As they were growing this year, I noticed that one especially tall plant was leaning precariously toward the sidewalk. I knew I would have to stake it, if it were not to topple over onto the concrete. But I procrastinated, and as it grew and the buds got larger and heavier, I wondered why it was still upright. So one day I walked over to take a look.

What I saw was both simple and wonderful. The nearby cabbage palm had caught the lily in a loop of fiber and held it up – an almost invisible support. (When you see the pictures, you might think that I had tied a string to the lily, but it was all done without any human intervention.)

We have been witness lately, directly or indirectly, to enormous disruption and destruction: war, earthquakes, volcano, a cataclysmic oil spill. Is this disharmony within nature (including human nature) the ultimate reality, we may ask?

No. I am convinced that each small glimpse of beauty or harmony is a pledge of the beauty and harmony at the heart of all things.

“I get by with a little help from my friends,” sang the Beatles. And so do we all, whether we know it or not – even if we think we have no friends. This interdependence, which we human beings (or perhaps more to the point, we lift-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstrap-Americans) tend to forget, is part of the loveliness of creation.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola might agree with the Beatles on this point: we do somehow make it through life with the help of both human and non-human friends. During the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, there is an intense awareness of personal sinfulness and also an awareness of the blessed relationship between the sinner and the rest of creation:

Ignatius speaks of “a cry of wonder accompanied by surging emotion as I pass in review all creatures. How is it that they have permitted me to live, and have sustained me in life! Why have the angels, though they are the sword of God’s justice, tolerated me, guarded me, and prayed for me! Why have the saints interceded for me and asked favours for me! And the heavens, sun, moon, stars, and the elements; the fruits, birds, fishes and other animals–why have they all been at my service!

The spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. by Louis J. Puhl, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola, 1951) [60].

The deeper reality at the core of creation is not our sinfulness, nor the very real pain and disturbances that can shake us to the core, nor the sorrows that can weigh on us until we feel we must break apart – but the beauty and harmony of God, as experienced in the communion of God’s holy creatures.

We get by, in spite of everything, even in spite of death, by the grace of God – and like the lily, with a little help from our friends.

I don’t know who made the arrangements, but occasionally the two women would be put in a cab, given return taxi fare, and sent to the Cenacle for a women’s day of prayer.  Suffice it to say that both of them were rather conspicuous in the group of mostly middle-class women making the prayer day.  The appearance of one reminded me of the water-color illustrations of the crone ― the benign crone, not the sinister one ― in my childhood fairy-tale book.

One particular program they attended was being led by a priest.  At some point during the day, he asked each of the participants to share with the group her thoughts on his chosen topic (which I have long ago forgotten).

When it came the turn of one of the women from the state hospital, she said, “I can’t speak, but I can dance.”

And dance she did!

Was the rather dignified group uncomfortable or embarrassed with this display?  If so, there was no indication of it.  At least one woman, at the end of the day, said that this silent dance was what spoke to her the most powerfully from the whole day of prayer.

The dance of a mentally ill woman, an offering from one of the anawim, the poor of God, had revealed the beauty of God in a way that all the learned words spoken by the priest could not do.

Those who have eyes to see, let them see.

At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.”

Matthew 11:25 (NIV)

Let them praise his name with dancing,
making melody to him with tambourine and lyre.

Psalm 149:3

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God. …
Happy are those who live in your house,
ever singing your praise.

(Psalm 84:1-2,4)

Not only the temple, not only the churches, are God’s dwelling, but all of creation — and each of us is also the dwelling place of God. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” asks Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:16.  How lovely is God’s dwelling place!

“Let us love, because He first loved us.” [1 John 4:19]

For how should we love, except He had first loved us? By loving we became friends: but He loved us as enemies, that we might be made friends. He first loved us, and gave us the gift of loving Him. We did not yet love Him: by loving we are made beautiful…

But our soul, my brethren, is unlovely by reason of iniquity: by loving God it becomes lovely. What a love must that be that makes the lover beautiful! But God is always lovely, never unlovely, never changeable. Who is always lovely first loved us…

How shall we become lovely? By loving Him who is always lovely. As the love increases in you, so the loveliness increases: for love is itself the beauty of the soul.

“Let us love, because He first loved us.”

