Beauty of Sacrament
“In all that awakens within us the pure and authentic sentiment of beauty, there is, truly, the presence of God. There is a kind of incarnation of God in the world, of which beauty is the sign.” Curt Thompson, The Journey of Desire
"Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure." Macrina Wiederkehr
“… the sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to find the place where all the beauty came from." C.S. Lewis
I stumbled on an Instagram series which each day offers photos of different themes: the color yellow, vertical textures, round symbols. etc. The next time I walked Biscuit, I started noticing as the Instagrammer did, the beauty in the ordinary. Red berries, red stop sign, red Christmas ribbons on mailboxes. Noticing halts us in our tracks and causes us to pause. That pause, that moment of rest and exhale, re-centers us. Noticing is the means of sacramental living.
“Earth is so thick with divine possibility,” says Barbara Brown Taylor “that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.” I just love that picture of altars everywhere! Walking with Biscuit each morning is an invitation to pause, to rest and re-calibrate myself at every berry, stop sign and ribbon. All of life can be ordinarily extraordinary, a steady sacrament.
Consider author Andy Crouch’s morning ritual:
“Every morning, wherever I am in the world, I go outside before I look at a screen. I’ve managed to do this consistently for about four years. Often, I go outside just for a few moments. But as soon as I step outside, I not only find my senses coming alive, I also find myself feeling smaller — a creature in the midst of creation, rather than the god of a tiny glowing world.
“It’s been kind of ridiculously transformative — ridiculously, that is, given how simple this discipline is. I’ve found myself far more grateful, far less anxious and far less interested in whatever my screens have to tell me that day. Also, for the first time in my life, I consistently know the phase of the moon, which doesn’t seem like such a small thing.”
Another friend carries his new baby girl out the front door and on to the porch each morning to welcome the day. What a simple and wonderful practice!
What might you do to pause, worship and remember your life as a sacrament? Reply with your answer and I’ll gather your responses for our community’s benefit!
JUDY
P.S. A few days after I wrote this, I came upon this super interesting article in the Wall Street Journal affirming God’s very invitation:
“Generally, beauty and music or art is very rewarding to the human brain,” says Wendy Suzuki, a neuroscientist and professor of neural science at New York University. “It can activate our natural, de-stressing part of our nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system that slows our heart rate down. And I think that’s so important these days because our stress and anxiety levels are so high.”