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