Inspiration: Beauty will save the world
The simple act of dancing has saved me more than once in my life.
At particularly low points, returning to ballet—to my body, to creative, expressive movement—to inspiring beauty—has pulled me from the depths of despair. As a Christian, I know I’m treading into dangerous territory when I use words like “saved” in reference to dancing. But the truth is, the cross, for me, sometimes takes the shape of an arabesque.
I wonder if it’s the same reason my grandfather, who survived the Armenian Genocide, and his brothers would play their ouds and dumbeks and sing Armenian folks songs so the rest of us danced the Pompourri or the Haleh and made merry together. Or my other grandparents, whose families fled the artsy village of Malatia during the genocide, would reunite with the other diasporan Malatiatzis each year in an evening variety show of song and dance and poetry.
Long before research proved it, I wonder if somehow the folks who have experienced unspeakable suffering instinctively knew that when the world tells you your life is absolutely expendable and worthless, the best way to remember that your life matters is to stay connected to your body and to the beauty and joy that can be expressed from it.
Christians recently celebrated the feast of Pentecost, where the “inspiration of the Holy Spirit” came down. Yet when we look around, it’s often hard to find any inspiration anywhere. A lot of folks I speak with in my daily life and work are depressed, anxious, and breathless at the state of the world today. The world we live in today is wholly uninspired. Literally, it seems to be lacking in Spirit.
In the most biblical and theological sense, to lack breath is to lack Spirit. To lack Spirit is to lack breath. The utterly uninspired state of the world can and should leave us breathless. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit isn’t a muse; it is the literal breath of God becoming our own. It is what gives us life.
The biblical scholar Ellen Davis spoke at a climate justice event I attended recently, an event that featured dance and poetry and music. Her words resonated strongly:
“We are here because we live in the age of the unthinkable. … I daresay none of us expected to find ourselves in this new era looking toward a future whose dimensions are unknown and much of what we do know is frightening. We are here because we have an inkling that [the performers] can help us rethink what it means to be people of faith living in this situation.
They will do it by showing us something beautiful. Even heartbreakingly beautiful. It may be a paradox to look to what is beautiful in order to reckon with something ugly and ominous. That is just what beauty does: Inspires us with a vision of what is good, indeed, what is Godly.”
When our breathing rushes and slows, starts and stops with the ups and downs and changes and chances of this life, beauty inspires us. Beauty is how we stop to catch our breath.
It may seem senseless to seek beauty in the midst of confusion, to seek inspiration in the midst of grief. It’s more instinctual to scatter and flee, like those at the Tower of Babel, or demand explanations and answers, like the disciples of Jesus do. But beauty is how the Spirit comes upon us. Beauty is how we find life again.
Dostoevsky famously said, “Beauty will save the world.” It certainly has saved mine. Perhaps it has saved yours, too. Perhaps you, too, know the freedom and inspiration—literally, the breath—that comes from beauty.
We need it now more than ever.