Beauty through Suffering

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. 

- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Beautiful Brokenness

Kintsugi: The Japanese art of finding beauty in broken things 

(The link above shows examples of this art.)

The following is from a friend. I hope it touches and enlightens others as it did me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't know for sure if I could let go of perfectionism, and accept my life, my family, and my faith will never be what I thought it should be.

Then...I found my dear sweet wife.  She went through divorce like I did. She was broken like me.  She was perfect for me...not because I could try to compromise my views and just deal with it...

...but in all reality, for me...she was perfect precisely because of what she went through and how she could see me in a light others could not.

And I came across this term in my readings:

kintsukuroi - n. "to repair with gold"; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

It is not simply any mended object automatically increases its appreciation but…that the gap between the vanity of pristine or perfect appearance and the fractured manifestation of mortal fate is precisely what deepens its appeal.

In other words, the proof of its fragility and its resilience is what makes it beautiful.

In every sense of the words, my wife is simply more beautiful to me because she is who she is today over and above anyone else who might have had a perfect life with no suffering ever.

This can directly apply to our testimonies of the gospel.  They can be broken. Not because we are weak. Not because we don't have enough faith.  Sometimes it is because God wants us to see that it can be mended, and afterwards never be the same...

...but better.  Precisely because we have been broken, we are better.

"Fullness" Includes Both the Beautiful and the Ugly

I have participated in hundreds of formal blessings in my life with the LDS Church - and some of them have been extraordinary.  

I love those experiences, even though they don't happen every time I participate in a blessing. I love the fact that "we" believe in practices like that, where people get together and pray over someone. I love the principle that underlies it and the communal faith-joining it provides. Also, there have been a handful of times over the course of my life when I really do believe the heavens were opened, so to speak, and I caught a glimpse of what being a conduit for pure revelation really means. I really cherish those experiences - but I had to participate in the mundane many to taste those unforgettable few.

Do formal blessings mean anything more than that - and are they possible elsewhere? Maybe, maybe not, but, deep down, I don't care all that much. I just appreciate the opportunity - and the fact that the opportunity is institutionalized in a way that gives me plenty of chances to be there for the special moments when they occur.

There really is a lot of unique beauty in this faith tradition of Mormonism - and the irony is that the more available we are to experience the beautiful, the more exposed we will be to the ugly. When we run away from the ugly, we also are, in a very real sense, rejecting the beautiful and settling for the bland.

Opposition in all things drives some people batty, but I've learned to appreciate the "fullness" of such a journey.  Thus, even though I want it eliminated, the ugly is just as important a piece of my faith as is the beautiful - and experiencing the beautiful makes the ugly bearable. 

Learning from the Innocents: Or, the Beauty of Youth Baptisms for the Dead

I was performing baptisms in the temple a while ago for youth and new converts, and it hit me DEEPLY and profoundly how beautiful the concept of such work is to those who still are fully (or close to fully) "innocent" and "pure". In particular, as two new converts, one young man and one young woman, entered the font (each for the first time in their lives), there was almost a glow of anticipation that was awe-inspiring. (There also was an adult convert doctor who had been a member for a few years but never done temple baptisms, whose wife's face simply glowed as she stood on the steps and watched him be baptized.) One of the women had been baptized into the Church just the past weekend, and another woman was the still-recent convert who had introduced her to the Church. The young man's family recently had returned to activity, and the young woman's family still wasn't fully active (and, technically, neither was she).

It's moments like that when it hits me how much I really don't care, fundamentally, about nuance and intellectual distinction. Of course, I do care about the ability to understand nuance and to make intellectual distinctions, especially as a coping mechanism and as a way to understand and accept myself and others. However, at the most fundamental level, there is a beauty and grandeur and mind-blowing simplicity about "pure Mormonism" that still reaches up and grabs me by the throat and brings tears to my eyes in moments like that - when you see people whose lives have changed SO much or are so hard in very real ways dressed in white trying to do something for those they love in such an innocent, simple way.

