How Does Beauty Form the Soul?
The Hermitage Retreat Center in Three Rivers, MI
When I was invited to the Beauty and Formation of the Soul Retreat with Curt Thompson, MD, I just knew - beauty was calling for me. By the time I arrived, there was a real hunger in me. A question wrestling within me:
“What do I do with this longing and desire to create works of beauty in the world?”
And beneath that question was the deeper one, the more universal one: “Is beauty essential?”
The gift I received from Dr. Thompson those few days was a resounding, “YES!” But not just any yes. It was a yes grounded in neurological science. A yes that emerged in the space between the left brain facts and my right brain intuition.
At this retreat, Dr. Thompson shared some of the foundational work from his newest book, The Soul of Desire, explaining that when we encounter beauty, it evokes:
WONDER - we are captivated, fully present, and have a right brain experience of surprise and speechlessness.
WELCOME - we want it to stay forever. We are welcomed by God in beauty. This space of welcome allows us to be transformed and healed by God.
WORSHIP - we feel compelled to throw ourselves at the feet of what is happening in that moment, with a real sense that what we are experiencing is bigger than ourselves. It orients us to the creator and originator of all beauty, God himself.
As Dr. Thompson was talking, it struck me how much I experienced these things, not only when I encounter beauty, but when I am creating it. I raised my hand and asked, “I’m an artist, do you think artists experience these things in the creative process?”
He abruptly replied, “You’re the artist. You tell me.”
And I just knew. I just knew that I knew that I knew. We are both transformed in the creation of beauty as we are in the encounter of it, and that there is a deep connection between them.
How Beauty Emerges
Dr, Thompson explained Dr. Dan Siegel’s theory of attachment. In order for beauty to emerge, we need to feel: seen, soothed, safe, and secure. He stated,
“When I live most fully into being seen, soothed, safe, and secure by God, I become more fully alive to who I really am - the beauty within. It is when this beauty can shine that we become like the true evangelists we are - shining who we are on a hill.”
So why aren’t we all shining like a city on a hill then? In a word: trauma.
The Impact of Trauma & Shame on Beauty
When we experience trauma, our left and right hemispheres are dis-integrated from one another. Dr. Thompson explained,
“Shame is operationalized in trauma, and it is shame that keeps us from seeing our own beauty and creating new and beautiful things.”
These words jostled around in my head all the way to my friend’s house that afternoon. In the back seat of the minivan, it hit me:
Shame is what has kept me from creating.
For months, I had been asking myself why it was so hard to get into the studio, even when I had the time to do so? Why did I frequently put things like email in front of this longing even though creating is what I deeply desired?
If my true self can only come out when I am seen, soothed, safe, and secure - I have not experienced these things from the world.
I had not been seen and known as an artist in the ways I needed to be.
I had not been soothed in the areas I had been wounded.
And the world had not been a safe or secure place for me to create.
I recounted all the ways throughout the years where I was asked to produce, but not to create. Asked to achieve, but not to behold. Asked for my accomplishments, but not my beauty.
Even in ministry, I was supposed to be the achiever Bette who could meet deadlines and objectives. The Bette who could lead and deliver. The Bette who could perform.
When Western culture values efficiency, productivity, and numerical success, what it asks from us is material, pragmatic, and marketable. When I encountered the pressure to perform on these standards, the true self within me - the part of me that creates works of beauty, hid in a corner because she did not belong. Because in a pragmatic, consumer-driven culture, beauty hides. She is not welcome. Because beauty does not operate on these term. She belongs to the eternal realm.
When I had this epiphany, I prayed this earnest prayer in my journal that night,
Jesus, I am asking you to bust down the door of shame and help me to come out.
Help my artist soul to awaken and be seen - if only by you at first.
Create a holy unfolding in me.
The Antidote to Shame
The next day, God began answering that prayer with another truth that hit me with such force. When Dr. Thompson said it, I felt like gravity double downed on me, sinking me into my chair…
“Beauty is the antidote to shame. And beauty is one of God’s most effective tools to free us from shame.”
I could feel my heart racing as he put words to what I had always known, but couldn’t articulate. Then, the barrage of questions erupted:
Could beauty really heal trauma?
Could there be true neurological merit to the way I have seen beauty impact the soul? The way it has impacted my soul?
Could beauty free me from the shame that kept me from creating?
Creating the paintings for Making Room in Advent: 25 Devotions for a Season of Wonder
Allowing Beauty to be Seen
As Dr. Thompson articulated the role beauty plays in healing and transformation, for the first time in a long time, the beauty within me was invited to come out of me and be seen.
She was told she was wanted. And there, my true self was soothed, safe, and secure as a creator of beauty.
For the first time in a long time, I felt free.
My true self rose up to advocate for herself. She began to challenge the assumptions that had kept her hidden. The lie that what the world needs right now is solutions, practical approaches, and production.
My soul remembered that we are so much more than the daily influx of these things. We are mortals infused with the infinite. The aim of beauty is to expand our souls to accommodate the divine within us - to enlarge and receive what is so much greater than our souls and bodies can possibly contain - the love of God.
“Experiences of earthly beauty awaken a longing for a beauty that is more permanent and transcendent than anything this life can give - a longing for the beauty of God.”
Beauty & the Eternal
In an encounter with beauty, we experience the consummation - union with God himself. When we experience loving union with God, all the shame falls off and we are liberated with the truth.
Beauty, true beauty, when embraced, can set people free from shame and anxiety. It can be the living empathy that draws people out of despair to become more fully themselves.
Maybe like me, there is a part of your soul that has been hiding in shame. The part of you that longs to create, longs for beauty, longs for union with God. My prayer is that beauty will find you and break down that door and liberate you with the presence beautiful One in your midst. This is my benediction - my prayer for you, for me.
A Benediction for Beauty
May you place yourself at the door of beauty
and find yourself welcomed in.
May her expansiveness widen you
and may her richness deepen you.
May her lavish love liberate you
even as her glory pierces you.
May she stir within you the power
to love freely, to live generously,
and to create abundantly. Amen
A Message on Beauty
Last year, God invited me to give a message at Kensington Church on beauty through the story of Mary and the Alabaster jar. If you’d like to go deeper with this idea, I encourage you to check it out (sermon starts 26 min in)
