Enough
“At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.”
Toni Morrison
It is enough.
It doesn’t require analysis, or insight, or exegesis, or the application of hermeneutic principles.
It doesn’t even require thought.
It is enough.
It doesn’t require discussion, or dissection, or the vision of an innovative genius, or a radical re-evaluation at the hands of the same, or the collective genius of a group process.
It doesn’t even require consensus.
It is enough.
It doesn’t require documentation, or the capture of a signal moment, or any kind of representation whatsoever.
It is enough.
It is enough that it is.
It is.
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Heresy to us, we inheritors of the Renaissance mind, who must subject all things to analysis and explication.
Heresy to us, we inheritors of the post-modern mind, who must subject everything to empirical thinking and group consensus.
Heresy to us, we Christians, who must test all things against doctrinal proclamation or
“The Word” or “The Spirit“.
Heresy to all who believe that beauty exists in order to be tested.
As if the final end of anything was to be tested.
An interesting point, that.
Particularly for us Christians.
As if we would willingly chose to become aligned with any agency that exists in order to “put things to the test”.
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How can anything avoid our clutches?
Well, it helps to be somewhat terse and enigmatic.
Self-definition as “I am” helps.
Let people try to wrap their heads around that one.
It can protect people from the worst of their tools.
A bit.
But it has not completely circumvented our most determined and insidious, albeit sophisticated, efforts to put the all-powerful and ever-living God into a box of our own imaginings.
Nor has it prevented us from using whatever witching tools we may devise in an effort to sniff out God’s will.
As if those definitions and determinations were so almighty important.
I beg to suggest that they are not almighty.
I beg to suggest that they are not the almighty.
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In word, at least, we claim to adhere to those admonitions that warn against defining God.
Some of us, indeed, adhere to centuries-old advice that warn against representing God in any form whatsoever.
Would that we refrain from limiting God by our words.
Would that we refrain from limiting God’s will by our words.
Would that we refrain from limiting God’s creation by our words.
Would that we refrain from limiting the people that God has chosen to bring into existence by our words.
Yet they, like God, must expect treatment at the hands of our documentation, analysis, discernment, categorization…
And boxes.
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Let it be.
So sang The Beatles, those many years ago.
Let the “I am” be, together with all that the “I am” has wrought.
For God alone knows what God has wrought, and God needs neither our reminders nor our insights nor our judgments.
As if we would willingly chose to become aligned with any agency that exists in order to “put things to the test”.
As if we had forgotten that we had not been called to sit in judgment.
An admonition that would save us from ourselves.
For it would keep us from being aligned with those agencies that exist in order to “put things to the test”.
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Let it be.
For beauty can attract attention, far more so than can the melodramas, the action-adventure fictions and the pure love of conflict that I have described in previous articles.
For, in attracting attention to itself, beauty can lead to love, which can lead to hope, which can lead to faith.
I am reminded of these things as I now complete one year of writing twice-monthly articles for this venue.
I wish for you a beauty that is beyond all measure.
I wish for you a beauty that is beyond all documentation.
I wish for you a beauty that will triumph over the finest application of mind and spirit.
I wish for you a beauty that will triumph over any possibility of capture in words, thoughts, expressions, teachings, beliefs, systems, feelings, or any “synergistic“ or “magic” moments.
I pause in silence, now, as all do in the face of beauty...
...and as so many of us live out the spans of our pedestrian lives, moved by an unspoken and unarticulated center; not necessarily remembering God in a moment-by-moment fashion, much less recalling at all times the various proclamations that have been made in God’s name, but simply trying, as best we know how, to love: trying, as best we know how, not to turn our backs on, not ever to turn our backs on, that for which we ache…
For beauty can lead to love, which can lead to hope, which can lead to faith.
I pause in silence, now...
... with the slight hum of summer bees in the wildflowers; with the slow drift of time before the pull of the autumnal clock begins…
...as the bees fatten with provender and the cumulus swells with the richness of the moisture-soaked earth…
...as all things climb; as all things yearn upward for light and water…
For which we ache…
...sheer beauty...
I pause in silence, now...
...here, on the eve of the twenty-second of July...
...the traditional Feast Day of Mary Magdalene.
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I post new articles twice-monthly in “Author’s Corner”.
If you live in or near the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, and you would be interested in meeting with others for discussion and/or prayer, please contact me at rob@towarddawn.org. All are welcome, regardless of identity or personal choices. Please understand that I do not have the resources to guarantee that I will be able to read or respond to all other correspondence.
Toward Dawn is a privately-funded outreach, and it neither solicits nor accepts contributions.
Rob Wright
Rob Wright holds advanced degrees in education and performing arts, and he has been a professional teacher for over sixteen years. In his home denomination, he has served as a lay minister in liturgical, educational and ecumenical activities. He lives in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire with his spouse of twenty years and their daughter.
