I’ve been listening (and re-listening) to some of Peter Kreeft’s lectures and speeches. (Free to download in mp3 format.) A basic theme that runs through many of his talks (and books) is that every person seeks truth, goodness, and beauty in some form or another. And all three of these are found in God. They are only in God, or come from God, or are inspired by God. They are attributes of God.
In a recently posted lecture, “Shocking Beauty”, Kreeft makes this arresting statement:
Deep truth heals your mind, and deep goodness heals your will, but deep beauty wounds your heart. Deep beauty hurts.
The head or ego wants to possess the beauty, to analyze and deconstruct it, but the heart knows that it cannot. Beauty pulls you up into wholeness and things transcendent, not down into the parts and pieces. The heart yearns not to possess but to be possessed by the beauty (that sounds like Kreeft in a different lecture), to be connected with it, absorbed into it in some way. And thus the ache—the ache of incompleteness, of separateness, of aloneness—so close yet so far.
Deep beauty sounds a lot like falling in love.
Deep beauty also sounds a lot like a path of humility.