by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given February 24, 2008

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come to this place this morning

To give thanks,

To remember who we are,

To become what we were meant to become—

Come now, and let us worship together.

We know that human beings are unavoidably religious beings and unavoidably aesthetic beings.  We have all heard of the drawings of beasts on the caves of Lascaux and the stones on Easter Island, but only recently have we learned that even during the Stone Age—even 400,000 years ago—there appeared the first signs of human expression of art.  When I visited the Jewish Museum in Prague a couple of years ago, I saw the drawings by children who were in the concentration camps—drawings of faces and flowers and butterflies.  Why would this be so?  Why would this impulse to create beauty be so persistent over time and in all kinds of conditions?

What is the purpose of art, one might ask?  What is the purpose of beauty?  What is the purpose of a flower, or a peacock, or a mountain?  When the overcast skies are blessedly gone, and we look up and see Mt. Hood shining in the distance and we catch our breath and we say to our companion, “Look!  The mountain is out!” what difference does it make?  What difference does the mountain make?

We are drawn to beauty because it gives us pleasure, a special kind of pleasure.  But why is beauty pleasurable?  And why do we need it the same way we need food and drink and air and love?  Perhaps it is because we live in chaos, without form, without promise, and we long for unity, harmony, balance in our lives—these are the intrinsic elements of art.  And so when we go to the museum and stand in front of a magnificent painting, our breathing slows down, and we feel a sense of peace, and our conflicts and questions lift for the moment, the beast at the door lies down.  Even if the work of art portrays something disturbing, if it has integrity as a piece of art, then meaning is made, and order is restored, and we somehow feel less alone.

My favorite art form happens to be film, because it combines visual beauty with the beauty of words, plus a story, which always carries its own power.  Tonight many of us will watch the Academy Awards on television—I know that I will.  In 1999 there was a surprising choice for best film—the winner was American Beauty.  I say “surprising,” because generally the winning film is widely popular and not necessarily great art, whereas this was a difficult film and an important film.  If you haven’t ever seen it, it’s one of those “must see” films.

In this film, Ricky and Jane are entering into a relationship.  Ricky, a solemn, serious young man, has been videotaping Jane since he moved next door.  We see Jane through his eyes, and we see that she is beautiful, but she does not see herself as beautiful—in fact, she is saving up, she says, for a “boob job.”  Jane reveals herself to Ricky and he in turn begins to tell her his feelings, something he has been unable to do with his parents or anyone else.  In one scene, he shows Jane a video he has made of a plastic bag being blown by the wind.  It is just a simple plastic grocery bag dancing in the wind, but it is beautiful and moving beyond words.  He tells Jane, “That’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid.  Ever.” 

Ricky uses video to escape from his abusive home life and to focus his attention on that which transcends the pain he feels from the world he finds himself heir to.  He tells Jane, “Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it . . . and my heart is going to cave in.” 

Here we begin to see the greater reason for the existence of beauty in our world—as we develop our consciousness and we are able to experience beauty more deeply—like the alchemist, we begin to find Spirit in matter.  And I mean by that, that we can be awakened by beauty—awakened to truth within ourselves, truth which allows us to live with more integrity.

Do you remember from your high school English class, Keats’ poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”?  The final lines are ones that many of us had to memorize, but are lines which scholars have argued about forever.  They go like this:  “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.  That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”  For me, these lines mean that beauty draws us to itself, because it touches the Divine within us—and because it gives us a sense of order and harmony, that is a kind of truth about the nature of the universe. It lets us know that there is a transcendent something beyond any pain or grief or loss that we might experience, something that is eternal, something that cannot be lost.

Last weekend the Buddhist teacher John Tarrant was here at the church to give a workshop, and during that workshop, he referred to a friend of his who had undergone torture years ago.  He said that the friend reported to him that there was something within him that could not be touched, no matter what his tormentors might do.  There was something that transcended the pain, the humiliation, the fear.  This, of course, is what the Jesus story is about.  It’s not about a dead person rising up out of the ground, intact—it’s about something within that stays alive, something that transcends anything that can be done to us.  Call that something what you will.  The Divine, the Spirit, the Holy—it’s all metaphor.  But it is real, and beauty is one path to this realm.  It is a way that transcends our imagined separateness and tells us otherwise, tells us we are one.

