Channing Memorial Church, Unitarian Universalist
Ellicott City, MD
The Reverend Susan LaMar
January 4, 2004

"A Fresh Look"

And so, we come to the final Sunday in the Christmas season, the Sunday which represents the arrival of the Magi at the stable in Bethlehem. Epiphany. The place in the story where, it is told, the divine nature of Jesus was made manifest to the Gentiles (the non-Jews). The arrival of wisdom.

It is also the first Sunday in the year of the Gregorian calendar, now used as the civil calendar throughout most of the world. A time of retrospection and of new beginnings.

We were reminded this morning about how Janus, God of Beginnings and God of Gates, looks back and looks forward, simultaneously. I love that image – the way it captures so much of what life is all about. Looking back at what we have been through, and what we think we know about it. Attempting to make sense out of what has gone before, to record it, to reflect on it, to find meaning for the unforeseen future. And of course it is important to look forward, prepared to face whatever is to come. There is nothing that I am aware of in the Janus legends that indicate that he can see into or predict the future. None of us can – and we probably don’t want to. Last Thursday’s Baltimore Sun teased us:  Imagine the panic in Maryland last New Year’s Day had we been told that 2003 would bring us the worst blizzard on record, the snowiest February; the coldest winter and rainiest summer in a quarter century; followed by gales, tornadoes and a tropical storm that would destroy 522 homes. Janus, and we, just look ahead with our eyes wide open.

The Janus image, captures the movement, the dynamism, of turning toward the future from the past. Perhaps that is where the tradition of making New Year’s resolutions comes from. We dislike something about ourselves in the past, so we resolve to change it in the future, starting now.

I think, though, that the tradition of making New Year’s resolutions pushes us to focus on what is wrong, or mistakes, or things that we want to change. I suppose that’s good, or could be good. I’m too fat, we say, so I’ll go on a diet. I drink too much so I’ll cut down. I yell at my kids too much, so I resolve to calm down and count to ten when I get annoyed. I dislike my job, so I’ll get that resume up to date, and send it off to at least 10 places each week.

But it seems to me that there is something very important missing from that dynamic image of Janus. As much as I love it, it lacks an important element.

And that element is this: there is nothing in the Janus image that encourages us  to simply be here, now. For me there is no invitation in that image to spend time with the present.  

That, perhaps, is why I am also taken by the figure of Woman Wisdom, whose image is also often linked with that of a gate. Woman Wisdom sits at the city gates, or at a crossroads, offering counsel and advice and insight and understanding. We are invited into a question different from evaluating and reflecting on the past and heading off into the future.

Wisdom invites us to spend time with what and where we are right now. It is a very specific kind of reflection, though, that I would encourage each of us to do in this here, this now. I would invite you, this year, to spend time with the beauty of where you are right now. Not what is wrong, but what is right, and good, and beautiful.

Notice it, and relish it.

I think that it is altogether too easy to forget to focus on beauty. Almost imperceptibly we find ourselves paying attention to what is wrong rather than to what is right and good and beautiful. We go for a walk and focus on “my foot hurts. I’m cold. Somebody didn’t clean up after their dog.” And we miss the subtle play of clouds in the winter sky, infinite shades of brown of the bare tree branches, the tan and yellow and orange speckled fungi on the downed trunks. Or we look at our spouse or life partner and think, “If only he or she . . . whatever  . . .made more money, was a better cook, was handier around the house. . . didn’t snore . . . then life would be fine. So we forget to notice the positive qualities . . . is happy with his/her life, values time with the children more than gourmet cooking.

It is not that we are conscious pessimists, or misanthropes. It is just that it is easy to slip into this way of thinking. Maybe it is because we live in a culture that thrives on and rewards those who solve problems. If there are no problems to solve, then our reason for being slips away.

But there is another way to be in the world. That is to focus on beauty, and then pursue more of it. 

The question  arises, though:  what is beauty? We probably can recognize what is beautiful – it is something that is pleasing to us, to our senses. That kind of beauty has to do with proportion and harmony, perhaps of order, symmetry[1] . . .  A visible fitness of a thing to its end or use. Things have beauty, and we perceive those characteristics with our senses. Even as we recognize what for us is beautiful, or what has beauty, that is material beauty.

But what about beauty itself? What is it? What makes beauty spiritual? A fit object of worship? A fit subject for worship? Something beyond or behind or within the proportion and harmony that we perceive through our senses?

