BY YACOB BERHANOU
On my part, two words (perhaps concepts) that we take for granted seem crucial for our better understanding of human existence. Beauty and fear… All the astounding things are the manifestation of what we call beauty. On the other hand, fear becomes the archetypal source of doubt, greed, revenge, retaliation, and many evil things. Where does our fear come from? We are crippling creatures that inherit limitations in every aspect… we pretend to be masters of everything when we possess nothing in our might. Man’s limited capability to experience the entire existential rarity around him and the divine being wholly, has compelled him into doubt.
Our fear originated from the limitedness of our caliber to experience existence. While evanescence and timelessness are double fleeting phenomena for both beauty and anxiety, fear abides to be the only impediment that restrains us from dancing with the divine and gulping from the eternal spring of life. Beauty, however, is the refuge of the soul, which frees us from that foreboding imprisonment.
Colors, rhythm, order, pattern, synchronicity, style, harmony, parallelism, movement… are all masterfully intertwined manifestations of the ethereal. It is a deep and large notion to be enlightened, to accumulate what is not an unimaginable boundless link. Even the meandering of a worm can be considered an infinitesimal part of gigantic ethereal charisma.
As Solomon Deressa, an Ethiopian poet, noted in his Amharic anthology’s ‹Lijinet – Childhood › brief prologue… ‹‹In childhood, what makes cycling fun is not the necessity to travel fast or reach a given place, but rather running behind beauty – the pursuit of form -… In this case, beauty is the bicycle moving straight and not dropping either way.››
In most of my contemplations, in each of my single strands, I became aware and started to think about nature’s mysterious pulses. An unknown and unknowable urge entices me to dazzle and dance with this nature’s hidden rhythmic vibration. I doubt there is anything as eternally abundant as beauty in our universe. This splendor never vanished but transferred, transcended.
Even though there appeared a beauty that kisses vanity and spreads in the likes of leaves withering every moment, the glamour will never be destroyed. It rises again in a constantly renewed, ever-changing manner with nature’s constant dovetailing. Spouting of the seed and seedling of the spout can both be synonyms with transcendence. In such a process, nature pursues the wheel on its own without the need for human intervention.
This eternal occurrence could represent a transformation from one embryo to another. A thing anchored in its inherent synchrony and vibration, constantly renewed, replenished, and reshaped into a fresh existential arise for a revival. Hence, beauty persists in nature without the need for human meddling.
Beauty attracts and transcends beauty. Pattern governs beauty more than principle. Beauty flourishes in exposing to danger, in facing the challenge, rather than in simply complying with orders and loyalty. Beauty better blossoms in thrives, from solitude, separation, rebellion, pain, and so on than likeness, imitation, or similitude… It cannot be created; it can only be revealed, discovered. Nothing we do belongs to us, including creativity. We are not even in possession of our wills or our whole consciousness.
As long as it is held by the sincere inclination of the soul from a cheap desire, no beauty can be inferior or superior to the other. Beauty manifests its essence in style, order, love, truth, and even pain… Beauty cannot be measured or compared; it can never be destroyed. No one can fully convey it. One can only surrender to its elegance and grandeur. In short, for human beings, beauty is the medium through which humans interact with the divine.
However, the world we live in is much more than a place where birds sing, butterflies fly, and fields are full of hay. The frenzy of bloodthirsty hyenas, hawks, and owls rages. It is impossible to separate this eternal duality. Life, at its core, bears the double ideal of beauty and suffering. In her book review of Mary Oliver’s “Owls and Other Fantasies,” Mariana Popova claimed that:
‹‹…This duality of beauty and terror is also true of the subset of nature comprising our experience—the subset we call human nature: When happiness comes at us unbidden and elemental, there is almost a terror to its coming—to the totality of it, to the way it submerges and saturates and supinates us with something vast and uncontrollable and sublime, thrusting us past the limits of our longing.››
No matter how intertwined beauty and terror are, the natural process is rooted in harmony, and can never be evil. The natural alignment cannot, yet again, be crude because of the way the two (beauty and terror) coexist. He who wanders around eventually becomes aware of everything. Nature’s order is bitterly ardent and true while nurturing each of every existence. There is no hesitation in its commanding endeavor. Exterminating itself is a part of existential revelation and transformation.
I remember reading an intriguing Islamic quotation that fits the concept. It reads, “When the angel of death comes, it is terrible. When he reaches you, it is bliss.” Moreover, beauty and nature are identical. K.M. George has made a wonderful observation that reinforces our thoughts in his book ‹The Silent Roots – Orthodox Perspectives on Christian Spirituality.›
‹‹The final judgment is a discernment of beauty. The Christian tradition has seen beauty and holiness as identical and the ‹‹image›› of God as the key to both. This image in us, by its very nature, calls us to undertake a pilgrimage to the source of beauty and holiness in God.››
If we perceive God as a tyrannical monarch, then we don’t have a clue to understand the genesis of beauty. God and beauty are the interchanging names (perhaps forms) of the universe’s vibration that dazzles and dances in the infinite realms. The unity of this vast occurrence becomes amazing. An innumerable variety of varieties presents themselves in the whole existential expanse. Gentle, rough, squishy, shriveled, simple, disorganized, crooked, doled, integrated, unbundled… and yet charming.
