Beauty is not only within the reach of artists, but it is true that it is easier for them to contemplate it, discover it, create it... love it. And, in a way, we are all a little bit artists.
One of the keys to grasping the universe of beauty is inspiration. To create beauty, you have to be inspired, you have to rise above, you have to climb. Inspiration is like looking out of a window that reveals something wonderful to us. And the wonderful thing is something that is not us. When modernity discovers the self, it falls in love with the self and then no longer leaves itself. We have been dreaming of the self for many centuries. We do not leave it. And why? Because the modern spirit confused windows with mirrors.
The window makes the invisible visible, and the medium is art and symbolism. The mirror only reflects; it cannot create, and the medium is the self, which also becomes the end. Therefore, those who do not discover windows can only fall into narcissism or individualism. The window transports us from real things to more real things. The mirror cannot transport us because there is no space, no journey.
When we travel to a new world through inspiration, the powers of the soul begin to work much more actively, because man is destined to marvel, and wonder “touches” ingenuity.
The marvelous has to do with truth. If truth is transcendent, that is, outside of me, then the mirror cannot aspire to it. The narcissist cannot be in the truth because he is stuck in self-referentiality, he drowns in it, he cannot unfold because there are no windows to get out of himself. The mirror is myth, Narcissus, subjectivity, solipsism, self-gaze, pure me and only me.
When one breaks with the culture of the mirror, of spectacle (mirror and spectacle have the same etymological root), then the capacity for wonder is born, because one no longer looks at oneself, but rather the force of the other bursts into the self, which ceases to be me and becomes a person.
When we settle into the culture of the window, the person is always capax Dei, capable of marveling at what one is not, at the truth of others and of the Other. And for that very reason, one can relate and behave as what one is: a person... a relationship. Windows invite relationship, mirrors invite solitude.
Bethlehem is a key window into Christian life. It is a portal through which we glimpse Transcendence. Bethlehem is the door, the portal that introduces us to the mystery of life. And that mystery is revealed in a family in need. There are no mirrors in the window of Bethlehem. Everything there is an epiphany, a window onto Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.
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