Beauty

Yesterday, while walking through the most beautiful park in Toronto on the shore of Lake Ontario I had another of those moments of such great and poignant beauty that I felt almost stunned.

What am I experiencing? it seems like the pull of the most wonderful beauty together with  a strong and painful awareness that such beauty is so very ephemeral. Why can't I grab it and hold it and never let it go? Like the most beautiful sunset you see you know it will be gone in minutes and no other sunset will ever be quite like it. Beauty is not graspable it seems. 

But two things come to my mind about these experiences.

First of all I found myself, yesterday especially, really aware again of the passage of my life; the recognition that it is rolling on, day after day to a conclusion that is closer with every moment. In faith I trust that that is okay; that it is even good. But at the same time I found to my surprise how much I wanted to cling; to hold fast; to hang on. But I can't do that. Life does not allow clinging. Life does not want us to cling. That is of course, easier said than done but it is part of what is beautiful about God - there is a kind of beckoning, a kind of live now, fully this moment and then let it go because there is more.

Secondly, there is something about overwhelming beauty. Today on the radio someone was asking people to share whether it was important for their places of worship to be beautiful. I found myself saying (to myself) yes, it is important to me because to worship in a place of beauty is to bring me/us closer to God who is Beauty. St Augustine wrote '...late have I loved you oh Beauty ancient and new, late have I loved you...'. He too saw God as Beauty. It does seem to me then that everything beautiful is a reflection of God. So part of my response to these experiences of awesome (in its fullest sense) beauty is my whole being's recognition that I encounter God. That is why it plunges my whole self into a rich mixing of pain and joy.

And here is beauty in abundance!

I want to say though that beauty comes in many ways. I remember years ago meeting a girl who was entirely bedridden, unable to speak or to contribute to her own care in any way. But there, in her, I saw a wonderful beauty for she had a smile that was so unexpected and so 'giving' (that is the only word I can think of) that I have never forgotten the gift of beauty I received in meeting her. Or the person in India who, eaten away with leprosy, struggled to make sure that I and my friends could be comfortable while we were visiting their community and who brought us the only chairs they had and placed them in the shade. That kindness too was a gift of beauty. 

So beauty is not what we see in the glossies or the films. What I see is that it is all around us but most of all in the depths of our hearts - which is of course, where God is.  

The present moment

About a year ago my friend Cathy gave me a wonderful little book of daily wisdom from Thich Nhat Hanh (Your True Home, Shambhala Publishing). I think this writer is a Buddhist monk and what he offers is so beautifully wise and precise and, it seems to me, wonderfully applicable to my life, today.

This morning I was especially struck by what I read because it is so true and so simple and yet so hard to live. He says: 

If you put an aim in front of you, you'll be running all your life, and happiness will never be possible. Happiness is possible only when you stop running , and cherish the present moment and who you are. You don't need to be someone else; you are already a wonder of life.

Isn't that good? even beautiful? But how hard it often seems - to me at least - for much of my life, to live. There is so often each day something in the future I am going to be looking forward to - seeing someone, or planning a holiday, or feeling better - whatever. And then, I discover when I do that, that I miss what the here and now is putting before me. I miss really listening to others and to the world around me. I miss often what I am actually at that moment, feeling or thinking.

Thich Nhat Hanh often speaks of being aware of your breath and how that brings you back to the now, and keeps you there. I am not good at that yet but I want to be. Although I find that it is sometimes better for me, as a Christian, to be present to my God - but I think maybe that works out to the same thing. 

I love it when he says, You don't need to be someone else'. How often do we really appreciate how beautiful each of us really is; how very precious just as we are. At the very least, we know in our deepest hearts that we can't be someone else, so why not explore what a beautiful creation I really am.

More thoughts about fear

Well, I have now finished Karen Armstrong's book 'The Battle for God' (Random House, 2000)and am really grateful to have read it. It seems clear that there are no easy answers to the divisions that permeate our world but I do think that there can be hope.

