Sister Joan Chittister, while reflecting on monastic wisdom, speaks of the imperiled state of beauty in the modern world. Her description of how in our time beauty is in jeopardy is sympatico with Hans Christian Andersen’s viewpoint in “The Nightingale.” She argues that what “may be most missing in this highly technological world of ours is beauty.” “Even when what is presented to us is called art,” we desire functionalism and efficiency over beauty. “We prefer plastic flowers to wild flowers. . . . We forgo the natural and the real for the gaudy and the pretentious.”2 We mistake the dazzling
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