It just came to me what Genesis 1:26, “Then God said ‘Let us make man in our image,’ ” could well mean.

Up to now my best understanding of that important concept was that it means humans were given consciousness. But reading John O’Donohue’s terrific book, “The invisible Embrace: Beauty,” opened my eyes to another possibility, one that brings a resounding “Yes!” from my mind and soul. Could “made in the image of God” mean that we are given the capacity to see beauty?

I’ve always been astounded by the fact that we see beauty. It is all around us and within us, too. This inward beauty is most easily seen in babies, but to those who have eyes to see it is still in us after all those years. To miss beauty, wherever it exists, is to miss seeing evidence of God’s heart in the creation. And if we don’t see God’s heart, we don’t see the essence of God.

OK, I may be getting too abstract or theological here to be interesting, but let me ask you a question: Isn’t one of your deepest longings to be seen as beautiful?

In a secular age, we go through all sorts of contortions to appear to be beautiful short of exposing our soul’s longing and loving. We spend billions on clothes and cosmetics, are susceptible to every shyster’s promise to transform us to alluring, as if Aphrodite is the one true god, rather goddess.

I’m not knocking sexuality here. Aphrodite has her place in the pantheon of human demigods. It’s just that the beauty I’m speaking of stimulates us more deeply than hormones, as exciting and good as hormonal stimulation can be.

The beauty I’m speaking of stirs our souls, frees us to celebrate rather than masturbate, cherish rather than control, stand in awe as opposed to stand over.

I’m hard pressed here to define beauty. It’s like love. In fact, my experience of beauty is that to see it is to love it.

We humans may have a modicum of free will, but in the face of beauty I’ve had no choice. I’ll bet the same is true for you.

I already mentioned the beauty of babies; add sunrises and sunsets, every flower, even every leaf, if we take the time to really see them, and every single human being, although I’ve had to say a time or two, “God, I’m glad you love them. I’m not there yet.”

You already know what I’m talking about. You know beauty in music and art as well as nature and the skies. And doesn’t experiencing beauty call you to wonderful places of not only high emotional experience but high moral inspiration?

That’s another thing about beauty; to see it is to be called to be its protector. Anyone who wants to despoil the child or person or artwork or expression of nature that has connected you with your deepest heart and the heart of the universe must be persuaded or prohibited from the desecration. Seeing beauty has its ethical imperative.

I’ve felt this way about beauty for a long time, so you can imagine my joy in finding O’Donohue’s introduction to his book.

He speaks to my mystical and social justice seeking heart when he writes, “At first it sounds completely naive to suggest that now might be the time to invoke and awaken beauty. Yet this is exactly the claim that this book explores. Why? Because there is nowhere else to turn and we are desperate; furthermore, it is because we have so disastrously neglected the Beautiful that we now find ourselves in such a terrible crisis.”

I close for now with these words from the Islamic Sufi poet mystic of the 14th century, also quoted by O’Donohue.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Contact Bill Gregory, an author and retired minister, at: gregor1@maine.rr.com