space for beauty to trust us.....

Turning our deck into a small, outdoor music venue for a night proved itself to be a winning idea. From emails to in-person comments, the reaction was clear: the beauty of the wetlands and woods behind our home at sunset was magical.

Would it be too grand a notion to claim that the physical beauty that greeted us helped set the stage to welcome the sacred beauty of the music? The poet, John O'Donohue, put it like this: 

What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation... When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.

Tending to the physical environment is an act of radical hospitality. Setting up this encounter with sound and spirit in a place saturated with creation's grace, encourages each of us to "approach the moment with reverence." This was my deepest hope: that the music as well as the setting serve as soul food for our hearts. Ours is a season of fear, fatigue and fury. One antidote is the tender refreshment of music shared in community.  Surrounded by natural beauty - and amplified by the aesthetics of hospitality - we sense a calling to "walk on the earth with reverence (so that) beauty will decide to trust us."  I love that insight, "beauty will decide to trust us." We can only plow the field, till the soil; creation is always a gift beyond our control. By accepting the invitation to slow down and open our lives to kindred spirits for at least a few hours, however, we do our part. We shape a generative safe space that is open to the birth of a blessing. 

Such a gathering is also a small, embodied act of resistance as well as renewal. "The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter" the embrace of hope. O'Donohue suggests that when we practice reverence we gradually forsake the ideals of perfection and open ourselves to the wonders of our brokenness. "Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good" is how popular culture articulates it. O'Donohue cuts deeper:

Many people are addicted to perfection, and in their pursuit of the ideal, they have no patience with vulnerability...  Every poet would like to write the ideal poem. Though they never achieve this, sometimes it glimmers through their best work. Ironically, the very beyondness of the idea is often the touch of presence that renders the work luminous. The beauty of the ideal awakens a passion and urgency that brings out the best in the person and calls forth the dream of excellence.

The beauty of the true ideal is its hospitality towards woundedness, weakness, failure and fall-back. Yet so many people are infected with the virus of perfection. They cannot rest; they allow themselves no ease until they come close to the cleansed domain of perfection. This false notion of perfection does damage and puts their lives under great strain. It is a wonderful day in a life when one is finally able to stand before the long, deep mirror of one's own reflection and view oneself with appreciation, acceptance, and forgiveness. On that day one breaks through the falsity of images and expectations which have blinded one's spirit. One can only learn to see who one is when one learns to view oneself with the most intimate and forgiving compassion.

There is precious little in our contemporary culture that encourages reflection. There is even less that helps us own our wounds. We are a people obsessed with winning for ours is a binary culture rewarding "my way or the highway" living. A small house concert offers an alternative. It quietly asserts the sacredness of small acts of faith, hope and love. Our little gathering interrupted business as usual with a tiny dose of resting together. As E.F. Schumacher and others have documented, an aggressive high tech culture needs small, high touch events to reclaim life on a human scale. "Small is beautiful" was the rallying cry back in the day. In 2018, I would add "small is holy" too.

Last night as I sat with my evening prayer resource, "Pray-as-you-go," the opening music was the Taize chant, "Bless the Lord my soul." It is my favorite prayer/song from this community and as it washed over me I felt myself slip into a deep rest. In time, the liturgist said that prayer is letting go of self and our needs for a time and resting in trust. Right now finding ways to share a safe space so that beauty will come to trust us - and heal us - makes all the sense in the world to me.