Let Beauty Interrupt
Life can be ugly. You have to read beautiful books.
Review by Ali Holcomb
Speaking from personal experience, Sarah Clarkson’s This Beautiful Truth is one of the best things to read in a really dark period of life. By this February, I had been through months of a roller coaster, with my highest hopes raised and dashed again and again. For two months, I had dutifully shown up to endless doctors’ appointments, with promises of a lot more to follow. How tragic to be barely into February and already feel exhausted by the year—and wearily wondering about how much longer this would continue, knowing it could be years. All through January I didn’t really want to read books, which tells you something is really off with me. Reading is my favorite pastime, but I didn’t have the energy even for that.
Clarkson puts her mental illness into words that most of us can understand. She describes how terrible night can be when instead of your brain shutting off in rest, it races and races, playing out years of horrors that have not—and likely won’t—come to pass. But throughout all of her hardship and the decade-long battle that kept her from the “normal” path, Clarkson describes how it was moments of encountering beauty that seemed to most pull her out of the pit. In a similar pit myself, I’d been trying to faithfully read scripture, hoping to find relief there. And some days it was comforting, but if I’m honest, most of the time it just felt like I was going through the motions of daily discipline, that they were just another part of the darkness of my life. I’m not denying that discipline is good, of course; despite their obvious benefits, doing things to keep myself in good physical and spiritual health are rarely enticing or fun. So after months of faithfully reading a chapter of scripture a day without feeling anything in response, I felt camaraderie when Sarah said that it was reading Tolkien that saved her life. Perhaps it was okay to find God in something unexpected, outside of my daily disciplines? Instead of pounding on the door reading verse after verse, maybe I could allow him to simply find me?
I didn’t pick up This Beautiful Truth out of nowhere. I’ve actually been a fan of the Clarkson sisters, Sarah and Joy, for both their books and their winsome and cheerful social media posts, for some time. Still (and despite the marathon of doctors’ appointments that were blighting my year) I felt a little silly ordering Sarah’s latest book, Reclaiming Quiet (2024). My life was already quiet, with many former excitements and stressors left behind, so would I find any camaraderie in Sarah’s new book? And yet. The more I read, the more I realized that my soul was anything but quiet. The rest of my life may have calmed down, but it was just enough to make room for the new stress that was all-consuming. I found her words, rather than making me feel guilty for indulging in undeserved stress, were soothing. Quiet, I was reminded, is different from silence. I was used to silence, that dismal abyss that I filled with podcasts during the workday so as not to let my thoughts wander to the unanswered questions that threatened to swamp my waking mind. Quiet, on the other hand, is peace. You don’t have to drown it out. In a state of quiet, you can actually listen and know the closeness of God.
My growing conviction is that in our darkest times, in our deepest fears, we must seek out beauty more than ever before.
Thus refreshed, I turned to Sarah’s previous book, This Beautiful Truth (2021). I was no longer in doubt of the welcome and companionship I would find. Sarah points out that when our minds are in a bleak place, it takes a lot to pull us out of that pit. Doing the same thing over and over again doesn’t always work, even when we’re doing what should work—and especially when those darker paths of the mind become too well-worn. Sometimes the roadblocks on those weary paths must, instead, be sudden and surprising. For instance, reading poetry always takes my mind to an unaccustomed place. Rather than reading chapter after chapter in a binge read, I usually only read a poem or two at a time. Just enjoying their beauty, rather than chasing a plot, is like slowly sipping a cup of hot tea. It brings my mind to quietness. (Of course, an excellent plot can take us out of ourselves as well. But as I said, sometimes the things that should work, don’t.)
What I have most taken away upon finishing this book is that beauty is the great interrupter. Strawberries (I put down my Bible and bought a pound of fresh strawberries after I started This Beautiful Truth), and walking outside, and listening to beautiful music rather than political podcasts, and sunsets, and taking in bright colors found in nature: I found that these are all helpful pivots away from my spiraling thoughts. Perhaps my first thought when staring out at the Chesapeake Bay near my home is not the glory and goodness of God, but more times than not, I end up there. Eating a bright strawberry, I start to marvel at the taste, then realize it is by design that it tastes so good. Marveling at beauty can lead you, step by step, to marvel at the Creator.
My growing conviction is that in our darkest times, in our deepest fears, we must seek out beauty more than ever before. In nature, in our everyday surroundings, and if you’re at all like me, in books. After I closed This Beautiful Truth, I instinctively said to myself, “I need more books like this.” So I went through the reference page at the end of the book and ordered way too many used books online: more poetry, Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories, Buechner, a whimsical novel with a beautiful premise Clarkson mentioned offhand… my shelf is now stocked with months of good books, beautiful books that I hope to continue to use as an interruption when my thoughts begin to spiral.
No, beautiful books alone will not mend or soften the hard road ahead, but I’m armed now with the means to redirect my mind. My new books will not stop every low mood. Beautiful books alone will not heal what is broken. Yet they have the power to interrupt my directionless thinking and endless worry. They can remind me of a deeper beauty that endures beyond mere present circumstance. It still sounds cliche to say, “Pursue beauty when life is hard”—but I think it’s true, and This Beautiful Truth was my first stepping stone to a new way to approach hardship. Sarah Clarkson never claims she is healed. Her mind still spirals—but beauty is a balm to sorrow. Why did God make so much beauty in this world? I feel confident, now, in my answers. First, because He is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty; and second, because He knows it is a sure way to catch our attention, catch our breath in our throats, take us out of ourselves. And for me at least, the first, best way to reach that point is to open a beautiful book.
Ali Holcomb is a military wife in Maryland. She has written for Mere Orthodoxy and is a regular contributor at Mockingbird Theology, and just launched a Substack where she sorts through her latest “life thoughts.”
This Beautiful Truth: How God’s Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness was published by Baker Publishing Group on June 8, 2021. You can purchase your own copy from the publisher here.