Homilies on the First Letter of John, IX,9,
Translated by H. Browne

The trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood range from bored babies whose young parents are the ones enthusiastic about Halloween, to expensively costumed children with specially designed trick-or-treat bags, to poor children with makeshift costumes and plastic grocery bags. Some have never seen a convent, and when we open the door, revealing a wooden Cenacle cross and the statue of our co-founder, Saint Therese Couderc, their eyes widen and they say with awe and simple courtesy, “I like your house!”

Somewhere around 8:00 , the teenagers begin to arrive. Year before last, they were mostly un-costumed and armed with a vaguely threatening air and gaping school backpacks as candy receptacles. This past year, however, brought a shift. The teenagers no longer seemed world-weary or menacing. They were dressed as butterflies and angels and other unidentifiable but innocent-looking creatures and seemed to be saying from their six-foot height, “We’re children, too!” They were delighting in the evening, and we delighted in their delight.

How many of them know, I wonder, that Halloween is the Eve of All Saints’ Day, their feast day, the feast of all God’s holy people, recognized and unrecognized? Of course, some of us seem to have a harder time with sanctity than others do, but the communion of saints links us all in companionship through the love of God. As the hymn puts it:

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

William W. How, “For All the Saints”

We are a motley crew, to be sure, but we who are still feebly struggling are just as beloved of God as those who are shining in glory. In a sense it is true that we all shine, even in the midst of the struggle. Thus the children with painted faces and sparkly or scary outfits, the teenagers still radiant with childhood or slouching to the door with their backpacks — all receive their treats and head back to the street, to borrow Wordsworth’s expression, “trailing clouds of glory.”

Sing praises to the Lord,
O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.

(Psalms 30:4 RSV)

Since I’ve taken to riding a bicycle around town, I find myself in a proximity to my surroundings impossible from the insulation of a car; and I have discovered places I had no idea existed.

One of these is a real jewel: the McRorie Community Garden in the southeast part of town, incorporating vegetables, flowers, and artwork. All of these, it seems to me, testify to the hopefulness and creativity of the human spirit, especially since the art is for the most part constructed of found objects.

Some of the artworks are made of old hubcaps and are what I would call “urban mandalas.”

Mandalas

We tend to see the mandala as belonging to the East — indeed the word comes from Sanskrit and means “circle.” However, the mandala, although we haven’t always named it that, is also part of Western art and symbolism, found in the rose window, the labyrinth, and the Celtic cross, to name a few examples. In any context, the mandala can symbolize wholeness, the universe, or the Eternal. In the Christian context, the mandala draws us toward Christ.

While it is easy to live our lives on the periphery, the mandala seeks to draw us inward, toward the center of reality. In the medieval rose window, the center typically (though not always) contains a representation of Christ.

Labyrinths in the Middle Ages, such as the one in the Cathedral of Chartres, allowed Christians to make a virtual pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or even to the heavenly Jerusalem, while the four quadrants made visible the cross of Christ.

The Celtic Cross, with its circle representing eternity and embracing the cross itself, leads our eye to the intersection of the arms of the cross, and thus symbolically to the center of the mystery.

Toward the stillness

Whether labyrinth or rose window or Celtic cross, these mandalas encourage us to long for and move toward the still point where our spinning minds and emotions can rest in the divine mystery.

And this brings us back to our hubcaps. In its myriad forms, not just in meditation using a mandala, prayer draws us from the peripheral toward the hub of the wheel, toward what is essential, toward what is real, toward that point of stillness that always exists, even as the wheel spins. (Note that a simpler form of window related to the rose window is called the “wheel window.”)

As T. S. Eliots writes:

At the still point of the turning world….
…at the still point, there the dance is…

T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets

I admit that I wasn’t thinking about wholeness or eternity or the divine when I visited the garden. I was simply delighting in the unexpected beauty of the mandalas. But happily we don’t have to be conscious of the meaning of symbols in order for them to have an effect on us.

For more urban mandalas, visit visit Unable to Grasp God’s Essence.

In fact, the communion procession was almost overwhelming in its beauty. There were people of all ages and races. There were families, some in “Sunday” outfits, others in what they would relax in later today. There were many students in jeans and shorts, and one young man with neon pink hair on half his head. The child in her white first communion dress, the black couple in striking African clothes, the woman in the wheelchair, the choir, the musicians — all were filing up in a kind of glory.

When Moses came down from the mountain, we are told that he “did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Exodus 34:29) These students and families, the children and old people, those who rejoice and those who mourn, the healthy and the sick — do they know how beautiful they all are? Do they know that the light of Christ is shining in them and around them?

