Recognising Patterns

D asked me to write about what I see that is beautiful. Some days it's hard. this morning, I made notes, powerpoint on sticks, for a streetlevel Theology session on Angels. They are a window on to a larger reality, a bigger screen, on to the existent. The (re)enchantment of the world - numinous and transcendent; their appearances are strange, weird, interruptions of the quotidian, and point to the glory of the One who made them, and whom they serve; not ends, nor means, indications of Glory: Peter Berger's 'rumours', 'signals'. It's not a dimension which I, or many in the secular West, move in. But the presence of people from the Global South may serve to re-open the door to the supernatural.

Today too, we went to see the Scorcese film, 'The Irishman', about the Mafia and unions in the US: corruption and violence. But a saga, a slow-moving beauty, albeit also a sad tragedy, with the key charcter ending alone in an old people's home. A kind of poetic justice. This evening, I watched a video about Slavoj Zizek - I would like to be able to write, to analyse, culture and politics, like him. Perceptive, comparing, drawing lessons: though often repetitive between his books. But to see the  hidden homologies, shapes, patterns, in the world, in society - William Gibson's 'Pattern Recognition'. This, more than theology, is what interests me. If only people would read, notice, what I can say.

Or is that, still, the little child wanting to be recognised, acknowledged, loved or hugged? Trying desperately to gain, to attract, the kind of love lacking so long. Is this the beauty I crave? Today, I saw beauty, or the angelic, aspect of creation. But also in human attempts, artistic and philosophical, to understand the human - as Nietzsche said, 'human all too human'. Always flawed, inadequate, partial; but nevertheless a valid search for meaning, its expression, medium - our image-bearing creativity.