Encounters with beauty move us; they can also call to us. Beauty always plants a seed within us. Those seeds want to do something. What does that seed want to do in you? How might you participate with God who’s in that seed of beauty and in you?
In our biblical tradition and the history of our shared faith, the seeds planted by beauty nourish compassion and cultivate justice; justice is an expression of beauty. But we can’t just stand in awe of these seeds; there are too many forces that would stomp all over these little seedlings of sacredness. It’s one thing to mourn those assaults, and we must. But we must also cultivate a fierce desire to protect them and do all we can to help them grow.
This is the call of Beauty.
In this February 14, 2021 sermonic conversation, Dr. Eunbee Ham and I explore the vision of the prophetic tradition of Isaiah with a wink to the modern poet, Mary Oliver.
Eunbee: We have come to the last week in the series, Beguiled by Beauty. We’ve journeyed together in contemplating how all of us are made for the Beloved. All of us are created with the ability to recognize profound beauty in creation. While this is the essence of who we are, we live with the tension that for reasons unknown to us, we’re often alienated from this nature and struggle to feel intimately connected with the divine.
Our hearts feel exhausted from the sorrow and tragedy of the world, and to allow in our awareness a contemplation of beauty amidst suffering and injustice can seem like a betrayal. Our ethical obligations for a suffering world, and our attention to beauty may seem like two different things.
But what I have noticed throughout our series is how these two are absolutely interdependent. The ways in which we cultivate wonder, attention, compassion,courage,and joy affect the way we show up to the world. When we are constantly bombarded with disturbing and sorrowful things in our lives, we can become too exhausted to bear the weight of the pain and injustice in the world. That exhaustion often leads us to despair, to disengage, to distract ourselves or become enraged, which do not sustain our spirits in the long run.
When we begin to awaken to beauty, that is, when we begin to recognize beauty as God’s presence and desire for us pulsing, flowing through all of creation--from stars to tiny creatures in the seas--our hearts begin to open. While we may feel so angry by what we see on the news, we regain the strength that we need for today by looking around and noticing what is also real--that God’s unceasing desire and beauty are all around us if we pay attention. And so we choose to fall in love with the world again and again, trusting in the darkest times, that it is luminous with the presence of the Beloved.
Today, on Transfiguration Sunday, we remember that Jesus was transfigured in radiant beauty before his disciples. And they too were changed. As we close this series on beauty, we move toward Lent, praying that our calling and discipleship will flow from this intimate connection to divine beauty.
Chris: I love the way Eunbee puts this--the interdependence of wonder and beauty and contemplation with an ethical call to act for the sake of the common good. I believe that beauty never leaves us where we are; it calls to us. Our encounters with beauty move us. That stirring in us, inspired by beauty, is the call of God who comes to us in beauty. Put another way, I’d say that whenever we experience something beautiful, beauty plants something in us. And that something, that seed, wants to do something through us. That “seed-desire” is the Holy calling to us, calling in and through us. It’s a call for us to participate in creating more beauty in the world, bringing more goodness, and that isn’t only mystical, it’s ethical.
In the biblical tradition and in the history of our faith, the seeds planted by beauty always nourish compassion in the heart of the one who’s received those seeds. And compassion often calls the receiver to cultivate justice, for justice is an expression of beauty.
The prophet Isaiah, for example, whose words we’re reading today, once looked out at the broken landscape of a nation in crisis; he saw the devastating effects of political corruption on ordinary people. The prophet used the image of a glorious sprawling oak, cut down maliciously, as an image for his nation. We are “like an oak cut down,” he said, “only the stump remains.” But we are not without hope. There’s something beautiful about that stump. It’s the beauty of irrepressible life, the force of life that keeps on springing up even when the wicked cut it down. Isaiah says there’s a beauty others can’t see. But he could see it; he wants us to see it. Isaiah saw it and proclaimed, “there’s a holy seed even when the only thing left of the oak is its stump” (Isaiah 6.13). There’s life there; all is not lost. And that’s a beautiful thing.
