"The heart is where the nature, feeling and intimacy of a life dwell, and without heart the world grows suddenly cold. In its desire for beauty, it reaches toward the beyond. This poignant desire for beauty suggests that beauty is the homeland of the heart…. When God created [the heart], it was fashioned for an eternal kinship with beauty; God knew that the human heart would always be wedded to him in desire; for the other name of God is beauty. The heart is the tabernacle of divine beauty. St John of the cross puts this poetically:
I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted
Because of all the desires I have ever known,
Just one did I cling to
For it was the essence of all desire:
To know beauty.
-John O-Donohue
