Excruciating Beauty

Music has such enormous power. It can make us laugh, create calm, lead to action, inspire to dance, and yes, weep. Music has that power for me. But it evokes a different kind of tears. The theme song written by John Williams from Schindler’s List is a prime example. The marriage of sounds and scenes from the holocaust transports my spirit to a place of deep remembering. To borrow a phrase from the writer and activist, Father Boyle, it leaves a tattoo on my heart.
Recently I have been transfixed by, Enno Maricone’s “Gabriel’s Oboe”,from the movie, The Mission. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WJhax7Jmxs
I have come to believe that this music touches my soul because of its “excruciating beauty”. These two words are not often juxtaposed. They seem to come from very different worlds.
Beauty is usually seen has something sweet, attractive, lovely, and winsome.
Excruciating suggests pain, distress, suffering, even torture. The Latin word cruciare” from which we get “crucify” means to torment.
Excruciating beauty describes the deepest of paradoxes; that what is truly beautiful is often extremely difficult, involves personal struggle, but in doing so marries profound pain and palpable pleasure.
Perhaps it’s no accident that Gabriel’s Oboe touches my soul. The oboe is one of the most difficult instruments to master with great skill born of painful practice.
At the very heart of the Christian faith is the cross. Jesus’ way of redemptive suffering didn’t deny or avoid the painful realities of life caused by human selfishness. Rather with “excruciating beauty” God took on the suffering of the world to redeem and restore it.
Have a listen and experience excruciating beauty…