© 1978 Frances Huttington
© 1978 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
There is such a great temptation to let The URANTIA Book, a poet, philosopher, artist, or some other majestic intellect answer this question for me, but this would not involve the love of self-sharing, so much in my life now. I begin with the gift of life — God’s spirit in all of us.
Back in my experience, back where I well recollect the beginning of sense awareness, there was a small town in Michigan with easy access to a country road. I was eight years old.
What sights — miles of blue sky, clouds and more clouds, rainbows, varieties of birds, wild flowers, great stacks of hay, fields of com and alfalfa! What sounds — surely this is the beginning of my great love of music! What wonderful (and some not so wonderful) fragrances! Such touching — cats and kittens, dogs, horses, cows, caterpillars, and ourselves! And taste — all those berries and deep purple grapes. Such joyous investigative activity! This was a glorious childhood preparation for a personal definition of beauty.
There are many school years in this defining. In these growth years, there are hints of spiritual awakening, a desire for more than random sense experience. Hopefully, we all have memories of teachers, loved ones, and friends who were adequately attentive to our curiosities, who were perceptive of our yearning — the yearning for expression, for creating.
There are years of marriage and parenthood in this defining. Beauty has now experienced contrast and it is growing ever inward and it sometimes hurts! And there is a turning to God for help.
When The URANTIA Book came into my life, strange and overwhelming things began to happen. There were times when I could define anything clearly and accurately, particularly beauty with companions truth and goodness. There were eight of these years and I now call them my years of turbulence. “Many spiritual births are accompanied by much anguish of spirit and marked psychological perturbations…” (UB 103:2.1)
After these intense years I looked at the quality of simplicity with sincere longing. With Jesus, beauty was an adjunct in teaching children to worship. He had said, “Beauty is most religious when it is most simple and naturelike.” (UB 167:6.6)
Now beauty has incorporated God hunger, the desire to be like him.
“No matter how much you may grow in Father comprehension, your mind will always be staggered by the unrevealed infinity of the Father — I AM, the unexplored vastness of which will always remain unfathomable and incomprehensible throughout all the cycles of eternity. No matter how much of God you may attain, there will always remain much more of him, the existence of which you will not even suspect. And we believe that this is just as true on transcendental levels as it is in the domains of finite existence. The quest for God is endless!” (UB 106:7.5)
This is beauty.
Frances Huttington
Portland, Oregon