To say I’m not a philosopher is an understatement. Back in my long ago schooldays, I managed to say something semi-meaningful and thoughtful, which promoted my wonderful teacher to loan me his copy of Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy. He thought I would enjoy it.

I was utterly and completely lost. I did somehow inadvertently fool him once with a coherent comment or two about Plato, but I probably gravely disappointed him after that. I never could finish the book.

Instead, I daydreamed my way through school, wrote angsty poetry in Algebra, got grades accordingly, and only became a serious student in Latin class. I’m still not sure why that subject commanded my attention.

By some weird quirk, I somehow got high SAT scores — maybe because I didn’t take the whole thing seriously enough to get nervous. Then I took some achievement tests, laughed my way through the absurdly easy German one, and was admitted to UCLA on the basis of my test scores alone, ignoring my scandalous grades.

My college career wasn’t any more successful than my junior high and high school careers had been. I finally dropped out after a couple years.

I never took a single philosophy class. But I did hang around Kerckhoff Coffee House with some grad students, discussing “deep things” , and somehow I must have uttered a semi-profundity or two, because they kept me around and even solicited my opinions.

But classically educated I definitely wasn’t.

Fast forward a bunch of years, when I was questioning why cultural relevance was more important than beauty, and why our church at the time should, according to the new pastor, abandon our usual worship space, meet in our fellowship hall instead, and make it look as un-churchy (and hence as devoid of beauty) as possible. Apparently, since I was already approaching 50 years of age, I was woefully out of touch.

Only it wasn’t just my age. In my 20’s I had voiced similar concerns in a different church, about the topic of music, and had jokingly dubbed myself a young fuddy-dud.

Years passed and stuff happened and, in a flash of insight, I told someone, “I’m starved for beauty. It’s as if I’ve been keeping myself on hunger rations.”

I attended a small conference about truth, beauty, and goodness — most of it way over my head because, again, I am no philosopher. I’m not really an artist either, and I haven’t written an angsty poem in years. But I was starved for beauty.

Then my dear daughter-in-law sought refuge with us during COVID, bringing beauty (and my son and granddaughter) with her. She didn’t just pile food haphazardly on a plate; she arranged it artfully. She didn’t just grab a snack and head outdoors; she created a lovely scene that belonged in a painting from long ago. She didn’t just toss on jeans and t-shirts; she dressed herself and her daughter as if clothes actually mattered. It was inspiring.

Gradually I began bringing little bits of beauty back in my life. I began opening my heart wide to even more beauty.

In the meantime — between my young fuddy-dud days and a couple years ago — I had been on quite the spiritual and theological journey, and I’ve got the books to prove it. (Well, not all the books… I’ve gone through three major cullings of my personal library in the past two decades.) In the past year or so, while visiting my daughter, I said something to her priest about truth, beauty, and goodness. He probably thought I was more profound and philosophical than I am, and said something in return about transcendentals… and I had to look it up later.

Turns out cultural relevance is not a transcendental.

You can’t just go where the beauty is, I had told myself sternly. But God kept drawing me with beauty. Also with truth and goodness, to be sure, and He was wooing and pursuing me with love all that time — and it was the beauty that, at least for me, illuminated all the rest.

After my first reading assignment from my priest, when I returned to my next meeting with him, I enthused, “It’s written so beautifully!”

I was discovering Byzantine Catholicism.

Since my priest is classically educated and didn’t daydream his way through most of his education, he tried to explain something about the role of beauty in revealing the nature of God, drawing us to Him, and glorifying Him in worship.

In a culture that assaults my sensitive nature with so much ugliness — not just the ugliness of its sin but its architecture, art, home decor, music, entertainment, and ideas — God has drawn me into beauty. Every Sunday I experience a beautiful, glorious foretaste of Heaven as we step outside of time, and worship God in spirit and in truth.

Every Divine Liturgy, I taste and see that God is good, that He is really and powerfully more than I could ever hope, and that He is all that is true, beautiful, and good.