A Different Kind of Beautiful

Feb. 11, 2017

This week we had the lovely opportunity to study Isaiah. Honestly, my philosophy on Isaiah in the past was similar to what the late president Packer described the experience being like – to paraphrase, he says that just as you settle into the narrative of the Book of Mormon, you get to the writings of Isaiah, and honest to goodness, they’re boring and difficult to get through. And then he pleads us to keep moving on, hopefully gleaning occasional inspiration. Or, if you can only look at the words, just keep moving. I always felt comforted that an apostle of the Lord told me this, so I could just kind of…looked at the words. As was suggested. Because Isaiah was hard. Although, I did learn some pretty cool things about Isaiah this week in class though, which made him a lot more enjoyable to read. He was a Hebrew poet, and the conventions of his writing style makes it, well, make more sense. Honestly, you only really have to understand half of what’s happening because Hebrew poets are notorious for repeating analogies so that you get a better idea of it. That’s cool stuff right there.

However, I am not here to tell you about all the things I learned from Isaiah. To be frank, it’ll take a lot more than a few class periods to really gain a greater understanding of what the heck he’s saying. So, contrary to how I may have led you on, I had another interesting experience this week that somehow made another part of the gospel a reality for me.

As an art major, you have to experiment with a lot of different kinds of media, even if you have your own specialty. This semester, I’m fortunate enough to be in a 3D art class with a heavy emphasis on modern art (both of which I just don’t enjoy. At all). The crowning event of it all was having to fire a ceramic piece in the kiln – the odd geometric shapes I’d made had been glazed with a paint that somehow needed to be pulled out of the white-hot kiln and tossed into a barrel of flammable materials so that it would cool down in a manner where it wouldn’t explode. To some, that sounds fun, I’m sure, but this girl doesn’t need any more adult play-doh in her life for awhile. However, upon actually seeing the finished product, it turned into something kind of beautiful. While not my favorite thing, there was a certain beauty to it. In life, we aren’t always going to do the things we want or like to do. But sometimes those things serve a greater purpose – and to me this week, the greater purpose was appreciating a different kind of beauty. With both Isaiah and 3D art, I have my own personal struggles. That doesn’t mean that they are things that I should immediately discount. There’s layers to everything that will help us to understand how beautiful every individual truly is. And that’s part of our life here on earth – we grow and learn and understand people so that we can be more like the Savior, and it’s going to be a lifelong process!