Beauty Can Be Unbearable
Beauty Can Be Unbearable
Erinma E. Man
“‘Suddenly I realize / That if I stepped out of my body I would break’ — and if you stop there, you can see how beauty can sometimes be almost wounding. It can almost break you. You mightn’t know how to contain it. It’s that unbearable lightness.”
– Pádraig Ó Tuama on James Wright’s poem “A Blessing”
“And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple[.]”
– Acts 3:2
The past several springs, I strolled through Los Angeles’ hills. In my mind, this is when the city shines. In April, the city’s east side was lush and leafy. Residential hill roads are narrow, so I walked between the houses and the pavement, entranced by the abounding flora: bush greens and jeweled blues, rosy pinks and starry yellows. Everything was in bloom and the bloom was in everything.
It would be my favorite thing of the day, these strolls. Especially when spring 2020 hit. I’d wait for that hour when the sunlight was just right—usually about 6 in the evening. I strapped on sneakers, grabbed headphones and maybe a journal, and walk. I would really get lost in the beauty of it all: genius flowers, a luxurious sunset, and glowing Spanish roofs. The hues were like hymns. Turn a corner and stumble upon a smiling, fuchsia bougainvillea. Look down and orange petals litter your feet, like humbled tangerines. The high notes of sagebrush. And the jasmine. Oh, the jasmine.
I can’t quite name what is so ravishing about that time of year to me. Maybe the color. Or the light. Or the dewy air. The best way I can explain it is that, during that season, I long for, and feel close to, a holy beauty.
*
Pádraig Ó Tuama gave me words for the spring-stroll phenomenon of beauty. Last autumn, I was in the kitchen cutting a pear. The world outside shy, not as vibrant as the spring. Although pleasant, October did not shine like April. Instead of doing those daily, infatuating strolls, I became more interior, literally. I stayed indoors mostly, turning myself to podcasts and books. That day, an episode of the podcast “Poetry Unbound” poured through my small kitchen. Ó Tuama’s gorgeous reading and interpretation of James Wright’s poem “A Blessing” gripped me.
One phrase stopped my whole body, mid-pear-cut: he read the poem line “Suddenly I realize / That if I stepped out of my body I would break[.]” He then uttered, “You can see how beauty can sometimes be almost wounding. It can almost break you. You mightn’t know how to contain it.” My mind flickered back to the April walks. Wounded. I was wounded by the beauty around me. Those stars of jasmine and jacaranda gems. They were so stunning, so immediate. They drew me and I wanted to come out of my own skin to reach them. They broke me with their beauty.
*
It’s December now. Los Angeles’ east side is quite cold at night. Dusk falls at 4, shuttling away the sun-drenched hills long before the work day is done. I don’t take as many strolls. But, it’s almost Christmas. New rituals emerge: listening to “The First Noel,” sitting in bed with hot tea, and reading advent liturgies.
Advent—our now—is a season of waiting. It’s a season of expectation and hope for Christ’s arrival, his entry from one world to another. During Advent, I am still and expectant. Rather than taking long walks, I sit in hopeful reverence—like believers across the ages have done—hungry for Christ’s coming perfection. I wait for Christ’s beauty. A holy beauty. But unlike the east side’s hills, which stir a longing for beauty’s immediacy, Advent stirs a longing for a promised beauty.
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Acts 3:2 describes a beggar, lame from birth, who lay begging at the feet of the Beautiful temple gate. He was on an edge, a boundary. He lay there with his broken body, calling out to anyone who might help. There was a shamelessness there that many would be too proud to enter into. But he didn’t have anything to lose. So, he went to that boundary. His body had failed him his entire life. Yet, he still pushed himself closer to the threshold, hoping those people who could cross over would stop before they did, and respond. He was at the boundary of beauty and brokenness.
Ó Tuama suggests that, although we long for beauty, we ultimately cannot truly withstand it. We cannot contain it—or maybe we just don’t know how. That, maybe, beauty is outside of the grasp of our knowingness. Beauty is unbearable.
The lame beggar was at the edge of something beautiful. He held an Advent posture. While beauty may break us, it did not break him. He could receive it and he could bear it. His wounded body longed for beauty. This moment in the beggar’s life suggests that, to truly contain beauty, we need to already be broken. Beauty repairs. We cannot keep it within our woundlessness. It is consolation and rest. A boundary for the broken.
Acts, Ó Tuama, and advent teach me that beauty—in its holiest form—is not only immediate. It is not only jacaranda, sage, and layers of light. Beauty is a great longing. It’s a lame beggar at a threshold. Beauty is advent, an expectation that something perfect will arrive.
Erinma E. Man
Writer & Contemplative
Photography by Roberto Nickson