“Shangri-La” #2 of 3: Beauty and Culture

Lost Horizon by James Hilton, 1933

The isolated monastery of Shangri-La has a greater purpose than paradisiacal living. The High Lama explains:

It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. …I foresaw a time when man exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and culture that I could and preserve them here against the doom toward which the world is rushing” (chp. 10).

Though isolated from the big world, Shangri-La is not ignorant of the outside world. The High Lama is deeply aware of the looming horrors of yet another world war that will end up destroying “all things of beauty and culture.” It is the monastery’s purpose to preserve “all things of beauty and culture” in hopes of “a new Renaissance”. Just as the monasteries of the Dark Ages served as “flickering lanterns” preserving the beauty and culture of the ancient world for Renaissance.

What threatens “beauty and culture” today? Is it yet another world war? Maybe not. That’s the good thing about the bad thing of atomic warfare—it makes all-out war unthinkable. At least so far. We live in a time of little wars; or, as Jesus says, “Wars and rumors of wars”.

Maybe Western culture today is threaten by the very institutions that were formed to preserve our “beauty and culture”. It seems our Western Canon (think “Great Books”) is being dismissed by our universities as the work of “dead white men”. You were blessed to attend Christian colleges which today, like those monasteries of old, preserve “beauty and culture”.

As for those “Great Books”; within a year of our marriage, when we were poor, we purchased all 54 volumes of the Great Books of the Western World. I’ve read so little of them one might conclude the whole set was a waste of money. Maybe so. I have read much of Milton and Melville and Augustine. That’s worth the price.

Today, the books are housed in a classic antique book case that fits nicely into our entry way. That too is of value. Like a stele reminding us that there is this Great Tradition worthy of honor, care and preservation. Jesus says a good teacher is one who “brings out of his treasure what is old and what is new” (Mt 13:52).