The young woman I mentioned lost her father to cancer six years ago, and it literally tore apart her family in many ways. She was 12 years old when it happened (with siblings ranging from 4-18), and she hasn't been active in the church since then - due mostly to the extra pressure exerted on her mother to deal with the death of her husband and her children's father (including the need to work long hours to support the family) and being the only members in a town 25 miles from the church and in a different state. Work for the dead means something powerful and wonderful to this young woman, since her father was not a member of the Church but was a very good man who supported his wife in her attendance and beliefs. She doesn't care about fine detail; she just wants to show how much she loves other people and how much she wants to help them in some way - any way she feels she can. Temple work is truly cosmic for her. She was visibly excited and nervous and in awe the whole time we were traveling to the temple, and she said to us afterward that when she finally got dressed and went into the font room:

"A sense of peace hit me, and I knew God is aware of me and loves me".

I love baptisms for the dead. I love the symbolism and the over-arching theological meaning. I love how I feel like I've been standing in holy water when I leave the font. I love how clean and pure and simple the whole thing is - when I let go of my need to think and simply allow myself to experience and just BE - when all that matters is that I AM.

I can parse the wording of verses and statements and talks and try to understand concepts as well as possible on an intellectual level, but, for me, it all pales in comparison to seeing the faces of the innocents as they enter a baptismal font and as they leave.

Receiving God's Image Doesn't Destroy Individuality

I saw a very profound, short statement on the wall of a high school I was visiting yesterday, and I thought how it applies to my New Year's Resolution for this month.  It said:

You were (created) as an original.  Don't become a copy.

 

First, I absolutely LOVE this quote in and of itself, regardless of its application to my New Year's Resolution.  I understand and accept the need for communal conformity to certain, minimal standards; I really do.  However, at the most fundamental level, I am a unique child of God - and that uniqueness is important to me. 

What struck me about this quote and my resolution is that too many people see Zion as total uniformity / unanimity / homogeneity.  They see "being united" as being indistinguishable from each other in any important way.  They see becoming "perfect" as becoming exactly alike in every way.  At least, that is how they appear to believe, based on how they act toward those who are different than they are.

I disagree. 

My favorite General Conference talk of all time (as my children will attest, while rolling their eyes and exclaiming, "I told you so!") is Elder Joseph Wirthlin's "Concern for the One" - and the part that resonates the most within me is the analogy of the multiple instruments and harmonies that are necessary to create a beautiful orshestral sound.  Everyone playing the same instrument all the time - or even different instruments but the exact same notes at the exact same time all the time - even when technically mistake-free and precisely is NOT beautiful music; at best, it is a beautiful melody.  (At worst, it is soul-less.)  All kinds of very different instruments playing intricate harmonies, counter-melodies and even varying rhythms in synch with each other and with passion and expression . . . now THAT is beautiful music. 

I am reminded of the description of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12 - where each and every part is said to be as important and critical as any other. 

Truly, there is a need for some kind of uniformity and communal standardization, but we were created as originals.  We can't allow ourselves to become copies.

Love at First Sight and the Gospel

The very first thing that crossed my mind when I saw my future wife was, “Wow, she’s beautiful.” The very first thing that my future brother-in-law said to his mother after meeting my sister was, “Mom, I just met the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”

So, what?

My wife was thin with long, auburn hair. She was shy, so she wasn’t ultra-popular, but she was quite striking by most “worldly” standards. My sister is not thin and never has been. She is a wonderful person, but by most “worldly” standards, it would be very hard to call her “beautiful”. Her husband, however, looked at her and was bowled over by her beauty.

My wife has given birth to six children, and both of our waistlines are nowhere near what they used to be. Her hair now is auburn only when she colors it, and mine looks best when it is cut short enough to not accentuate my expanding bald spot. However, we love each other now every bit as much as we did when we both were skinny and good-looking by common worldy standards.

I believe that we are influenced, often subconsciously, by the media and culture around us, but I also think that there is an ambiguous SOMETHING that reaches out and grabs some people when they meet some other people that is hard (ok, impossible) to quantify.

There is a profound corollary with how people react to the Restored Gospel in there somewhere.