Beauty in Life

Sometimes I come across a spiritual concept that appears to be true to me and yet is not addressed adequately, if at all in our scripture. Beauty is one of those concepts. Biblically, I broadened my search outside of our Inclusive Bible to the NIV and found a line of the great teacher Ecclesiastes who said that “God has made everything beautiful in its time.” Then I dug deeper into other writers and philosophers.

Rumi, the Sufi poet and mystic said, “Everything in the universe is a pitcher brimming with wisdom and beauty.”

Confucious, the preeminent Chinese philosopher and leader said, “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

And Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.”

If we regard the Divine Essence to be Beauty, and the Divine Essence is in all things, so all of life must have beauty in it if we look close enough. We remember from last week that this means we must stretch our definition of Beauty… yes, beauty is an aesthetic quality, but it is so much more. Beauty is in our soul, in the intricate workings of our bodies and the interrelatedness of life. Beauty is in our actions and our character and our words. Beauty is in nature, and animals, and music, and cells and science. I wonder, even if we look deep into the things that we consider not beautiful, might we find beauty even there? The answer must be yes, if there is nowhere God isn’t.

Training ourselves to look deeper for Beauty than the cover of a book, the color of one’s skin, the way someone votes, or the first glance at a landscape, is another way of training our spiritual selves to seek God in the everyday things in life.

Why is this important? Because of how Beauty makes us feel. When we truly allow ourselves to experience Beauty, in any of its many forms, we are often filled with awe and wonder, we experience an elevated consciousness where we feel connected to all things. In those moments we want for nothing and are filled with harmony and a sense of wholeness. Sometimes when we're overwhelmed by Beauty we may find tears in our eyes. Encountering Beauty is transformative because it takes us out of ourselves (small s – ego) and catapults us into our bigger Selves where we experience all of these wonderful spiritual things, and more!

John O’Donohue, in his book, Beauty, writes: “The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere – in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion and in ourselves…”

 When talking about the Beauty in Life, perhaps the easiest Beauty to see is that of a beautiful place. Recall for a moment a place that you've visited that transformed you for a little while as you soaked in the experience of the place. If only we could bottle that feeling and bring it out when we need to be lifted out of the mundane, or painful reality that is sometimes life.

Of course, Confucius reminds us that everything has beauty but not everyone sees it. If one is merely looking at the sunrise or a rose but one’s mind is elsewhere, then we will not see the beauty. Did you know that 5.9 million people visit the Grand Canyon each year, but the average time they spend looking at the canyon itself is 17 minutes? Have they really seen the beauty before them? Have they allowed it to touch their souls, elevate their consciousness, and fill them with wonder and a sense of the Eternal Mystery? Or has it been a box to check off of places they want to see?

We’re so programmed to try and get so much done, fit so much in, that we don’t allow ourselves to stop long enough to appreciate and absorb the beauty so that we might be transformed by it. If it can happen with something blatantly beautiful like the Grand Canyon, how much easier can it happen with beauty that is more subtle and difficult to see? Like the beauty inside a person, or the beauty in the midst of difficult times.

Once upon a time, Buddha was traveling to another country, and he sat down under a tree by a bridge to rest. He drank water and began to meditate and to doze a little in the shade of the tree, lulled by the sound of the running water. Buddha was getting old, and he was sitting cross-legged, comfortable and looking much like the fat Buddha statues, his stomach spreading over his legs. A samurai warrior on horseback came riding up and stopped to get water before crossing the bridge. He saw Buddha sitting there and roared out loud with laughter. Buddha opened his eyes and looked up at the man. He cocked his head at him, wondering what had caused the great laugh. The man looked at him again, laughing, and said, “You look like a huge pig!”

Buddha was silent for a moment, then looked up at the samurai and said solemnly, “And you look like God!”

The samurai was stunned and didn’t know what to say. He pulled himself up to his full height and asked, “Really?”

“Yes,” said Buddha, smiling at him.

“What in me, in my bearing, makes you say that I look like God?” the samurai asked.

“Oh,” Buddha answered, “I spend most of my time in contemplation looking for God. For years that is all I have tried to do, and now all I see is God!”

The samurai was quiet, trying to take that into his mind. But Buddha continued, “And you – what do you spend your time looking for? What do you see?”

And the story says that the samurai turned, mounted his horse, and left as quickly as he had come.

Buddha’s question becomes a question for all of us. What do we spend our time looking for? What do we see? Do we spend our time looking for the worst in people or in life? Do we deliberately look for life to let us down, for the other shoe to fall? Do we look for roadblocks? Are we so preoccupied that we don’t look at all? Or do we look for Beauty and Goodness… do we look for God?

Another thought about seeing Beauty in Life is to recognize that it isn’t perfection of our looks or lives or hearts that conveys beauty. Even in the most challenging life, there is beauty. Sometimes there is beauty in simply having survived and grown in wisdom and grace.

A young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley. A large crowd gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. There was not a mark or a flaw in it.

But an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said, “Your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine.”

The crowd and the young man looked at the old man’s heart. It was beating strongly but full of scars. It had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put in … but they didn’t fit quite right and there were several jagged edges. The young man looked at the old man’s heart and laughed.

“You must be joking,” he said. “Compare your heart with mine … mine is perfect and yours is a mess of scars and tears.”

“Yes,” said the old man, “Yours is perfect looking … but I would never trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom I have given my love….. I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them … and often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty place in my heart but because the pieces aren’t exact, I have some rough edges. Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away … and the other person hasn’t returned a piece of his heart to me. These are the empty gouges … giving love is taking a chance. Although these gouges are painful, they stay open, reminding me of the love I have for these people too … and I hope someday they may return and fill the space I have waiting. So now do you see what true beauty is?”

The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. He walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect young and beautiful heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man. The old man took his offering, placed it in his heart and then took a piece from his old scarred heart and placed it in the wound in the young man’s heart.

It fit …. but not perfectly, as there were some jagged edges.

The young man looked at his heart, not perfect anymore but more beautiful than ever, since love from the old man’s heart flowed into his.

Love given and received is beautiful. It may not always be easy, and sometimes it may be painful. But true love is always beautiful… scars and all.

This week may we pay attention to what we look for – may we look for Beauty, even in those places and people where it is most hard to see. May we look into our hearts and the hearts of others and see that the scars and jagged places where love has been given and received makes life beautiful.

May we stive to live more and more moments looking deeply into the Beauty of things that we might draw closer and closer to the Sacred Presence in our midst.

Love & Light!

Kaye