Unfortunately in American culture, we have commercialized beauty--we have ripped it from its spiritual moorings and put it up for sale.  Let me speak of a couple of ways we have done that. 

In the first place, we have allowed individualism to run amuck through our cities and towns, so that in most places anyone can build any ugly thing they wish to, of any proportion, of any color, of any design and place it in front of all of our eyes to see.  The commercial consideration is all that matters, it seems—somehow it has been forgotten that our visual space is also our spiritual space, and that these streets lined with fast-food places and filling stations are cluttering up our very souls.

And then in recent years huge amounts of capital have been transferred from the public sector to the private, leaving public parks and open spaces, public art and graceful public housing wanting, while the money goes into gated communities, private swimming pools, and McMansions built by people who have more money than consciousness.  The result is, of course, alienation and isolation—exactly the kind of deadness that Lester and his real-estate-driven wife were caught up in, in the film American Beauty.

Another way we have commercialized beauty is through the beauty industry—since 1997, plastic surgery procedures have increased 444%.  Now who is getting all this cutting and siphoning off of fat?  Surprisingly, the majority of these operations are done on middle-class women, many of whom just put the cost for the procedures on the old Visa card.  And 47% of the procedures in 2005 were done on individuals 35-50 years of age.  Twenty-four % of the procedures were done on people 19-34 years of age.  What is going on here?

Dr. David Stoker, a plastic surgeon in Marina Del Rey, California, offers a surgical cure for the woman who has just become a mother—he calls it the “mommy makeover.”  It involves three procedures intended to tighten drooping skin, as well as reduce stretch marks and excess fat.  Dr. Stoker explains:  “The severe physical trauma of pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding can have profound negative effects that cause women to lose their hourglass figures.  Women <shouldn’t> have to go on feeling self-conscious or resentful about their appearance.”  The cost to be restored to your pre-pregnancy self?  $12,000-$20,000—not to mention the dangers of major surgery.

Because we have commodified the body--and objectified it as an ego object—we have disconnected it from its proper function as a path to the soul.  Our sexual lives are properly incarnational, in that we embody a Mystery greater than ourselves and we share in that transcendence with our partner.  When we have internalized that we are beautiful, internalized that we are loved, then something transcends specific qualities of appearance, transcends age.  People who strive to appear perfect in physical appearance might remember that the very thing that sometimes makes one beautiful to another is the quirky feature—the unusual turn of the nose, the lip that is a bit too full.  Perfection doesn’t allow another in, really.  That’s not about love, it’s about narcissism.  Ultimately, it’s about fear and insecurity.

How we can learn to be more conscious of beauty?  We can do so as we experience various art forms, and over and over again we find ourselves drawn to and enlarged by these experiences.  But there is more to this than a training of the eye—there is the training of the heart, as well.

I remember my experience in seeing Michelangelo's David there in Florence, Italy.  The statue was bigger than I thought it would be, and there were lots of people there, surrounding it, and looking.  I was struck so deeply by the piece that I could not leave.  I walked around it and looked at it from every conceivable angle, and I saw that it was true, from wherever I looked.  I was filled with awe.  This simple shepherd boy, innocent and faithful, going out against the giant with only a slingshot in his hand!  How often do we feel that way—that we’re putting our fragile selves up against gigantic evil?  How often do we feel that our weapons of love and innocence will be insufficient?  And yet we wish to have the faith of a shepherd boy, to say that we will take on the task, that we do believe that we, too, are a kind of incarnation that we will take on our giants, in faith.  And in that moment I knew that I was at one with all the others looking at the David, whether they were from Japan or Germany or China or Australia or Africa.  Different skin colors, different ways of dressing.  All of us human, there, together.

Beauty has to do with presence.  My experience is that when I really give myself to something, when I really look at someone, I always find them beautiful.  When someone comes to my office for pastoral care and pours out a troubled heart, I find myself strangely joyful at times.  This is not because I don’t care about another’s pain, because I do.  But authenticity is so rare and so beautiful, and I am so privileged to see it, that I am moved by what I see.  Sometimes we need to be broken open so that the beauty inside can be released.  I don’t take the burden of another’s pain upon myself, because I know it’s theirs and it’s all right for them to have it, because all people will experience pain, and this pain is their particular pain to deal with.  People have amazing courage as they face their difficulties.  And I get to witness that courage.  When I go to another church to preach, which I do from time to time—well, those people look all right to me—but quite frankly they are not nearly as beautiful as you are.  I expect every minister feels that way.  What you really see, you find beautiful, and what you find beautiful, you can’t help loving.

