Beheld beauty

It is said that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, this questions whether lack of observation means there is any intrinsic beauty at all. It is also said that ‘it has to be seen to be believed’ – in each of these the perception makes a difference.

Quite recently I was in the car park in Sainsbury’s Pinhoe;  it was a grey, wet and cold day (in July!) and there seemed to be very little appealing in the rows of parked cars and unkempt hedgerows. In the midst though I saw the most beautiful, crimson flower, it was almost as if it was struggling to be spotted amidst all the grey. Yet I spotted it! It only took a moment to stop and look, to enjoy. Instead of hurrying into the shop to but more stuff I spent a few seconds to enjoy, to notice something beautiful.

My mind was taken back to the film ‘American beauty’ and the scene where the plastic bag is blown around in the wind, the protagonist says this:

“That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it”.

Sometimes in the midst of unkempt hedgerows and difficult times instead of looking for the ordinary and focussing on what is wrong we need to consider what is good – look for the beauty. In it and in the process of looking,  we may be surprised to find the beauty that we discover, not least in ourselves. If we take the time to stop and look and notice. 

I wrote this little ditty to help me reflect and remember what I had encountered.

In the dead rows of hedgerows, today I spotted this.
Midst Audis and Fiats and 4x4 monstrosities.
In the tumble of weeds and exhaust-breathed brambles it lives.
Striving for recognition, pushing away toofast lives, in toofast lanes - shopping or motorways.
Weighed down with pulchritude I stopped and saw and noticed and felt, lighter for one moment.
In the dead rows and hedgerows, today I spotted this.

Broken and poured out

My two days with Rob Bell ended with a run around London and a train journey on Thursday morning – Maundy Thursday.

My two days were a mixture of the everyday profane – tiredness, impatience, frustration yet with a glimpse of the divine – wonder, awe, inspiration. There was something profound and mundane, something transcendent and something ordinary.

Maundy Thursday is the day we remember ordinary bread broken with extraordinary friends, the washing of feet in the most astonishing of circumstances, of bleak tears poured out in the depth of human sadness and abusive kisses.

Rob Bell spoke for more than 12 hours with stories of science and faith and cosmology and love and purpose and meaning and said so much of worth but there is a message that, at least for me, is writ large. I am invited to be a Eucharistic person - to be broken and poured out in service and in love. Now that sounds a bit bleak doesn’t it?

At the end of the two days he said ‘which of my stories did you enjoy and remember the most?’ I immediately remembered the ones where he had told us of his mistakes, when things went wrong and for Rob it seemed that in the midst of the pain of being broken and being poured out that he found meaning and purpose and a reason and an energy to get up and try again.

It was on Maundy Thursday that Judas betrayed Jesus, it was on Maundy Thursday that Jesus crumpled in the garden despairing, that he broke bread and poured out wine as a forward recognition of what was to be. And soon all would be broken and all would be poured out: life, hope, friendship,  everything of  import, everything of matter.

Yet this would not be the end but instead a start.

Maybe being broken is an opportunity; the first step to being remade, maybe being poured out leaves room to be filled.

May we know that in our 'brokenness and poured-outness'  that there is meaning.

Broken
       Poured out

Intentionally,
         with purpose

In service
         In love

Knowing

        and waiting
           to be filled and renewed.

Just the way it was always meant

Today is the first day of lent, the days 'lengthen' and Easter approaches, it is often the time when people decide to stop doing something.

As I write ‘Cornerstone Runners’ (the first group formed in Cranbrook) has just celebrated its second birthday; it was two years ago that a few of us set out in the darkness for a 4 mile run towards Exeter and back. We are now backed and insured by ‘Run England’ and have 8 trained leaders – in any given week on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays between 20-40 runners go out for a bit of exercising and socialising. We have had couch – 5k, half marathon training, staggered starts, hill runs, crocodiling and the infamous ‘run to a pub’. Unsurprisingly the latter seems the most popular.

So why do we run? For some it is about fitness, others losing or maintaining weight, some might have personal goals to train for, many enjoy the social side and some just love running.

For me bits of all of the above are true, apart from the last part – I have said this before I don’t love running. Running is hard: my legs ache, it is tiring, I get hot and cold and wet and I can find many excuses NOT to go. So why do it? For me I guess it started as a challenge, I said I could never do it, I said it was impossible for me so I didn’t do it – a bit of self-fulfilling prophesy. This impasse was enough to make me try, to see if I had the mental stamina and discipline to go beyond my self-imposed limitations and although I will never win any races and am one of the slower members of the group, I can do it.

As church minister for Cranbrook people sometimes ask me what my job is, what my purpose is. Might I say simply this, I believe that inside each one of us are possibilities we negate because of self-imposed limitations, primarily - ‘I can’t. I believe that we often undervalue who we are and what is possible. I believe that we are made for much more and sometimes we just need to have a little bit of faith, often faith in ourselves.

So stop whatever you want this lent but alongside all that 'stopping' might I add, a cessation of the often wrong belief that you just can't. Might I also suggest that in all that stopping there should also be a starting - maybe start believing that you just might be able. In my experience a bit of practice, perseverance and self-belief goes a long way. For me lent, and the journey to the cross, is about a journey through the dark waters of the improbable and even the seemingly impossible to a place new place of belief, self worth and life in all its fullness, just the way it was always meant.