At the conclusion of the book she says something that seems to me to be really worth pondering because we often think we live in a rational society. She says: Freud showed that far from being wholly rational creatures, human beings were at the mercy of the powerful, irrational forces of the unconscious...This , indeed, was demonstrated by the modern experience. Despite the cult of rationality, modern history has been punctuated by witch-hunts and world wars which have been explosions of unreason. Without the ability to approach the deeper regions of the psyche , which the old myths, liturgies and mystical practices of the best conservative faith once provided, it seemed that reason sometimes lost its mind in our brave new world. 

All through her book Armstrong has spoken about the fear that is at the heart of fundamentalism. It is a fear that all that one understands to give life meaning is being assailed. But also, those of us on the 'other' side perhaps seek to deal with our fear with other kinds of control;  control of disease, disruption, abandonment and the ultimate, death. 

So, is there an answer? No simple one for sure but in later work Armstrong suggests what seems to her to be a worthwhile effort to change the self-destructive, untrusting direction our world seems to be taking. She suggests the living out of compassion.  http://charterforcompassion.org/ 

I have mentioned this before and will no doubt mention it again because I find it so hopeful.

Compassion implies that we will learn to respect and listen to one another. That is a start. We don't have to agree, we may have to work in different directions. But surely we are less likely to fear the person or community or culture that we try to understand, to listen to, to respect. It starts with me, here with my own personal relationships but also with me trying not to be afraid of another colour or culture or language...things I do not understand. Then maybe, that frees the other to stop being defensive or hurt or angry and we begin to build bridges. Compassion of course, goes further but you will see that if you investigate the site.

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Wonder

This morning started out very, very wet and stormy. Thunder and lightning and torrential rain accompanied people to work so they were huddled under umbrellas as they waited at the streetcar stop.

A little later it stopped pouring and there was a hint that the sun might actually exist. I was down by the lakeshore shortly after, walking along the boardwalk. There were almost no people there except for the odd dog-walker or jogger. 

As I started to walk I had to stop because what was before me was so beautiful as to be breathtaking. The sky was stormy and bright at the same time and the sun shimmered silver on the horizon. The wind was blowing so that huge waves were pounding the sandy shore and the rocky edges of the beach. It was for me, one of those moments that make you want to say 'Thank you!!! What an incredible gift'. And I did.

Then I found my self wanting to hold on to it; wanting it to last longer, even forever. I imagine most of us have felt that way sometimes too. But of course it disappeared - or at least it changed so that that special beauty disappeared. ( I was going to say that it became more ordinary but that is such an insult to the beauty of the ordinary.)

The reality of the fragile moment of beauty reminded me of how I always do want to hold on as the moment whizzes by before I may even know what I have seen or heard or experienced. Life itself whizzes by - not just the moments of beauty and so often you just want to say 'whoa!, hold it, I haven't had enough'.

I think all great religious thinkers have reminded us that the way to live is simply to live each moment; let it be, just be. Hard to do but I can see it is the best guide by which to live.

Mind Boggling

As I shared before, I have been reading Karen Armstrong's book about the growth of fundamentalism (The Battle for God) and listening to some tapes of Jean Vanier on the Gospel of St John. Yesterday something really struck me and I wanted to share it with you.

I know that Christianity is hardly the flavour of the month currently. Folks, sadly (from my point of view) are leaving in droves - at least as organized religion. I think I do understand better why, the longer I live and also, the more I read. 

I found myself comparing how Jean goes about talking about Jesus, about the Gospels, about what it means to be a Christian and what Karen is saying that many Christian (I want to put that in quotation marks) fundamentalists think being Christian means. The difference between the two is so enormous that I wonder how it can be that people can read and study and pray around the same book (the bible) and come up with such wildly different understandings.

