God and Beauty

Yesterday I had the chance to be part of a Christian Mass. One of those ritualised masses that I haven't attended for four years now. I was there because I was with people who adhere to the beliefs of Christianity. People that I love and respect and wish for them to be free in thought, and to live their life fulfilled however that may come about.

During this mass I listened and tried to understand why myself, a few years back, was such a Christian devotee. Then the priest  advocated the life of St. Augustine and he said that this man, in his life, referred to his God as Beautiful. At that moment I felt close to St. Augustine. For when I look outside at the trees and the rocks, when I am by the sea and hear the waves dancing on the sand and look up at the glittering stars, what I see is Beauty.

You see, you do not have to have Religion to see Beauty. To feel the Beauty around us. You might believe in God or you might not, but what we all must come to realize is the beauty of life. I think that Religion was the result of this realization. That men and women of old saw Beauty in their lives and the wonders around them and they had to assign a name to this Beauty. They created God to give meaning to the seemingly perfect and magnificent happenings of nature.

However with time, the pure idea of love and understanding of nature and the closeness of man to nature and its beauty got corrupted. Greed and selfishness shaped religion. Religion became the tool to control the emotions of man. It became the weapon of cunning individuals for their benefits, to use against people pure in heart. Those people who were spiritual and saw Beauty in the world were the most susceptible to manipulation.

Yet today, we might be moving away from that manipulation once again. We are becoming closer to the root of our Religion. We are becoming more Spiritual and less Ritual. For the important part to argue about is not the existence of God but the Beauty of life. All humans, believers or not can see this Beauty. They can feel the power of a storm and the sweet caress of a breeze. They can hear the power of thunder and give praise to the light of the sun that warms us on a chill Winter day.

This is what we need to learn. To dream of life. For there is no greater pleasure in life than to appreciate life. Forget about God for a moment and look around you. There is YOU and there is the world right now. Would you rather love life and live it peacefully or would you rather love the idea of God and live life to please him, when in your mind the same reason for God to create life in the first place was for you to live it?

So worry not about God and what came before or what comes next. There is no need for ritual. No need for prayer. For life itself is a prayer. Drinking dew off a flower in bloom or laying down in a field in the heat of the sun is a prayer to life. It is your recognition of this Beauty that matters.