No one can elucidate this entire phenomenon with a bunch of impotent words. Even the phrase “I am who I am” can only explicate some of it. Those holy religious books are only a version of it. However, this fullness is the unspeakable beauty of the Almighty himself. A piece of such depth and beauty is what I am, who has the potential to simulate and infinitely asymptote the Divine.
Nevertheless, as Frédéric Gros stated, ‹‹walking is not merely physical exercise, but a philosophy.›› I realize this again and again every evening, during my lone pilgrim strolls. It is believed that he who aspires to wisdom deserves beauty. He who is zealous for better apprehension of beauty can develop a conscience. However, cruelty should be a manifestation of a person whose sense of beauty has failed. Beauty resides in the soul. Beauty seemed like the gospel. But for those who misunderstood it, it could be a crime, a curse. Yet, to appreciate the beauty of the soul, one shall be born again in the spirit.
…I rambled persistently; for it became my cure. Walking reaffirms the vow of existence. It manifests the oath of the divine; it enables me not to give up on the human condition, to resist the chaos that surrounds me. Walking sets me free. Walking provided me with multitudes of imaginative wings. It enables me to have the acumen and be prudent.
Eventually, if I happened to cease my rambling in front of a great river or a majestic mountain, instantly some kind of awe will take over my soul as though Eutopia (attainable compared to utopia) was outstretched around me. A kind of what Sinclair Lewis said – ‹‹Sehnsucht – inconceivable longing for we know not what›› overwhelmed my soul. I will see humans walking over the cliff just to fade away in the dim evening light behind the horizon.
I will watch them vanishing behind the dim yellowish illumination tenderly as if they were my ancestors. We will meet in spirit from afar. I will attend to the whole human psyche in their respiration. The evening air wafts the aroma of existence from their deeds. There, in a moment, tranquility will grasp me. The air was drifting, swifting and galloping to nurture every sentient being for perpetuity.
It is dark behind the mountain. But here, darkness isn’t a version of negation, hiding, or subjugation; but a maneuver of consolidation. In a way, I feel like the Almighty has shown his favor to me. The potentiality of the light illuminated behind the horizon hazes my soul. I would wish to stand there for days, months, years, decades, centuries, millenniums, and eras… silence. I know climbing a mountain wouldn’t be every ones cup of coffee. However, for me it is like receiving Holy Communion. If I stood at the summit of the mountain where everything halted, then that would mark the end of my odyssey.
I would stare at the finite expanse, where beings and nothings appear to me like a dream in a dream. I can hear those people descending behind the horizon mumbling to each other in a language I can’t comprehend. I wonder why I always considered languages strangers to me as dialects of Angles. Yet again, in my soul, the murmur of nature represents a salutation. My soul yearns not for the light but the afterglow, not for the meaning of their murmur but the resonance.
It doesn’t matter whether I see a stray bird or a miniature cloud instead of a human being! It could be sufficient to solidify my conviction in all nature. That moment would turn magical to me; dissolving the now and the then, moment and ever, time and space, allowing me to prevail over all times, seasons, and places at once. Déjà vu… my spiritual apotheosis… The vastness of ethereal beauty engulfed me. But at times, I feel like I am an eminent survivor from a separate era.
Yet, every dimension of beauty reveals its sanctity. This tale will help us to grasp the vital essence of our notion. Once, in a remote Asian Buddhist monastery lived a well-known Zen master. One day, a large number of his disciples waited for him to disclose the depth of divine harmony to them. When the master calmly ascended into their presence, a bird on a nearby tree started singing a few times and flew away. Immediately the master declared, “As you heard, the sermon has served.” And descended from his platform.
Similarly, divinity is revealed in every attribute of beauty. And beauty presents itself in myriads of facets. It doesn’t matter whether the embodiment of beauty is a flower, a waterfall, a bicycle ride, or an alluring woman. Any beauty can’t be an ornament to be admired in isolation. The entire vibrant metaphysical traverse recited in full becomes divinity itself. But, we are not blessed with such excellence; for we are helpless captives of time and space. However, in our limited intelligence, we can meet God through the reflection of every aspect of beauty.
For me, strolling was a critical instrument to befriend beauty and divinity, to arouse my inner dragon, and to govern and utilize it in a way for my artistic endeavor. Let me conclude our exploration like this… the pinnacle of being amazed by beauty could lead to worship. Beauty emanates from pain, words, dust, and breath. Ash to ash, dust to dust to perpetuity. Ages couldn’t determine it…
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 23 JUNE 2023