Let me tell you a story about Molly, my cat.  I met Molly at the Humane Society when she was 10 weeks old, there in this large cage with the other kittens.  I thought she was the most beautiful kitten I had ever seen—sort of a fuzzy Siamese--far superior to the ordinary orange alley cats in the cage with her.  But she was shy--she hid under a bench in the cage and wouldn’t come out.  She hissed at the other cats when they came near.  I thought to myself, “I don’t want a cat that will hide under the bed all day—I want a cat to cuddle with.  Maybe this is not the kitten for me.”  So I went back to the young woman at the desk and told her of my dilemma.  She said that I should probably talk with the pet counselor.  Molly could be put “on hold” until I made up my mind.  So while I waited my turn, I thought I would take a look at the grown cats up for adoption.  Each cage had notes about the personality of the cat.  It would read something like this:  “Adorable 6-year-old cat, likes children, when frightened pees on the floor.”  I thought, it’s one thing for me to go to a pet counselor, but sounds as if some of these cats would have to have their own counselor.  So after some reassurance from the pet counselor, I took Molly home.  And she was fine—a little shy, but just fine.  And then one day a friend was over, and she said, “That’s a really beautiful kitten—too bad she has a crossed eye.”  And I looked at Molly and I looked at my friend, and I said, “No, she doesn’t.”  The next day another friend was over, and I said casually, “Say, do you think my cat has a crossed eye?” and she said immediately, “Well, yes, one of her eyes is a little crossed,” and I said, “No, it isn’t.”  This is what it means to see with the eyes of love.  Molly’s eyes are precisely the way they are supposed to be.  End of the story.

So beauty has many uses in human life, but no real intention, except pleasure.  Our attraction to something beautiful is instant and is from the Spirit, not the logical brain.  Beauty is insistent, it moves us.  We may fall into awe.  Beauty allows us to rest, as though some puzzle piece has finally found its place.  Beauty helps to heal us in a broken world.  We are taken out of our workaday existence, and we find ourselves in a space that is timeless and eternal.  Beauty causes what one scholar has called “a radical decentering—we no longer feel that we ourselves are at the center of the world.”[1] A blessed escape.

Soetsu Yangi, founder of Japan’s modern craft movement, defines beauty as that which gives unlimited scope to the imagination.  Beauty is a source of imagination that never dries up.  So that takes us full circle, back to that Divine spark within each one of us which transcends all else and brings us hope and inspiration for living.

We Americans are a practical people—we play so much on the surface of things.  We think that because we have more and bigger that we are better.  But there is a glow, an incandescence, a numinous quality to existence which is every bit as necessary to us as food and water.  Beauty is a way through to that Divine place.  It can give us what we can get from few sources so readily and dependably—a calming of the heart, a resting of the soul.

We are wanderers, journeymen on this earth—we are here for only a short time.  But through the power of beauty, we can know our kinship with the earth and with all who have ever lived upon it and all who will ever live upon it.  We can be taken to a place of harmony and joy, a place where at best, we can know that our separation is but an illusion. 

Look at the buds bursting out of their bonds just now, smell the sweetness in the air; give yourself time to really see the person you are with rather than rushing into talk; allow time to experience a fine film, a well-crafted poem, a walk through an art gallery.  Surround yourself with beauty in your home and in your city.  And most of all, train your heart to receive the abundance that is there for you, freely given.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we pause now to give thanks for the myriad ways we are blessed with beauty.  Help us to see, help us to listen, help us to receive.  The Divine wishes to break in upon us in so many forms, and in our busy-ness and in our striving, we sometimes are not open to receive.  May we welcome the gift of beauty into our lives, allowing it to bring us pleasure and healing, truth, and rest.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

May each of you know your own beauty, and may you not fail to see the beauty in others, for to do so is to bless them with your knowing.

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Copyright 2008, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.