Soul guides us to open to beauty and to respond

Kathy Ford shares a quote from Thomas Moore's book, Care of the Soul in her post yesterday, "Soul’s Great Talent" that includes Moore's view:

“An appreciation for beauty is simply an openness to the power of things to stir the soul.  If we can be affected by beauty, then soul is alive and well in us, because the soul’s great talent is for being affected. The word passion means basically “to be affected”, and passion is the essential energy of the soul."

He continues with a reference to poet Rainer Marie Rilke's The Sonnets to Orpheus:

"The poet Rilke describes this passive power in the imagery of the flower’s structure, when he calls it a “muscle of infinite reception.”  We don’t often think of the capacity to be affected as strength and as the work of a powerful muscle, and yet for the soul, as for the flower, this is the toughest work and its main role in our lives.”

Ford mentions gardening friends and includes photographs of her own flowers in her post.

Rilke's verse:
Flower-muscle, that opens the anemone’s
meadow-morning bit by bit,
until into her lap the polyphonic
light of the loud skies pours down,

muscle of infinite reception
tensed in the still star of the blossom,
sometimes so overmanned with abundance
that the sunset’s beckoning to rest


is scarcely able to give back to you
the wide-sprung petal-edges:
you, resolve and strength of how many worlds!

We, with our violence, are longer-lasting.
But when, in which one of all lives,
are we at last open and receivers?

Celebrate beauty and a youthful heart at all ages

In an undated article, "What's Fitting", Sara Davidson ponders age-appropriate fashion for older women. She speaks with Thomas Moore about beauty and age:

"Clarity arrived when I spoke with Thomas Moore, the former monk and psychotherapist who wrote, Care of the Soul. Moore, in his late 60s now, lives in rural New Hampshire where, he says, “we have barns and old farm equipment out in the fields. As the barns begin to lean and the machinery rusts, suddenly the artists come out and paint them. I think that’s true of people as well.”

But then Moore surprised me. He said he supports people’s efforts to look as youthful and beautiful as they can. “I think it’s wonderful to be concerned when you’re older with the Venusian thing — with the body and your own beauty. I’m very much in favor of anything you can do to keep your youthful spirit.”

What about older women who wear tight leggings, like their daughters might? I asked.

Moore smiled. If you can get away with it, great. It’s the attitude that matters. If you’re doing it because you’re afraid of getting older, that might not work. If you’re doing it to celebrate beauty and a youthful heart, I think that’s wonderful.”

Moore said it’s possible to do two things at once: “Age with grace — say, `Okay, I’m going to be older and enjoy it,’ — and at the same time say, `I don’t want to lose touch with my youth.’ Our childhood is always with us, our adolescence is always with us. Youth is always inside us, no matter how old our bodies are.”

In the days following our talk, I came to understand what balance might look like. You can focus on developing the inner qualities that make people compelling and appealing as they age: humor, curiosity, enthusiasm and zest. And you can take care of the outer package, in the same way you would refurbish a historical building so it doesn’t look run down and dilapidated. So it looks its best and its character will shine through."

Although "balance" may be interpreted in different ways, Davidson shares one of Moore's approaches for many situations in life: Don't choose one. Do two or more things at the same time.

Beauty is a prime ingredient in a soulful world

Leah Campbell Badertscher blogs about her contemplation of beauty in "WHY Beauty?" and shares some sources she finds helpful in this exploration. She begins with her reaction to:

"In a world where the soul is neglected, beauty is placed last on its list of priorities."
 — Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

Badertscher also writes about the late John O'Donohue's radio presentation, "The Inner Landscape of Beauty". She writes, "He also discussed beauty as not necessarily being something that would be conventionally, superficially defined as 'beautiful' as in 'pretty' (although those things are not necessarily excluded), but that it does have the quality of being so captivating as to be arresting. (By the way, I absolutely love that word, arresting —  it's so, well — arresting.) This closed another gap in understanding for me."

She ends the post with a description of Rumi's poetry: "I started reading a new volume of Rumi poems last night and in the introduction it is told of how representatives from all over the world and from all religions came to his funeral. When asked about why they came, they answered, 'He deepens us wherever we are.' This touched me deeply, because I realize how, hundreds of years later, his work deepens me — and countless others — as well. And that is far beyond being a sufficient answer to 'Why? Why Beauty? Why care for the soul?' To deepen. To deepen ourselves, to deepen one another."

A Joyous Outpouring celebrates beauty and soul

For The Tennessean, Michelle Jones writes "Twist Art Gallery shares Lauren Krusso's pretty flowers", describing Krusso's exhibition, A Joyous Outpouring that showcases her printmaking and sculpture. Jones describes the show: "An overwhelming sense of beauty emanates from a floating garden of 10 handmade flower sculptures suspended in one corner of the gallery. In combinations of cream and deep red, purple and teal, orange and red, blue and white, each flower sits on its own bed of leaves. She includes,

"Kussro also likes to counter what she sees as a trend in contemporary art of downplaying the relevance of beauty. Quoting a Thomas Moore essay, she talks of the necessity of nurturing the human soul. “My work has always been about beauty,” Kussro explains. “I think it’s necessary for beauty to exist. … I feel like it’s my responsibility as an artist to use my gifts to benefit others.”

Jones writes, "Kussro also explores the negative side of beauty in A Joyous Outpouring in that she was inspired by the negative spaces and pieces left from where she cut shapes for her sculptural work." The artist says, “I was throwing away all these beautiful scraps, so I started saving them all,” she says. She began repurposing them in small, colorful resin-covered collages, or cut out even smaller leaf shapes in various green hues and applied them to gauzy fabric stretched over plywood frames."

A celebration of international bridge building

Thomas Moore often writes about the utility and beauty of bridges. The Detroit News celebrates the 80th anniversary of the international Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan through a pictorial slide show about its construction and expansion. The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest international crossing in the United States. At the time of its official opening, Nov. 11, 1929, the Ambassador Bridge was the world's longest suspension bridge:
http://multimedia.detnews.com/pix/photogalleries/newsgallery/ambassador-bridge_04302009/index.html

Lack of soul contributes to absence of beauty

On her site, Daphne Michaels quotes Thomas Moore about beauty from her book, Light of Our Times: Conversations with Today’s Leaders in Health and Spirituality.

Michaels asks, "In beginning to understand beauty’s role in human life, what are the obstacles? Do you think it is more expensive to create beauty?"

Moore responds, "No, not at all. It takes nothing to create beauty."

When pressed for obstacles to beauty, Moore's answer includes, "The things that we consider important and valuable come from a place other than the soul, and that is where the soul is undervalued."

Barque referenced Michaels' book in an earlier post about Moore's insights about dark nights of the soul.

Beauty offers ingredients for soul's stimulation

In her post "Valentino, Beauty, Passion and Soul" about the film Valentino: The Last Emperor, Katy Paul-Chowdhury includes Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul descriptions of beauty inviting contemplation, feeding imagination and inspiring passion.

Paul-Chowdhury blogs, "The film was surprisingly funny and touching, showing us the tetchy genius behind the smooth exterior as he contemplated the end of his magnificent career. It also provided a thrilling peek into the lives of people with great wealth, glamour, and privilege. I was particularly moved by his life-long passion for and commitment to beauty."

Following a passage from John O'Donohue's Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, she suggests, "So there’s Valentino, 45 years in the seemingly silly world of surfaces, socialites, and supermodels, living a life that is more consistently and deeply soulful than many of us ever achieve."

She concludes the post with Rumi:
"Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."