leunig is like the force (and a little bit like gaffa tape) He has a light side and a dark side, and he holds the universe together.

This is pure cheese…. but you have blasphemed the supreme being… Mr Curly, by disrespecting his humble creator. I am appalled and dismayed.

No wait both those feelings have way too many sylables for me to bother with.

Seriously why are christians determined to learn nothing from anyone who is not exactly like them? Did God create us stupid, or have we learned to be that way?

The other thing is
http://www.thinkchristian.net/?p=1006
is an interesting and timely read.

It seems to point to quite a physical thing (eventually).

and as Donald/Victor said to me on Sunday,
“You can’t put God as beautiful and Rebecca as beautiful in the same sentence” – you can’t class the two together.

I like Timmeh’s thought about the ownership of manly appreciation of beauty: strange, given obvious notings of the re-casting of ‘manliness’ following us all perhaps losing our identity of manliness – on one side there’s FHM/Ralph and arrogant matesy drinking (we’ve almost left it to the breweries to define what a bloke is now!), and on the other there’s touchy feely fab 5 style maleness; not much in between that’s out there and trendy; but who cares about trendiness?

Hey, it’s like driving that horrible Tiida they lent me: how did I get here?
Sorry, seem to have wandered a bit.

And you’re like “… um…. keh…. NAKED!”

I think the sincerity of your question, and the simple elegance of your analysis is beautiful.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder… and I love the way that mathematicias find beauty in numbers. One thing that seems to me to be almost universal about beauty, and perceiving beauty, is that it touches more than just your intellect… its an emotional and possibly spiritual experience.

Beauty is something that we don’t understand why it moves and excites us, but it does. I think Geoff, that you find beauty and wonder in captivating ideas.

I think for all the words I’m using, Hannah summed it up better.

I was thinking about the prom. So wild and rugged and dry and sandy and windy and remote and alone and cold and hot and isolated and busy… spiny scrubby, inhospitable, inviting, harsh and lush.

I’m so drawn to it, and so repulsed by it… but most importantly IT MAKES ME FEEL STUFF!

Galadriel in LOTR is beautiful and scary. Gandalf is beautiful and wise and this other thing that doesn’t have a word but means comforting and fierce at the same time. Aragorn is beautiful and noble, and Viggo Mortgensen is beautiful because he is an actor with a genuine interest in horses.

Micheal Leunig is beautiful because he can draw a map of the human soul with just a duck and a guy with curly hair… and because he is one of very few people who can scribble soiled condoms on a lawn and have it published in a national newspaper.

God is beautiful because he created this remarkable world of paradoxes and messy hairy bits and rotting lemon heaps, and all kinds of other stuff that makes me feel things.

God is beautiful just because he made me so I can feel things.

And after having said all that… I still don’t really enjoy standing around singing any song about how beautiful God is repeated endlesly. It doesn’t work for me, and it feels like it means less with every repetition.

But sometimes I think thats because I don’t feel very beautiful myself… and so by focusing on God’s beauty I just feel further away. Maybe this applies to you too Geoff? Do you feel beautiful right now?

Personally I reckon we blokes have lost our freedom to feel beautiful without being gay. Its almost like gay people have a monopoly on beauty and rainbows and happy things. I don’t have any issue with gay people and they are welcome to as much beauty and raibows and happy stuff as they want… but I reckon we should fight for our right to those things too.

So… one thing thats beautiful about me is the way I pour my heart and soul into my guitar, even when it doesn’t sound good.

One thing that’s beautiful about you Geoff, is your thirst for gaining and sharing wisdom, knowledge, ideas, and your childlike pleasure in a really satisfying thought.

One thing thats beautiful about Gerry is his ability to be playful and friendly, and also engage in deep dialogue with younger guys, without having to use his maturity as a claim to superiority.

One thing thats beautiful about Russle Crowe is the shy smile that he sometims gives in interviews when they catch him on a topic that he actually cares about.

I dare you to think of yourself as beautiful for a day, and see if you don’t accidently skip around with a gloriously goofy smile on your face!

One of my favourite songs for the last year has been “Beautiful” by Shawn McDonald. (Lyrics here: http://www.christianlyricsonline.com/artists/shawn-mcdonald/beautiful.html)

Maybe my theology of divine beauty is a little bit simplistic… but mostly when I think about a beautiful God, I think about that beauty as it’s reflected in creation. I kind of associate it with a sense of awe, as I’m caught up by how big all of that stuff is… but then at the same time it’s something totally personal in the Psalm 139 “eyes saw my unformed body” kind of way.

I too, am just a computer nerd but I think that’s beautiful.

I’m loving the interaction here – I’m not interested in being right, I’m pretty sure that I’m not, I just want to understand why I’m wrong

My little boy, Toby (8 months old), is currently Absolutely Fascinated with the blue LED light on the front of my subwoofer.
He doesn’t understand the whole picture, but seriously, he’s always rolling/commandoing his way to a place where he can just touch it. He adores it. If I left him there he might spend all day looking at it, and touching it. He might also try to eat it, but that doesn’t help the analogy.

Same with us – the concept of beauty I think is deeper than good and wonderful – I’d define it (but not THINK of it) as the absence of significant detraction. But I think of beauty as something that lifts my heart, quickens my pulse, makes me feel good. Perhaps it’s the created aspect of me jumping in sync with God’s nature, but God IS beautiful to me because everything I DO know of Him I find just amazing.

You get your head around God loving me just because HE is love: not even because He made me and wants me to be in relationship with Him, but because His very nature IS love. I can’t help but find that amazing, and because I then appreciate it, beautiful.

And we haven’t even got to him making three part harmonies, cranberries, or allowing Richo to dob one from 55m on the boundary yet.

And, yes you are remarkably beautiful.

Now, this is probably just that my own interpretation needs re-alignment, rather than the songs themselves, but I must admit that none of the above things are what I’m thinking about when I’m singing a worship song about the beauty of God. But perhaps just thinking through this will change my focus.

“Now part of this is probably to do with me being a boy, and being a computer nerd at that, so my aesthetic appreciation is likely to be considered somewhat diminished.”

darn! – heres to hoping I (being the boy-nerd’s girlfriend) am aesthetically appreciable. No really, I’m not worried, but it did amuse me!