May Beauty Arise
Written by Renee Eiler
Issue 01, September 2025
"Beauty will save the world." -Dostoevsky
There is a revolution beginning.
As humans with curious natures, we long for our souls to know — to truly know — what it is to be. We desire, deep within the cracks and the crevices of who we are, to live in a way that embodies all that we believe. We catch glimpses of it when we see color upon color light up the sky in the evenings, or when we work the ground and reap the benefits of our labors through picking our own strawberries or smelling our own flowers. It is there when our hands touch a new life, fresh from the womb, and something in us says, “I am home.” We feel it in little hands reaching up for ours during a barefoot walk in the grass. We know what it is to be when we come away from a soul-catching time with a friend. It is felt when we retrieve a fresh-baked loaf of bread from the oven. It is experienced when our souls recognize that they have purpose and meaning in more than fame or money or materials. We know it when we hear a song that touches our hearts and brings a tear to our eyes, not because we are sad, but because we are living. These moments and so many more are the moments we return to over and over to remember what it is to be. Our body is meant to express beauty and when we tend it, move it, nurture it, and preserve it, we are one step closer to bearing the full image of beauty.
This is where beauty originates: in the ordinary. In what we already possess. In the choice to take all that this world calls “mundane” or “simple” or “ineffective” and seek to make it the most impressionable thing that could be. This is not done by adding more or giving into the idea that if we could just fix this, then we would better represent beauty. Beauty will not arise so long as we always look outside of what we have already been given.
Beauty is the portal: the portal to truth. It is the key to all five senses. It is the gate to our growth. It is the breath to a life-altering reality. It is the remedy for an illness of mediocrity that has humanity bound. It is world-changing peace. And it rises from the earth as if it is part of it, an intrinsic and binding reaction to the created and the Creator…like the dew in a spring morning, like the grass that grows from the dirt beneath our feet, like the mother bird who chooses so carefully which branches and twigs and leaves will become a part of her dwelling space. It is meant to be.
Yet this world is loud. This world loves noise. The nature of our lives is such that we almost cannot help but consume copious amounts of mere information; ideas, instructions, facts, how-tos … and the human soul is weary of the noise. It creates a constant static in us that feels impossible to remove and it clouds that which we truly long for.
What happens when that which is beautiful becomes fragmented? When the depths of our world is broken into pieces, leaving behind a battered remnant of what we once knew? When that which is true and authentic crumbles into a pile of masks, and one by one the humans come, standing in line to receive a mask of their own?
When a soul realizes their beauty is fragmented, most try to go back. We travel down the corridor of time daily, holding onto memories, that which we saw, felt, and touched, in order to continue to see, feel, and touch. The masks we waited in line to receive now hide us…they hide our souls, our hearts, and our potential. We hand masks to the next generation as they do what they were made to do: mirror. We long to create, as we should, so we create shadows in place of the beauty that would move forward. We replace the colors that bring us life and wholeness with the bland…with sameness. A likeness to everyone else. What once was real has become fake.
In the effort to find some semblance of beauty, we lose it. We have traded life for shadows. And if beauty does not arise, we have nothing to live for.
How does beauty live?
When humans make choices, we choose our out- comes. From the moment we wake until the moment we sleep, we are deciding: will I live? Or will I just survive?
So, dear reader, we invite you to revolt.
Revolt against the loud.
Revolt against the ugly.
Revolt against the bland, the stale, and the broken.
Revolt against the glamor that promises only emptiness.
Revolt against merely consuming and not embodying.
Revolt against doing what all the other humans do simply because it is what is done.
Revolt against masking, against hiding, against compressing.
Revolts do not happen in one fell swoop. They begin with choices. They begin with truths that are embodied and connections that are made between mind, body, and soul. Those truths are acted upon and the faithful carry it to completion.
We are beauty. We have access to beauty. We can choose that which is beautiful.
You may ask yourself, what is at stake? What will happen if I do not revolt? If I continue to live as I always have and follow the shadowy footsteps of the ones before me who believed we are victims to darkness and it isn’t really going to get better until we die…how will that affect my world?
You will lose your world. The soul will suffer first and foremost.
The world, its souls, and all that is true and good and lasting is at stake.
The choice to reject the “normal” is not always easy. “No one else sees this as an issue. Why has it become such a big deal?” is a question you may receive on more than one occasion.
But dear, beautiful human, let us go against the current: gracefully, confidently, and consistently.
It means going first. It means doing the difficult and sticky work of stepping out of victimhood and into responsibility and walking away from textbook answers and textbook living to find the truth. Beauty and truth must go together. When you separate them, they are those fragmented pieces of emptiness that we unfortunately find all around us.
It is all right here in front of us. We only need to be willing to see, to touch, and to feel all that we have been given. And in doing so, we play a part in the preservation of the good.
So, may beauty arise.