Metal ’25: Beauty and Majesty  

This is the second excerpt from the first free hour of my Metal ’25 retreat. You can find the first installment here, with more installments coming over the next three weeks. May your autumn be gracefully honed.

Welcome to the Autumn Retreat Day, a day of preparation for Majesty. When I say Majesty, I’m using a word from the Sufi tradition, where there’s a distinction between Beauty (jamal) and Majesty (jalal). Similarly, in the Western esthetic tradition, there’s a difference between the Beautiful and the Sublime. The Sublime and the Majestic pretty much the same thing.

In the Western tradition, when the word beauty is used, what’s meant is the kind of beauty that makes people feel good. They feel happy and harmonious in that beauty, more settled in their own skin, more tranquil, more at ease.

By contrast, the kind of beauty that is referred to as the sublime is the kind that rocks the boat; the kind that makes you go “Whoa,” possibly makes you shiver with fear; possibly makes you feel broken open by awe. It’s disruptive, uncomfortable, will not make you feel at home, will not make you feel tranquil, might bring you to your knees and make you burst into tears. The Sublime is not a comfy, cozy, pretty kind of beauty.

Then in the Sufi tradition, similarly, when we talk about the Beauty and the Majesty, Beauty in that context refers to the attributes of God that human beings enjoy.

Conversely when we speak of the Majestic, we mean the attributes of the Divine that human beings don’t enjoy. We might respect them. We might be filled with awe. We might even find a kind of rugged beauty in them, but it’s not comfortable: “Really, this is beautiful? Really, this is what’s happening? Really, you’re kidding, this is the will of God? This?”

Autumn is the season of preparation for majesty. It’s the season when at first, we have an incredible fullness of splendor. The richness of the Earth is taken to its limit. We’ve got harvest. We’ve got abundance, and we’ve got a growing sense that it’s not going to go on forever.

One of the qualities of Metal is the awareness of a time limit. We have the first half of autumn, as preparation for needing to put our toys away… and that feeling of, “Here’s what we’ve got, but if we only have a little bit of time left, how do we want to bring it to a completion?” How do I want to bring it to its grand finale? How do I want to prepare for my graduation? How do I want to prepare for my 60th birthday? How do I want to prepare for something that’s like, “Ta da! It’s finished.”

And then after the celebration, the graduation, the 60th, the whatever it is, the “Ta da! It’s finished!” Now, what? Now what? It’s finished. It’s finished. Okay, preparing for majesty. How do I prepare for “It’s finished”?

How have you been preparing for the endings that are coming with the season, or coming with the times?