty with a lens of justice then entail?

For me, it has meant being aware of the beauty products and clothes I am purchasing (do I really need that sweater?) and finding creative ways to reduce my consumption, encourage more sharing and choose environmentally-sustainable products.

On a very practical level, it looks like going through my wardrobe on a regular basis and giving away/receiving clothes at the monthly clothing exchanges that my art cooperative hosts.

Because of the low cost of participating in these exchanges, it has helped me in developing a more defined sense of fashion. I get to take home pieces I would not ordinarily buy at a store, try them on and either keep them or return them at the next exchange.

It has meant organizing such clothing exchanges with my city group at church.

Or learning how to thrift well and find second-hand treasures at Eva B, or the Fripe-Prix Renaissance opposite of D’Eglise metro (these are my Montreal favourites but I’m sure you’ll find them wherever you are in the world!)

I try to apply capsule wardrobe thinking to my own closet: the idea being that you’re better off with a few classic pieces that you can pair in different ways than a closet stuffed with clothes you never wear but think you will.

In a way, this has been related to the first point of self-expression because it meant taking my clothes and asking if it was really me – did I feel most myself when I wore it? Or in Marie Kondo style – did it bring me joy?

On the topic of beauty products, I have spent quite a bit of time researching how to create homemade products that work, but also are less toxic to our bodies and the environment.

Some have worked better than others and it has been a gradual switch over time, but so as to not take up too much space and bore the guys, here is a shortlist (with links) of the recipes I have tried and continue to use:

• Honey and Ground Almond Face Wash

• Rose water and Witch Hazel Toner

• Castille Soap/Honey Body Wash

• Night Oil Moisturizer

To see Him: a telescope

So, I’ve hinted at this (and you’ve probably also picked up on this throughout the piece) but beauty is one of the major pieces that has shaped my theology and apologetic.

I have not yet come across a convincing argument from atheists/agnostics on the human response to beauty – especially when the beauty is not ratioed, symmetrical and thus evolutionarily favourable (although if you know of one, please do send it along!)

And if I think of when I feel most deeply connected to God, beauty has factored in some sort of way – when I slide into the harmony of a worship song, or come across a deeply moving passage in the Word, or hear a compelling sermon that resonates deep within me.

Psalm 27:4 says:

One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to meditate in His temple.

We were meant to behold His beauty.

The beauty as He first weaved into creation, calling it TOV –

sounds that at certain frequencies and intervals become music, pigments that absorb certain wavelength and so become colours.

The beauty He breathed into us, as He weaved us into existence –

the way we were meant to image Him in the way we express ourselves through our outward appearance, art-making, and seeking of justice.

The radical decentering we experience when we encounter beauty as Scarry describes?

That’s exactly the point of beauty – to remind us that we are not the point.

He is. 

He is the center of the universe, the One who holds all things together (Col 1:17).

He is the Source of all goodness, truth, the things we long for (James 1:17).

He is the reason why we even care about justice, why beauty has meaning, why our lives have a story.

Beauty was always meant to point back to Him.

How do I do this well?

Ah, the question of a lifetime.

I don’t have it all down (and probably never will until I see Him face to face), but for me, it has something to do with seeking out the thin places I talked about.

This means creating space – the solitude, silence, the quiet of the mornings – when I am able to hear more clearly.

It looks like stopping on the street to look at the clouds.

Or sitting alone with just a journal and a croissant – no phone or computer or chattering friends – in a tea salon in the middle of Strasbourg.

It means being diligent about pursuing the creative process –

finishing this post even though it’s taking way longer than it was supposed to, or busting out the water-colours when I was hanging out at the house of an American missionary family last night.

And to trust that in the thin places, He will meet me there.

That in the beholding, I am being transformed into the same image – from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18).

To reflect on:

1. Mirror: How has beauty (art, music, literature, creation, fashion etc.) informed my sense of self, and to what extent are my further creations of such beauty true to this?

2. Looking-glass: Have I ever experienced a radical de-centering upon encountering beauty? How did this affect the way I viewed my relationships with the people around me? And do I think about questions of sustainability/social justice in my pursuits of beauty?

3. Telescope: Do I see beauty as a means to see God more clearly? If no, how then do I understand the “deeper meaning” beauty seems to point to? And if yes, what are some specific ways I can be leaning into that more?