the heavenly country

Ansel Adams

"The object of all great art is beauty, and it makes us nostalgic for God. Whether we consider ourselves people of faith or not, art arouses in us what Pope John Paul called a 'universal desire for redemption.'

All of us are meaning-seekers. We approach every painting, novel, film, symphony, or ballet unconsciously hoping that it will move us one step further on the journey toward answering the question, 'Why am I here?' People living in the postmodern world, however, are faced with an excruciating dilemma. Their hearts long to find ultimate meaning, while at the same time their critical minds do not believe it exists. We are homesick, but have no home. So we turn to the arts and aesthetics to satisfy our thirst for the Absolute. But if we want to find out true meaning in life, our search cannot end there. Art or beauty is not the destination; it is the signpost pointing towards our desired destination.

C.S. Lewis puts it so elegantly in The Weight of Glory: 'The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them. and what came through was a longing...For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.'

My hope is that through our future encounters with music and the arts, we will discover the 'heavenly country' we have not yet visited, but long to find."

~From Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron