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SAR 13: Something Beautiful for God
- I’ve used the phrase ‘more generally human’ for the sense in which rest helps restore our humanity, recalls us to our own ‘being’, regardless of our beliefs about it. Periodic rest, or sleep, or Sabbath rest is a rebalancing tonic for human beings ‘in general’. I use the term ‘effectively human’ to suggest the human being in tension, in movement toward his eternal destiny, or ‘working out his salvation’. His being begins to affect the world around him, and thus he himself is more fully real-ized in it.
- The term ‘specifically human’ moves us into a third ‘dimension’, or fuller realization of human being. I use it to suggest that we go beyond the necessary work of applying ourselves to the effort of spiritual growth when we become vessels (shaped, in part, by those efforts) that the Spirit simply fills to overflowing.
- The more fully realized I am (the more humane, the more virtuous and well-educated, the more me), the better I am able to take in Reality, to ‘take in’ whatever I encounter, to be affected by it. For example: the more training I have in music, the more fully I will apprehend a richly complex piece of music; the more time I spend drawing in nature, the more fully and accurately I actually see the next tree, bird, or flower; the more I learn to live in loving community, the better able I am to be open-hearted and welcome others into unity with me; the deeper my friendships, the more capacity I have for deep friendship with Christ; the Eskimo with 20-something words for ‘snow’ actually perceives more distinct varieties of snow than I do! The more fully Christ is present in, is realized in me, the more I will respond to others as He would. The more He is formed in me, the more fully me I become!
- Paradox is a form of tension, because it can’t be easily, simplistically, resolved. It makes us think, and we tend to avoid that discomfort. If we avoid it by refusing to admit there is any tension, or if we avoid it by resolving it in a way that violates someone, we handle it destructively. For example: A caretaker for an aging parent feels tension. The paradox? I’m grown-up and can finally ‘do whatever I want’, but now ‘must do for Pop’. Destructive responses: a) Oh, I don’t mind this at all. (Refusing to acknowledge tension exists.) b) No way! He’s not my problem. (Refusing to acknowledge the reality of the other’s need.) c) OK, I’ll just give up my own activities and dreams. (Violating self instead of the other in a dramatic self-martyrdom that is different from cheerful self-sacrifice accepted freely in light of all the factors in tension.) The more comfortable we become with the reality that, in time, we are in a ‘between’ of tension, the better able we’ll be to relax even within that tension. Impatience demands the tension end, but Sabbath-keeping teaches us a patience with the paradox that deep rest (and joy!) comes to us right here, in time, in tension, in the midst of discomfort. Bearing that tension in hopeful patience, we are helped by the Spirit to make a thoughtful, loving, true, creative response that doesn’t pretend away hard realities, or violate anyone.
- Evangelism and beauty both attract people to Christ by ‘lifting up’ and by ‘pouring out’. We can stand up and proclaim the Good News, or create a work of art with a specifically religious subject, or message. Mass is a form of beautiful proclamation, in which Christ is publicly lifted up into view, to be honored and to draw all men to Himself. On the other hand, we can go out into the world being vessels of grace taken into all the small places where souls are to be found. When we pour ourselves out upon the parched desert around us, it begins to bloom. Works of art that speak of our own intensely personal, particular encounters with reality, and are rendered in beauty according to the nature of our art form can act, similarly, as little vessels of grace, enabling some who are ‘afar off’ to have an encounter with Christ, who fills our persons and our best works with His own being, in humility and love.
- Beauty knocks us off balance – it even can ‘wound’ us! It causes us to see the world in a new light, to be affected in a deeply interior way that opens up new capacity and yearning for Reality. This is an experience we can’t engineer, can’t demand, and which humbles us (especially if we are struck speechless for a while, helpless to quickly label and set aside the moment, rendering it powerless!) The beauty of a work of art might also unite us suddenly and unexpectedly with an artist who might otherwise have been someone we’d have kept our distance from, or rejected.
- We’ve got to keep restating truths in new ways for people with different vocabularies, frames of reference, capacities to understand. It takes great love to be able to keep being ‘made small’ in this way, and great Love to keep our representations consistent with Truth. We ‘become all things to all men in order to save some’.
- The Greek word, poema, means workmanship, as in ‘You are God’s workmanship’. A person is a poem – a carefully crafted work of art whose ‘parts’ correspond to a beautiful unity, and also add layers of complexity consistent with that unity. The poem is given being within its creator before it is fully realized in and through time, space, materiality.
- Beauty is received on its own merit, as a thing separate from the creed, or agenda, or person of its maker. In a work of art, a free gift is made, and the freedom of the giving means no demand is made for a response. This is, then, an invitation to freedom offered to the receiver of the gift. We know if he receives it, he does receive something of the person behind it, but in a form which has humbly ‘left behind all the glories’ of its maker. Beauty (of person, of a work of art, of a gesture) can slip in under the radar that might shut out a form that seems to obligate or argue with the receiver. If, through beauty, we can attract persons to encounter with Christ, we may help restore in them “the harmony between truth, goodness and freedom” (Cardinal Ouellet).
- Sabbath-keeping attunes me to the beauty in other people in two ways. My perception is changed as I see more and more with Christ’s eyes (His gaze of love and mercy), and my own being is changed as I gradually become more deeply receptive to others – more able to be affected by them. Sabbath helps me bear up under the tension, or paradox, of the true beauty of others as it actually is – right alongside their weaknesses, ugliness, or hostility to Truth. Hopefully, they will feel loved as they are, and not loved with the demand that they change to earn my regard.
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