But both beauty and holiness are perpetually in short supply. Beauty is commonly trivialized in our culture, reduced to decoration, equated with the insipidities of pretty or nice. But beauty is not an add-on. It is not an extra. It is not what we attend to when we have a break from necessity. Beauty is fundamental. It is the evidence of and witness to the inherent wholeness and goodness of things. It is life in excess of what we can manage or make on our own.
