by Maria Gotchenia
Sustained with Beauty, oil pastels on paper by Maria Gotchenia
SUSTAINED WITH BEAUTY
This piece of art is my reflection on a vital role beauty plays in our lives as Christ followers. As Simone Weil famously said, "There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty; the other is affliction." I believe that during hard times, a heart might want to harden, just to protect itself from the pain it has to endure. But a hardened heart is not alive. It is in survival mode. Getting it back to life may be a challenge. Surrounded by strong walls of pain, resentment, and cynicism, it can be deaf to the voice of reason. It needs to be pierced. And God pierced my heart with beauty many times. He nourished and sustained my roots in Him with beauty. The beauty of stories, nature, and art spoke to me in a way straightforward logic couldn't. Beauty, indeed, will save the world. It certainly saved me.
MARIA GOTCHENIA
Maria Gotchenia is a linguist, an author, and an artist. She is currently living in Belarus, Eastern Europe, with her husband, two sons, and a White Swiss Shepherd dog named Alaska. As an author, Maria contemplates what it means to be human, creative, and a Christian in the Machine Age. As an artist, she paints nature with oil pastels and charcoal, combining it with her own words or the quotes she finds inspiring to bring some beauty, hope, and inspiration to the table. She writes and paints because, as Samwise Gamgee put it in The Lord of the Rings movie, “There is some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.”