Seeking beauty

At the end of Children's Worship at the congregation I serve, the chalice flame lit at the beginning of the service is extinguished as everyone says together, "It is finished in beauty."  This has now been added at the end of the benediction the congregation in the sanctuary says each week.

"It is finished in beauty."

It's a lovely, dare I say beautiful, way to bring an end to such sacred time.  On it's own, though, it's incomplete.  That's because, in addition to being finished in beauty, it is also begun in beauty.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's sustained in beauty.

Last week I raised the classic question of a spiritual director:  where do you see God in this?  It's a question that can be asked no matter what the "this" is.  Whether we're in the midst of joy or sorrow, clarity or confusion, anger or grief, hopelessness or hope, celebration or concern ... wherever we are in our life, God is with us.  This question is designed to encourage us to listen for God's voice, look for God's fingerprints, feel for God's embrace.

As I've written about before, of course, that word -- "God" -- is extraordinarily problematic for some of us.   It has been so misused (as I would say) that for many it is simply irredeemable.  There are others for whom the word "God" isn't at all problematic -- it's absolutely meaningless.  Like "purple dancing unicorns," the word points to nothing.  It quite literally has no meaning.

Nonetheless, the question is worthwhile.  I would contend that whether or not you find the word "God" palatable, or meaningful, it points (like a finger at the moon) toward a quality of life that is sustaining.  Perhaps that's the reason that word is often replaced with the phrase, "Spirit of Life." So asking where you find God in your current situation is really asking, "where do you see something sustaining in this?"  Or, to put it yet another way, "where do you see beauty?"

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the saying goes, and there are lots of things that can be counted as "beautiful."  I've heard that Einstein was once asked how he knew his General Theory of Relatively was correct and he answered, "because it's beautiful."  (If that story is apocryphal I'd rather not know.  As the theologian Frederick Buechner said of the Christian story, "It's too good not to be true.")  There's even a Wikipedia page for "Mathematical Beauty," which contains this quote from the writing of Bertrand Russell:

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry."

Sublime.  Delight.  Exaltation. Where are these right now?  Can you see anything that elicits any of this?  Wherever you are in your life at this moment, whatever is happening in and around you, can you see/feel something that lifts you up, reminds you of the "more than," and which can be a touchstone for you?  That's a big part -- maybe really the most important part -- of what I'm asking when I ask, "Where is God for you in this?"

And here's a little something paradoxical -- beauty isn't always beautiful.  By that I mean only that the "beauty" that will sustain us in some situations doesn't "look" all that "beautiful."  We'd be hard pressed to ... well ... to press it into any of the well-established categories society has agreed to call by that name.  Even Russell's "cold and austere" description of mathematical beauty could be recognized as "beautiful."  Yet there have certainly been times in my life -- and perhaps in yours as well -- in which there was simply nothing that I could, by any stretch of the imagination, describe as "beautiful" (at least, as people generally use the term). 

Nonetheless, when encouraged to really look -- really listen, taste, touch, smell, feel -- I found that I could always find an answer to those questions:  "Where is the life-sustaining beauty in this?"  "Where is God in this?"

What do you say?


Pax tecum,

RevWik



P.S. -- The great bop pianist and composer Thelonious Monk wrote a piece titled, "Ugly Beauty," and contemplating that paradoxical juxtaposition has always been helpful to me in my spiritual growth.  I also bring this up because it's a really cool tune (apparently the only waltz Monk ever wrote).  Enjoy:

The Great Question

If you have ever worked with a spiritual director before, or are doing so now, there's a question you've probably heard:

Where is God in this?

I suppose you could say that this is the question of the spiritual life.  Where is God -- in this experience, this relationship, this feeling, this crisis, this confusion, this moment.  I often try to describe the difference (in really general terms!) between a therapist and a spiritual director like this:

• When you visit a therapist while in the midst of a crisis, let's say, the therapist is going to try to help you to understand it and/or to figure out how to get through it to the other side.
• When you go to a spiritual director while in the midst of a crisis, the spiritual director is going to try to help you find where God is (where the Holy is, where the Sacred is, where Love is) right there in the midst of it all.

Hence, where is God in this?

A friend of mine from Japan once told me that there's no way to ask the question, "Where am I?" in Japanese.  He said that no Japanese person would ask a question with such an obvious answer -- "Where are you?  You're here, of course!"  According to this friend, the question you ask when you're lost in Japan is, "Where is here?"

