They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
In my experience that is very true.
You cannot get somebody who does not want to see
something that is beautiful to see it.
In fact, even when you want to see beauty,
it is hard enough to see it.
You have to look. And look again.
Sometimes the beauty of a moment or
of something we are looking at or experiencing,
forces us to pause and sort of take it in.
The beauty is at another level.
It is not on the surface.
It is beneath the surface.
One has to work a little harder to experience the beauty
not just see the beauty.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think everything is beautiful.
But I do think that the beautiful is in so much of our lives
and we don’t take the time to experience it.
We get caught up on the surface of the reality of our lives
and we do not see the beauty.
Pain, problems and suffering can give us
the greatest access to this beauty
because our attention has been sort of grabbed
and we now have to pay attention to this moment
because there is a temptation to move onto the next moment.
John O’Donohue, the great Irish poet and author,
has a beautiful way of putting it.
He says, “Beauty is a sister of all that is broken,
wounded, pained, lost and stumped.
She will not be confined to the realm of perfection
where there is no loss, pain or depth;
that beauty is a palace of broken tenderness.”
It is a beautiful phrase “broken tenderness.”
As you know, these last several weeks
have been a difficult several weeks for me
with the loss of my brother, my spiritual director
and other people in my life.
The pain, loss and suffering have been very real
and yet even in the midst of all of that,
I have experienced some of the most beautiful moments of my life.
And I do not think that can happen without that loss;
without the pain because it grabs my attention.
It just doesn’t happen, one has to work a little at it.
One has to look and then look again.
One has to feel and then feel again,
go a little deeper into it and allow that moment
to give something beautiful back.
I have experienced several moments with my dying brother for example
but also through the outpouring of so many.
My room in my suite over here is full of gifts from you:
Cards, flowers and enough baked goods
to feed the entire parish times over and over again.
It is so wonderful.
And the emails you have sent.
And the many people who have sent them from yonder,
from different places, who are watching on line.
I would say the tenderness and the gentleness
of those written notes were not just a card signed.
Please know that those were so important and tremendously healing;
and beautiful moments.
Whether it be baked goods, a flower, a letter or an email;
or just simply a conversation that many of you had,
a gentle touch on the shoulder.
These are very tender moments.
It is the palace of tender brokenness
that heals and brings great beauty to one’s life.
My hope is as we enter into this third Sunday of Advent,
we are called to rejoice and be joyful.
And sometimes where I am,
I don’t feel like wanting to be joyful
because I’ve got so much loss;
and yet, I cannot resist being joyful for
what the palace of broken tenderness has given to me.
And that comes in and through you and so many others.
My hope is that you are not experiencing that loss and that pain
but I know some of you are as you enter into this Christmas season,
it is always a hard season for those who have lost loved ones.
Some of you have gone through loss in this last year
so you do enter into that palace of broken tenderness.
Allow it to give you some broken tenderness.
Allow it to heal you if you can.
For the many others of you,
I ask you to pause in this last two weeks before Christmas
and to not let it just flow on by.
But to look and to look again at what is around you.
And notice the beauty of the moment;
take note of the love shared;
the beauty of creation;
the beauty of those around you.
It reminds me of that other phrase,
“Hidden in plain sight.”
That is often where beauty lies.
Beauty lies right in the midst of plain sight
but we have to look with different eyes.
John the Baptist came, proclaiming us to notice where Jesus Christ is,
that he is the one
and they were still confused.
They say, “Well, what should we do?”
He doesn’t give them a long litany of things to do.
He simply tells them to be present to
whoever or whatever is their job and their role.
If they were soldiers, be good soldiers.
If you are a tax collector, then be honest tax collectors.
He doesn’t tell them to go and climb a mountain;
go do this, do that; he doesn’t.
He just simply tells them to do what they are supposed to do
and to do it faithfully.
And be present to the moment.
So I say to all of you,
I am not asking you to do anything extraordinary.
Be present to your husband or your wife
and be a husband or a wife but be present to your spouse.
If you are a parent then be a parent and be present to your children.
And if you are a child, be present to your parents;
notice their goodness; notice their love;
don’t take it for granted;
don’t wait for Christmas to tell them how much you love them.
And if you have parents in your life,
make sure you tend to them in their elderly age
so that they can experience in their tender brokenness
your love and your beauty.
In doing that, all of us, if we could just do
what we do in the ordinary moments and do it well
and be present then we will experience joy.
We will be able to rejoice no matter what our circumstances are.
So today, what should we do?
Be present in the moment.
Look again.
Look deeper and see the beauty of this moment
whether it is pain or loss;
or joy and greatness.
May we be attentive to the moment
for God is right here, right now.
What should we do?
Pay attention right now and see the God who is all around us.
