"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:
