Belief and beauty

I visited the MOA again today. It made me excited to visit (read: chase Ada around) museums in DC. I wonder if taking kids to museums often as toddlers makes them appreciate them more as older kids, or reminds them of the hours of boredom their mother subjected them to.

Today I went with my grandpa while my sister took The Lou. At one point he was in tears looking at a vase and thinking about what devotion the work expresses.

I was reminded again that religious experiences can happen outside of religious context. In fact, maybe a typifying aspect of Islamic art is that it is expressive of the sacred without having a religious function. I wondered about the ways I could incorporate the sacred into the more mundane aspects of my life—in real ways, not just turning on old EFY soundtracks as I do my hair.

I loved a line repeated often in the exhibition: God is beautiful and loves beauty. If there is one thing my short experience has taught me, it is that those words are true. I believe in a God who loves the beautiful.