Similarly, I suppose the question "where is God in this ...?" has a pretty obvious answer, too -- "Here!  Everywhere!" I guess, then, that what we're really asking is, "Where do you see, or where are you experiencing, God in this ...?"

This way of asking the question allows for an extremely common answer that some folks seem to think is an inappropriate one, no matter how true it is:  "Where do I see God in this?  Where am I experiencing the Sacred right now?  I don't!  God is nowhere to be found!"  That doesn't seem very "spiritually advanced" to a lot of people.  Maybe even you.

When the author of Matthew recalls the words Jesus spoke from the cross he includes these words in Aramaic, ""Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"  The author of Mark remembers this too, that while Jesus was dying he quoted the 22nd Psalm -- "My God, my God ... why have you forsaken me?"

If Jesus can look around and not see God, if Jesus can feel abandoned by that Holy Love which is the foundational reality, it should certainly be okay if you or I feel that same way.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Together

We have come to the end of our extended meditation on the Rev. Kathleen McTigue's New Year's reading: 

The first of January is another day dawning, the sun rising as the sun always rises, the earth moving in its rhythms, with or without a certain as the day of new beginning, separating the old from the new.  So it is:  everything is the same, bound into its history as we ourselves are bound. 

Yet we also stand at a threshold, the new year something truly new, still unformed, leaving a stunning power in our hands: 

What shall we do with this great gift of Time, this year? 

Let us begin by remembering that whatever justice, whatever peace and wholeness might bloom in our world this year, we are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet, the embodiment of all the best visions of our people.  

The year can be new ground for the seeds of our dreams.  Let us take the step forward, together, onto new ground, planting our dreams well, faithfully, and in joy.

What stands out for me most in the last paragraph is her invitation, her encouragement, that we move forward into this newness together.   It is true that we must life our own lives, that no one can live our lives for us.  In that sense, we do travel the path of life alone.

At the same time, though, we humans are communal people.  It can be argued, has been argued, and, I would argue, is really beyond arguing, that we are not truly "alive" if we are entirely alone.  We need one another.

This is one of the reasons that many spiritual directors prefer to refer to themselves as spiritual companions.  Those of us who do this work are not usually too interested in being overly directive.  We do, though, want to keep you company as you walk your own pathway of spirit.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

I Must Do What I Can

Last month began "unpacking" a New Year's reading by the Rev. Kathleen McTigue: 

The first of January is another day dawning, the sun rising as the sun always rises, the earth moving in its rhythms, with or without a certain as the day of new beginning, separating the old from the new.  So it is:  everything is the same, bound into its history as we ourselves are bound. 

Yet we also stand at a threshold, the new year something truly new, still unformed, leaving a stunning power in our hands: 

What shall we do with this great gift of Time, this year? 

Let us begin by remembering that whatever justice, whatever peace and wholeness might bloom in our world this year, we are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet, the embodiment of all the best visions of our people.  

The year can be new ground for the seeds of our dreams.  Let us take the step forward, together, onto new ground, planting our dreams well, faithfully, and in joy.

I've been looking at one paragraph a week, and there are two left, so next week will be the end of the series.  For today,

Let us begin by remembering that whatever justice, whatever peace and wholeness might bloom in our world this year, we are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet, the embodiment of all the best visions of our people.  

So often we hear people say -- or, perhaps, we, ourselves, say -- that there's so much wrong in the world and just wish someone would do something about it.  Does that sound familiar?  This can be about something the scale of, say, climate change, or something happening at the local level.  Actually, it can be even closer than that -- it's not too uncommon to hear a person bemoaning some problem they're facing and wishing that someone or something could be done about it.

Declaring that "we are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet ..." that are needed to effect change, though, makes waiting for someone else to do something patently foolhardy.  A challenge of the decision to engage the life of the spirit is that we will be reminded, over and over again, that "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

That can be overwhelming.  I know.  So I want to offer something that might just take the edge off a bit.  These words by Edward Everett Hale (who, ironically, was so involved in so many things that he was sometimes called Edward Everything Hale):

I am only one,
Yet still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
Yet still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything,
I must not hesitate to do the something
that I can.

Perhaps here, then, we find an answer to last week's question.  What shall we do with this great gift of Time, with our one wild and precious life?  Nothing more, yet nothing less, than the something that we can.

Now the question becomes, what is that something?

Pax tecum,

RevWik