I've been reading David Bentley Hart. Partly because of my Ortho-curiosity and partly because Benji's brother highly recommended him. Despite being fairly well read in Neo-Calvinist theology, my literacy of broader conversations in Christian theology is... lacking. So I'm slowly working through Hart's work, and this bit in the introduction to The Beauty of the Infinite stuck out to me:
“In the moment of the beautiful, one need attend only to the glory that it openly proclaims, and resist the temptation to seek out some gnosis secretly imparted.”
I've been thinking a lot about beauty—probably why my brother-in-law recommended Hart to me—especially in relation to religion and spirituality. This image of the 'moment of the beautiful' is really powerful. It's hard to articulate what it feels like, but the feeling has a familiar weightiness.
It makes me think of my first encounter with St. Paul's Cathedral in London. I was 16. I had already been excommunicated and had, in turn, abjured the Christian faith that wounded me. I was on my last trip with my family before I would completely move out at 17. I had no interest in Christianity at that point (or maybe, had suppressed my interest in Christianity), and even the concept of the Divine and the Transcendent made my skin crawl a little bit. I rolled my eyes at the family's insistence we visit the cathedral. I figured we'd just get it over with and then cross the river to visit the Tate Modern.
The church made an impact on me though. I don't remember very many details from the tour. I'm sure I paid attention at the time, but the only memory that has stuck with me is standing under the main dome, looking up, and feeling... desire.
Transcendence had, up to that point, usually come up in the context of God's sovereignty, which (true to the Neo-Calvinist stance) was intimately linked with power, judgment, and punishment. I had a sense that there must be some "higher" source/repository/being of love, but I didn't think that source had any affinity whatsoever with the God of Christianity. I honestly doubted it's reality in any sensible terms most of the time.
But I felt it draw me in, up through that dome of St. Paul's. It was an erotic experience. Not explicitly sexual, but still tangible and substantial. I felt desire awakened within me. I felt what Hart refers to as the 'distance of delight'—an expanse between me and the desired, a wonderment at something radically other and yet truly beside me. It forced me to my knees, not by pushing me down, but by pulling me up.
I'm wishy-washy on what constitutes a "mystical experience." A cautious believer though I am in stigmata and mystical marriage and things of that ilk, I hesitate to label anything in my realm of experience as a mystical encounter. But this was definitely a moment of beauty—both in the sense of temporal particularity and in the sense of bearing movement and force. I've been writing privately about 'kairotic punctures': moments where God's time pierces into our time and pulls it into the infinite. My arguments have been about liturgical rhythms, but I think these moments of beauty might also be kairotic punctures as well. More spontaneous, more intimate. But still drawing us up and out and into Godself.
I'm going to keep pondering these moments and seeking them out. If that's a thing...