Jean (you will understand that I am totally in accord with what he says) speaks of Christianity and most specifically the Jesus he meets in the gospel as the essence of forgiveness, mercy, compassion, integrity, acceptance of the human condition in all its darks and lights. That is not to say that Jesus is wishy-washy because love is hard and often painful. But it is to say that he represents all that is best in human nature.

The fundamentalist seems mostly to be looking at (as fact) the creation story in the book of Genesis and the horrors and battles found in the book of Revelation (which I would like to suggest should not be in the bible since with the exception of a few beautiful passages it seems totally out of sync with the message of Jesus in the gospels). Anyway, the fundamentalist prefers to think of Jesus as a man of battle who in anger is going to wipe out everyone who does not please him. This Jesus is not, apparently, a man of peace. We are all going to be judged severely if we believe in: birth control, abortion, gay marriage, evolution, equality of women and so on. The message is exclusive (nobody but white, protestants [maybe a few RC's] need apply) and severe.

How can this be? Nowhere in the gospels is that part of Jesus' message. The most powerful of Jesus' images is in fact, not to obey 'the rules' but to love. He also makes clear time after time, that we - as we are, with all the dark places we want to hide - are beloved sons and daughters of God. That in good part was what Jesus exists to say to us.

I suppose that what happens here has to do with our personalities? our upbringing? our fears? so that what we believe will be to some extent governed by that. Perhaps mostly our fears.

I am just boggled and very, very sad that a message which is meant to be loving gets transformed into exclusive, angry, misogynist so-called Christianity.

Facing fear

For some reason or other both the book I have been reading: Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God: a history of fundamentalism and Jean Vanier's tapes that I wrote about last time, have spoken of the power of fear in us.

Fear feels like one of the most havoc-creating emotions we can experience and when we act out of fear we can do some quite dreadful things to each other. Karen's book is helping me to have some sense of why our world is so polarized. She speaks of the fear behind fundamentalism; the fear that all that I believe in, all that I hold dear, all that has given my life meaning is being destroyed by others. 

If for instance, my life is built on believing that the bible or the Koran or the Torah is truly the absolute and literal word of God then when others start to challenge this I become full of fear. The values that I hold dear are being trampled under and I begin to feel that I must try to overcome or destroy those who are doing this. I may begin to see them as agents of satan. Gradually, the gap between us seems unbridgeable. 

Is there a way out of this? Certainly not quickly or easily but if we succumb to hopelessness then we all lose.

In Jean Vanier's tapes on John's Gospel he talks about what seems to me like a small way through the barrier of fear. Jean speaks about the story that is usually called 'the woman at the well' in Chapter 4 . He  reminds us that Jesus was  speaking openly to a) a Samaritan, a people who were in fact, despised by the Jewish community and b) a woman. Women were of no great account and certainly a man alone would not have a conversation with one let alone such a deep theological one. Still that is what happened and it is typical of Jesus.

Jesus engages the woman in an increasing spiritual dialogue. In the process, he points out that he knows the woman has been married five times and is now alone. He is not using this as a rejection or a criticism but simply as a reality of who she is. Jesus accepts and loves her as she is: somewhat 'broken' but beautiful all the same.

Jean picks up this point and reminds us that for all of us there are aspects of ourselves that are broken and that we fear to be exposed. There are things, relationships, situations where we have not behaved well or from which we have been deeply hurt. We are often left with a feeling of worthlessness, rejection, anger. Jean speaks about the need for each of us to have someone who knows us as we are, deep down, in our brokenness and in our beauty. He is suggesting here that Jesus is doing that for this woman.

But what I think he is also saying is that when we can become aware in truth and acceptance of the fragility and brokenness in ourselves and then in each other, we begin to see each other not as enemies but as other human beings. We don't need to agree, we may have to act strongly but we will not act out of hatred or fear. 

Jean asks the question: why do we fear the light of truth? and he answers: because the light reveals the dark places in us. So, when we can slowly allow the light in, then in our meetings with one another  fear will slowly fade. 

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