“I am interested in poetry and beauty. For me, the name of God is ultimately 'Beauty', and I think I would agree with a friend of mine, an Orthodox bishop, who said years ago: 'When God looks at a person, He sees neither achievements nor virtues, which may or may not exist; He sees beauty, which nothing can eliminate.'
Thus, the ultimate meaning of things can, for me, be defined in terms of beauty – or, conversely, in terms of ugliness... Every recognition of beauty in the world is a moment of freedom: we are given the opportunity to see and to receive what God gives. The dimension of spiritual awareness opens up to us, allowing us to see the world (and ourselves) in relation to God.
The deepest form of human failure is the denial of this thing, and the contraction of what surrounds us to the 'limits' of self-interest. We deny our own beauty, and we deny the beauty of the world.
The famous axiom of Dostoevsky that 'beauty will save the world' seems to be something more than a plea to cultivate refined perceptions and reactions or to enjoy feelings that inspire or fulfill us: for beauty to be 'salvific', our heart and mind must be stripped and exposed, radically detached from self-interest...