That’s spiritual and visionary leadership. Leadership of any kind--leading nations and businesses and families and congregations and ourselves--requires that a leader is capable of seeing the beauty others can’t or refuse to see. When we behold beauty, a seed is planted in us. Hope is planted in us. And that seed calls out to us: “Do something with Me!”
Eunbee: Chris, I appreciate your perception of the prophet’s ability to point to beauty, comfort, and restoration in a context of exile and devastation. It’s odd to read such a hopeful and joyous text within a context of slavery, displacement, and death. While such celebrations of joy and beauty seem so out of place with the ruins of Jerusalem, I am reminded once again to notice how they may be closely connected.
It actually reminds me of a modern day prophet, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, who was one of the great civil rights mothers in the 60s. She knew what it was like to live through moments of great despair and frustrated hopes, and yet, she identifies beauty, celebration, and joy as essential to her civil rights work. She says that these values were cultivated in her community from her childhood. No matter what messages they got from the outside world, someone at home was always telling them how beautiful they were, how intelligent, how talented. She also talks about the Spirit of her maternal ancestors, women of all colors, who drew a circle of protection around each other. They taught each other how to live like family. And I quote: “How to live with some strength and care in your hands. How to live with some joy in your mouth. How to put your hands gentle on where the wound is and draw out the grief. How to urge some kind of mercy into the shock-stained earth so that good will grow.”
Chris: Ah, yes. The seeds of beauty were planted in her, weren't they. She stands with Isaiah as a visionary prophet who tended the seeds of compassion and goodness and justice that beauty planted in the soil of her soul.
I’m curious about her. Tell me more. Do you know what she did to, as she puts it, “urge some kind of mercy into the shock-stained earth so that good will grow”? That’s not only powerfully prophetic it’s so beautifully poetic.
Eunbee: Yeah, she was a civil rights activist-scholar whose social activism drew on African-based mysticism, indigenous wisdom, and mothering. She had two Masters degrees in gender and women’s studies, social work, and a PhD in archaeology. She said, “There is something about going through hell that can give you a vision. It’s not guaranteed. And we have to look not only at the experience itself, but at how to go through it with sanity and compassion….One of the keys is honoring and understanding your roots, …[staying] connecting to the sources that strengthen them.” And to recognize that “all of our roots are connected….Everybody in this country has interconnected lines of blood and culture. And everybody’s roots need to be integrated into our lives. We have to experience other people’s roots. That’s how we’ll recognize the connections.” In this way, she was convinced that the key to sustaining activism was becoming aware that your well-being is deeply related to my well-being. She practiced this connection every night before bed. She’d look at a picture of someone who was hard to love, someone different, a Klan member for example, and she would say, “You are my brother. You are my father. You are my son. God be with you and bless you.” She would go to sleep with those thoughts and those prayers on her mind and was amazed by the transformation that took place within her own heart. It’s as if she was planting seeds within her heart.
Chris: What a remarkable woman and what a remarkable spiritual practice, and really hard--to take the picture of someone who hates you, to look through the ugliness, to perceive the deep beauty of our intrinsic connection because we are all human, that takes courage and vision. And that might not work for all of us. Sometimes we need to tend the outrage and keep ourselves safe. We need to tend our very real feelings, especially when we’ve been harmed or have witnessed harm.
But all of us can tend the everyday beauty we can encounter all around us. That’s how God raises a prophetic people from the seeds of the ordinary beauty that’s always near us. That’s how we can manifest the vision of Isaiah who said, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news—who announce peace, who bring news of happy things, who see divine beauty in everything.”
Beauty’s all around us--for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Beauty plants seeds inside us and those seeds have divine, irrepressible life in them. They call out to us: “What are you doing and becoming because of the beauty you’ve beheld; what’s coming into the world because of the beauty inside you that wants to grow outside you?”
Today, we’re ordaining and installing new elders who will serve our congregation, who come alongside us to create more beauty and goodness and justice.
Maybe this can be your ordination day too: a day you make a commitment to manifest more beauty in the world, a day you can set an intention to tend the seeds of beauty planted within you, a day you can hear beauty call to you saying, in the words of the poet, Mary Oliver: “What are you going to do with your one, wild and precious life?”