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Looking for Heaven on Earth
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At the back of our brains, so to speak, there is a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder. GK Chesterton
Life without intoxication is not worth a pitcher of spit. Kurt Vonnegut
The small man builds cages for everyone he knows while the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low, keeps dropping keys all night long, for the beautiful rowdy prisoners. Hafiz
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A man dies. An angel is escorting him around. (There is, apparently, an "angelic hospitality committee" on the other side.) The angel takes them to places where the scenery renders the man speechless.
"I had no idea," the man says.
Emerald green valleys, rushing rivers cascading over boulders the size of VW buses, sunlight dancing along the landscape, shapes and forms created from the shading in hillside folds playing itself out as a compelling stage show. An endless palette of blues, in the sky and in the sea. The man tastes the invigoration of the bracing air, and drinks in majestic vistas, imposing mountain peaks and dramatic sunsets, and fills his lungs with the salt and earthiness of the verdant forest floors.
"I am ecstatic!" he tells his host. "So... this... is... Heaven?"
"No," the angel replies. "I just wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to see all the things you missed while you lived on earth."
Granted this is an easier story to appreciate if you had the opportunity to catch sight of last night's super-moon. It seems redundant, but who does not see beauty, or the sacred, or God, in moments of splendor or grandeur? (Then again, I suppose, at one time or another, most of us do not.)
However, here's the more straightforward question. What about life's unsightliness? Can we see heaven there? You know, in the cracks, fault lines, fissures and suffering that is a part of each of our days? I just finished Donald Hall's The Best Day The Worst Day, about life with his wife Jane Kenyon, the reality of her bipolar disorder and the pain riddled and complicated last years of Jane's chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant (for leukemia) before her death at age 48.
What I appreciated about Hall's account is the unflinching and meticulous detail to the nuance and fragility (a la Chekhov, who wrote that writers "must illuminate the actual world with a delicate light"), of moments, where, if we allow it (even in the middle of fractures and disappointment), beauty, literally, walks in... and takes residence.
In one encounter with a teacher in India, Hall asks him to define "contentment."
"Absorbedness," the teacher replies.
Now, I can't find absorbedness in any dictionary. But here's my best guess: "Let life in."
Let life in... in the splendor. Let life in... in the complications. Let life in... in the disagreeable. Let life in... in the unfeigned moments.
Which may be... this moment. Or, as Jane Kenyon wrote, in her final days, "Trust God and be where you are."
On both sides of the equation--whether living as if beauty is only in the magnificent, or believing that life's complications interrupt our appreciation of beauty--we assume that we must arrive somewhere else for life to begin. With this mindset, it is easy to be obsessed and derailed.
In either case, my energy is given to "elsewhere and otherwise," and I miss beauty regardless of where it walks.
As a child, we sang a hymn in our church, "This world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through." We were taught that life here on earth is a waiting room (more often than not, filled with pain, probably deserved or at the very least to be used for a lesson). And heaven is some kind of bailout system. "Don't worry," I was often told. "God will take care of it when you get to heaven."
I believe differently now. (Not that I don't secretly wish for some kind of bailout.) But here's the deal: if you don't find beauty--or the sacred, or God--here, chances are pretty good you will not find it there.
Of course, while I may believe that, I find ways to obsess over the particularity in bad news here. And when I do that, I don't let life in.
I love GK Chesterton's metaphor about digging for the sunrise of wonder.
Absorbedness.
Let life in.
To belly up to the bar--of this day--with all of our senses, with the full permission to be, literally, drunk on life.
There is a story about St. Teresa of Avila. She sat, gorging herself on partridge, which incurred the self-righteous indignation of some of her fellow nuns. To them, St. Teresa replied, "When it is fasting time, fast. When it is partridge time, partridge." As they say... that'll preach...
I've been in the Bay Area for the weekend, joining in the celebration of my friend's 60th birthday (it's the age with a zero allowed before you have to concede that you're old). We partied into the night; drinking French wine and munching delicacies from Oakland's best known Taco Truck--parked at the curb next to his house. When you're 60, you get to decide the menu.
I preached at Piedmont Community Church and spent some time this afternoon with a group talking about creating Sanctuary Places in our lives.
I'll check out the moon again later tonight... in the meantime, I'll break bread with friends, sip a bit more Bordeaux, linger on the patio and savor it all for a little while. Over my shoulder is the San Fransisco skyline and the sunset, the sky layered with cloud garlands of salmon pink. I can't help but smile. And if someone asks me why, I'll tell them, "Because that's what you do when you're in heaven."
A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh as though it had all just come into existence. From the movie, A Single Man
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Poems and Prayers
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflection,
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling,
Or just after.
Wallace Stevens
To Earthward
Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air
That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of - was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?
I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.
I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.
Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.
When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,
The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.
Robert Frost
Today, we have practiced loving life. We have practiced living our lives the way God created us to live, intentionally breathing each breath as if it were our most precious. We have practiced living the life that we have been given in the fullest way possible, aware of the Presence of God in each moment.
Today, we have been nourished with an awareness or our own life. We have felt happiness and sadness, jubilation and despair, realization and wonder, and with each thought, God has made us more alive. Today God has showered us with grace and we have again been recreated into who God intends us to be.
Let us now, celebrate the sacrament of the Blessed Present. Let us now intentionally dance to the music that God plays just for us, hearing each note and feeling each beat in rhythm with our lives. Let us dance, sometimes waltzing, sometimes two-stepping, sometimes feeling a little rumba in the beat; sometimes jitterbugging, sometimes salsa dancing, sometimes fox-trotting; and sometimes resting our bodies long enough for our souls to once again feel the beat. Let us each day intentionally listen for the chords of music in our own lives and know the music by heart...and let us always dance with the Blessed Present.
Amen.
(St. Paul's UMC, Houston, TX)
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Notes from Terry
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