Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The Image of Perfection

Originally, all creation emanated perfect, unsullied beauty, but it incurred damage, and the beauty became blighted. Now all beauty is, at best, flawed. No form is quite symmetrical, no face is without blemish, no color pure, no balance perfect and no harmony without a touch of dissonance. A veil has been drawn between our world and the source of all perfect beauty.

A shadowy but tantalizing image of this perfect beauty that exists beyond the veil remains locked away in every human heart. A vision of what was meant to be flashes across the screen of our consciousness like a subliminal image, and we are hooked. We long for the full experience of what we can now only glimpse.

We can only glimpse because beauty in its unfallen fullness is presently beyond the capacity of our fallen senses. But the flawed beauty that lingers in our world assures us of the greater reality that exists beyond the horizon. And this awareness that beauty is real but presently unattainable is the source of both our longing and our alienation.

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