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Cor: 3:18)

Then I looked around me at the assembled faithful, who, if they were not in pain at the moment, would at some time in their lives have to suffer deeply. Each one was at that moment happy or sad, healthy or sick, at ease or in pain; they were all sinful; they were every one of them headed toward death — and they were all amazingly beautiful. In fact, an essential part of their beauty seemed to me to be their mortality — or rather our mortality — and our participation in the death of Jesus.

I suppose this loveliness shouldn’t have surprised me, because we share our mortality with the Son of God. I am reminded of a quote from The Chess Garden, a remarkable novel by Brooks Hansen:

…when a Christian observes the crucifixion either in the Word, in church, or, if he should be so lucky, in the moment that contains him — he sees something beautiful, and blessed and necessary and sanctifying, for there on the cross he recognizes God, and there on the cross God recognizes him. . . . [God] continues to recognize the nature of our condition, through Christ. He continues to see that we are crucified here, and we continue to see that He is crucified here as well. So we are understood, so we are welcomed to Him, so we are forgiven. (p 433)

May we have eyes to see the beauty of the crucified Christ, and the loveliness of our participation in the mystery of his death and resurrection.

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
(Psalm 90:17 KJV)

In spite of his gentle demeanor, none of us felt totally at ease with a five-foot snake in the house, and we didn’t know how to go about convincing him that he would be happier outside. I looked him up on the internet and found that he was most likely a yellow rat snake, very useful to have around since they eat rodents, but we still preferred that he take his meals outside. So I called Florida Pest Control, only to be told, “We don’t do snakes.” At last a friend came over and took the snake outdoors, chuckling at our dilemma.

It was only when the snake was picked up that we could see his intricate beauty. As I mentioned, he was brown and gold striped on the top and sides, which was all that could be seen under normal circumstances. (I could tell when he slithered away in the dead leaves that those stripes were excellent camouflage.) On the underside, however, our snake was a lovely cream color with bright star-like splotches.*

So I asked myself: Why would these beautiful designs be found where generally they wouldn’t be seen? Is it that God revels in beauty, even beauty that is “useless” from a human point of view? I do believe that. I imagined God creating such a creature, putting star-like designs on its underside where they would rarely be seen and exclaiming, “How beautiful!”All that flows from God’s hands is beautiful. Like the snake’s belly, however, not all of our own beauty is visible under normal circumstances. What is more, I can’t help thinking that what God finds loveliest in us is not always what other people think is of value. Even what we ourselves take pride in may not be what God finds the most beautiful in us. On the other hand, God, who sees the undersides of our hearts better than we ever can, may look at something we think of as insignificant or even disgraceful, and exclaim: “How beautiful!”

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:
and establish thou the work of our hands upon us;
yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
(Psalm 90:17 KJV)

______________

* In all the web pages I checked describing yellow rat snakes, the descriptions of the belly varied from simply pale white or yellowish to “mottled with gray” or “yellow highlights,” which leads me to assume that there is no single characteristic pattern.

To be exact, this was a sea nettle. (I looked it up.) Like other jellyfish, I learned, it has no heart, no blood, and no brain.

My only impression so far of jellyfish had been that they are a nuisance when one is swimming in the ocean — more than a nuisance if you are stung by one. In fact, as I stared at this one, my first reaction was a feeling of fascinated disgust. The sea nettle had shapeless stuff hanging from its bell which reminded me of primal goo. It was especially unappealing when it turned upside-down. I wasn’t even sure that it was alive.

Then a second jellyfish appeared, and I realized that they were both in fact alive. I wondered if this one could be the mate of the other — though it’s hard to imagine anything without either a heart or a brain wanting to swim along companionably with its mate.

Gradually, as I watched, a marvelous thing happened: I saw how beautiful they were. The first was a translucent white; the second had red stripes. They both looked like uprooted mushrooms. Even more remarkable, considering my first reaction to them, was the concern I felt as the water became rough and the striped one seemed in danger of being smashed.

Too often, I don’t gaze long enough at things or people to see their beauty. In gazing, we may at times be granted the gift of seeing the world and its inhabitants a bit the way God sees them. When that happens, we perceive the beauty that was there all along, but which we had not, up until that moment, had the eyes to see.

O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. (Psalm 104:24)