Break with technology and backfill the time with beauty—that’s the call of the week.

Yesterday, while traveling, I searched for beauty, and it came in the form of an email from my friend and fellow-writer, Lore Ferguson Wilbert. It was an email filled with links, each meant to pull the reader into a more sensory experience. She wrote:

To help you engage all your senses (which is part of waking up), I listened to this four-minute masterpiece this morning and by the end was gulping back tears. The Sound of Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago.

I lost myself in the haunting and holy beauty of the clip, and after those four minutes were over, I recalled a video I’d seen years ago. In it, the Holy Father sat in a Tbilisi church as an Orthodox choir sang Psalm 53 over him. The drones from that choir are enough to bring you to your knees, but when the child lifts her voice in lament, spirits bend low, listening.

If Dostoyevsky and John Paul II are right, if beauty can save the world, this music might be salvific.

Life Examined: The Search for Beauty

Where did you find beauty yesterday? If you didn’t, did you look?

Grab a Copy and Wake Up

THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.