Everyone Needs Beauty...

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
places to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength
to body and soul alike.”
~ John Muir ~

Yes to John Muir’s words. Yes, we need beauty as well as bread. We need beauty in our daily lives, whether it is a painting or image we can rest our eyes on and gather nourishment we can take with us out into the world, or a book of new poems we have just discovered that will sustain us as we do our work. It might be an unexpected conversation or connection we have with someone. We must be nourished and bread is not enough. Our souls must be nourished; our hearts must be fed. In one of David Whyte’s poems he says: “people are starving and one good word will feed a thousand.” I believe he is speaking about the nourishment of our souls. There is a way that we are starving in this society. We are bombarded by images and words every day, yet we are hungry. We need places to play and be creative in. We need spaces and times when we can pray. When I enter our sanctuary for worship or when I sink to the floor for our meditation circle in the ballroom, I do feel nourished. The beauty of our spaces is nourishing and it can sustain us. But John Muir sends us outdoors “where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” His temple, his church was the forest. He stood among the ancient redwoods and spoke of it as a cathedral of tall and majestic beings emanating peace and wisdom. If you have stood in a grove of redwood trees, you know what he is speaking about. Or if you have stood at the edge of the sea and looked out into that great rolling expanse of waves that never ceases to move and change, a never ending cycle of change and power. As a congregation, we are involved in a never ending cycle of change and power together. It is true. Together we create communities and sustain them with our gifts. And these gifts are many and unexpected. Each one of us is needed. Each one of us has something to give and receive. We might not know what that will be on a given day but there are reasons we are together; there are gifts to be heard in the stories of all of us. There are gifts to be found in everyone we meet. We need our congregations, our churches to be sacred places where we can be ourselves and perhaps places where we can become someone new. We can be reborn here in these communities of love and longing. There is a place inside us all that longs to create and give to the world. Let us offer ourselves, and our gifts. There is no doubt that we can make the world better and we need to begin today.
blessings, Rev. Telos