“Absorb Beauty”
Luke 12:22-32
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
July 26, 2015
“Did you see it? Did you see it?” Father Seppji was so excited he couldn’t contain himself. He was breaking rule #8 of ashram life: no talking during breakfast. He didn’t care.
I guess I broke the rule too, because I answered. “See what?”
He got a perplexed look on his face. “You didn’t see it? The mountains–the clouds lifted and I saw their peaks. It was glorious. Eight months at the ashram and this is the first time I’ve ever seen them so clear.”
Father Seppji and I, along with four other seekers, were staying at a Christian-Hindu ashram high in the Himalayan mountains–so high the peaks were almost always covered in clouds. That morning, like every morning during the two weeks I had been there, he and I meditated on the flat roof of our dormitory. After our yoga practice, we sat, perfectly still, our eyes closed, trusting that our self-imposed stillness would open us in some way to God’s presence. As the days progressed, I noticed my technique improving: I sat with my spine a bit straighter and my mind slightly less distracted. I was working hard at being still.
“So you didn’t see the mountains?” Father Seppji still couldn’t believe it. “How could you miss them?”
“I was meditating,” I answered. “My eyes were closed.” I thought for a moment. “How come you saw them?”
“This morning,” he replied, “it was so beautiful I meditated with my eyes open.”
Oh, I thought, I didn’t know you could do that. I had been so focused on opening myself to God’s presence that I didn’t notice God’s beauty all around me.
***
Thirty years later, just this past May, Fran and I sat on a bench, along with several hundred of our closest friends, waiting for Old Faithful to blow. We were on a five-day nature photography expedition at Yellowstone National Park, and I had just learned how to use a whole bunch of features on my camera. As we sat there, I contemplated my options. The sky was cloudy; maybe I should push to a higher ISO. I decided I wanted a fast shutter speed to capture the water in motion as it spurts out of the geyser–but that meant I’d have a narrow depth of field. The background was dark; the water would be bright–what should I do to prevent overexposure?
While we waited, I tested the options–taking photos with different ISO’s and f-stops, checking the funny little graph on the screen that tells me if I’ve over or under-exposed. We waited, I tested, we waited some more, and finally the water burst forth from the earth. I was ready. I clicked and clicked, adjusted the little knobs, clicked some more, checked the graph, clicked, adjusted, clicked and adjusted.
Before long it was over.
We got back in our bus, and I started scrolling through my pictures. I’d done pretty well with exposure and sharpness, but the shots were still disappointing. They looked ordinary. “It’s so hard to capture it,” I commented to Fran. And then I realized that was exactly what I’d been trying to do—capture something that could simply not be captured. During the entire time Old Faithful was erupting, I was looking through or at my camera. I never stopped just to watch.
***
“Absorb beauty.” I chose these words as my first “Sabbath Intention” because I need to hear them over and over again. I spend so much time surrounded by beauty. And there are so many things that get in the way of my experiencing that beauty. I easily become focused on a goal and never broaden my vision to what is right around me. Sometimes the goal is all about the beauty—trying to record it, to capture it, to make it mine, as though the moment itself doesn’t matter. The slightly snarky disciples in our scripture drama wanted to dry the lilies to preserve them. Even if that was possible, they missed the point, for the beauty of the lilies, though fleeting, is a gift from God in that moment.
It took me a while, as I wrote this Sabbath intention, to find the right verb. Discover beauty, find beauty, seek beauty— those were too easy to turn into goals. When I came to “absorb,” I knew it was the word I needed.
“Absorb,” to me, suggests a natural process—as natural as a sponge absorbing the water around it. Beauty is all around me—in the trees in my back yard, in the amazing places I am fortunate to visit, in the mix of flavors in a special dinner, in music, in art, in the people I love and the strangers I encounter. My body, mind and spirit need beauty to thrive and yearn to soak it up. All I need to do is let go of the things that get in the way.
“All I need to do”….Saying that is a little like Jesus saying to the disciples “Do not worry about your life.” Of course the disciples worry about their lives. Of course I get caught up in a goal or a camera dial. Even if I only meditate with my eyes open, or if I throw away my camera, there will be other things that get in the way of that natural process of absorbing beauty.
The good news is the promise of God’s grace, and the abundance of God’s beauty. I might have missed that particular view of the Himalayan peaks that morning, but the next day yielded a different kind of beauty. I didn’t really see the full majesty of the Old Faithful geyser, but the next time I was there I stood in awe of the brilliant colors in one of the less famous hot springs. We will always miss opportunities to absorb beauty, and there will always be more beauty to absorb. That is grace.
A few years ago, I was out on our back deck meditating. My eyes were closed. My body was still. I was focused on my breathing. In the stillness, I heard the flutter of wings. Without moving, I opened my eyes. There, right in front of me, was a downy woodpecker, with its red head and its crisp black and white feathers. I sat and watched, absorbing its beauty. If my eyes had been open at the start, my body would have instinctively reacted to his presence, and I would have scared him away. This time, closing my eyes freed me to receive God’s gift of beauty.
Later on our Sabbatical trip, Fran and I drove through Yellowstone into Grand Teton National Park. We arrived at our lodge in the late afternoon, and I immediately headed off on a two-hour hike, circling a pond. About fifteen minutes into the walk, it started to rain. Stubborn fool that I am, I kept going. I put my camera and binoculars in my backpack, took out my windbreaker, and walked in the pouring rain for at least an hour.
Finally the sun came out. It was still raining. “At least there should be a rainbow,” I thought to myself. I turned around, and sure enough, there was a rainbow. It was faint, but it was glorious. I stopped, opened my backpack and took out my camera to try to capture it. I couldn’t–probably because I was trying so hard to use the manual settings, and no one had taught me the proper f-stop for a rainbow. This time, though, I got the point. I put my camera back in my pack. This was beauty too stunning to capture. This was beauty that could only be absorbed. This was a gift from God.
Open your eyes so you can see. Close your eyes so you can hear. Bring your camera to slow you down. Leave your camera so you can be in the moment. There are no simple rules for how to absorb beauty. There is only our deeply human yearning for beauty. There is only the beauty around us waiting to be absorbed. There is only the promise of God’s grace. That is more than enough…
Thanks be to God. Amen.