Jonathan Edwards, the 18^th century American preacher and theologian offers an intriguing approach to beauty. He distinguishes primary beauty, or spiritual beauty from secondary beauty, or natural beauty. What we normally think of as beauty, he would place in the category of secondary beauty. We see a sunset, and respond with awe – that is secondary beauty.

What then would be primary beauty, spiritual beauty?. Edwards’ own struggle places it in the category of “things of this nature” – things that it is difficult to reduce to a definition. Like God. Like being-itself. I will offer you his definition, which is short but quite dense, and then try to unpack it.

Spiritual beauty, according to Edwards, is “being’s heartfelt consent to being.”

“Being’s heartfelt consent to being.”

What the heck does that mean?

Well, it seems to me that it takes beauty out of the realm of being a quality or a characteristic and places it in the realm of action. Consent. Spiritual beauty is the act of consenting from our deepest hearts. To what? To having existence and being aware of our existence, and to having a will. 

I think one of the problems is that Jonathan Edwards was writing in prose, and this primary beauty places us in the realm of poetry. “Things of this nature” belong in the realm of poetry. That is why Rumi did a better job of approaching this beauty beyond beauty in the reading we heard this morning:

“Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love, be what we do.”

“Let the beauty we love, be what we do.” Beauty not as a characteristic, not as a feature or a property. Beauty as that which we do. An action? Perhaps. Perhaps it is a state of being.

I have seen another translation of that line in Rumi that says, “Let the beauty we are, be what we dare.”

In that translation, beauty is an integral part of our being, -- a verb of being, not a verb of action. And by using the word dare rather than the word do, it inserts just a bit of risk into to picture. Our will is invited toward a risk. A risk from within the very essence of our being.

Let’s come back to earth now.

I began to reflect on this in the past few weeks because of the work we have ahead of us here at Channing. And we do have a lot! But the work we have to do is set in beauty and abundance. That is hard to remember when all the talk is about scarcity and “problems.”

Here are some examples of the beauty of Channing:

Music: We have a music director and a choir of 13 members. Most churches of our size have neither a music director nor a choir. Our choir is made up entirely of amateur singers. Larger churches with larger choirs often hire paid section leaders to carry the parts. Yet the music that comes forth from our choir twice a month is amazing. On Christmas Eve, when the choir processed into this, our sacred space, carrying candles, it took my breath away. That is consent. That is beauty.

Families. This church is filled with young families. We have 66 children connected with 100 adults. That is unheard of in a Unitarian Universalist Church of this size. These families – you – have found a place where you and your children can explore life together. You can engage the big questions of meaning and purpose and the worth of humanity and divinity and dignity and God and not-God and morality and ethics and right and wrong and most importantly ambiguity. You can do all of this as a family. Together with other families of various forms and sizes. That is consent. That is beauty.

Engagement and attendance: I was talking to my mentor a couple of weeks ago, someone who has spent his life with small churches. He said to me, “So, you have about a hundred members, that means you get, what, 30 or 40 in church each week? 8-10 kids in the Sunday School?” I said, “Joe, we have between 60 and 75 in church each week. And the Director of Religious Education just told me that our average attendance in the Sunday School this year is  43.” Well, let me tell you, there was a very long silence on the other end of the telephone.

Those numbers are unheard of in Unitarian Universalism. Conventional wisdom is that churches usually have about one third to one half of their members and friends in attendance each week. We have between two thirds and three quarters! And we do it without guilt! We do it by consent. That is beauty!

With all of these examples, what is going on here is consent – there is a deep and heartfelt consent to Channing Memorial Church’s very being. Spiritual Beauty is not static; it is movement; it is movement itself. It is the essence of dynamic being and it is here.

I invite you to take this idea of spiritual beauty as consent and dynamic being into your own life. Spend some time reflecting on this spiritual beauty. Sit at the gate for a while with Woman Wisdom, knowing that Janus is there too. You must turn and go forward. Here is a question to take with you into your meditation or your prayer life, or into the woods, or the pool, or on our jog, or your commute – whatever moments you use to reflect on “things of this nature” :

What in your life are you giving your most heartfelt consent to? To what are you giving your most heartfelt consent? That – whatever your answer is -- is your beauty. Your primary, spiritual beauty. That is the manifestation of your divine nature. That is the musical instrument that you are playing. And if you cannot answer the question, then spend some time with that. Listen to your heart, listen for wisdom.

Let your consent to being be what you love and what you do, what you are and what you dare.