Beholding Beauty: A Remedy for the "Pieces of Glass in Our Heads"

“I’m tired, boss. …Mostly I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of glass in my head all the time.”

 This heartfelt lament from wrongfully-condemned death row inmate John Coffey in the 1999 film The Green Mile reminded me of why we need to behold beauty more than ever. In our modern age of social media, it seems that we all possess his unique ability to witness much of the ugliness that goes on in the world. That constant stream of ugliness – social, relational, political, spiritual, emotional, and more – leaves us weeping for solace.

 Interestingly, a few beats before Coffey laments, we find his prison guards accompanying him to the warden’s home to attempt to heal his wife of her malignant brain tumor. As they disembark the prison for that home, the first thing Coffey notices through the grating above his head is the stars in the night sky. In other words, he beholds beauty! And it lifts his heart in joy. Then, as the guards lead him toward the van they’ve hidden to take them to the home, Coffey stops to pick up some leaves. He expectantly holds them up to his face and inhales deeply. Then, he smiles. Again, he beholds beauty, and beauty lifts his heart!

 Beauty, indeed, has the power to revive and restore our hearts… if we stop to behold it.

This is the same heart-changing, beauty-beholding moment is depicted in the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption when inmate Andy Dufresne plays an operatic masterpiece over the prison’s PA system. Upon the sound of such beauty, all the drab inmates in their drab clothes shuffling hopelessly in the drab prison yard lift their heads in hope.

 That being the case, when’s the last time you paused to behold beauty? Such moments can be as simple as pausing to notice an interesting pattern in a snow drift, the colors in the sky, a work of fine art, the delicate flavors in a meal, the grain in a piece of wood, the harmony in a song, and so much more. The key is stopping to behold the beauty that’s all around us.

 So, from one beauty-lover to another, stop and behold beauty! It’ll do your heart good. I promise.