God and the Senses (4): Augustine's "Beauty so old and so new"
The qualities of religious experience mirror those of poetry--and, indeed, some of the best accounts of religious experience are related through poetry (think of St. John of the Cross); as one bends and bursts beyond the typical conventions of language, so does the other. The most engaging poetry pulls at all five senses. So too, the expression of religious experience. I realize that what follows may not be technically be poetry in the sense of ancient meter and verse (though it has some of those things!), but one could easily consider it "prose poetry." Indeed, St. Augustine of Hippo, trained as a rhetor and as a professor of rhetoric, was a master of style, and his Confessions is a masterwork on many levels including its means of expression. Late have I loved you, Beauty so old and so new: Late have I loved you. And see, you were within And I was within the external world And sought you there, And in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovel...