Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts

Saturday, June 28, 2025

The Joy and Sorrow of Symbols, Perceptions, and Ignorance

 I recently wrote some about the search for beauty and those simple moments of purpose, faith, and pure human and natural interaction.

Saturday, a Memorial Sunday liturgy at Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in downtown Salt Lake City, I went looking forward to that. Candles, prayers, chants, the rhythms of worship common for millennia in languages living and dead, sung, whispered, shouted from the lips of millions across our globe.

But first, I had to park my 2019 Ford Fiesta in the tiny parking lot behind our more-than-a-century-and-a-half-old church, once a synagogue,  and meander down a narrow alleyway toward the front entrance.

"No Trespassing" signs, occasional police patrols, fencing, even some security cameras do not keep the homeless and drug dealers and their meth-addled victims from finding a way in during the dark hours. And with sunlight comes the inevitable stacks of bottles, cans, emptied syringes, the occasional broken crack pipe . . . and piles of human feces, near the urine splashes and stains against the bricks of our building.

This morning, as I went to light candles and say prayers for my departed parents and other loved ones inside, I had. to dodge two still-steaming mounds. One, protruding well into the narrow alley, would pose a slip-and-fall threat to a child or grandparent (one slightly less foot-sure than I), so I grabbed a stick and tried, with mixed success to move it.

My search for beauty? Now, there was a challenge. Took me well past the mid-point of the liturgy to once more focus. So much for sainthood for this old angry, smoldering, fart. 

What was I supposed to do, I eventually quipped with myself: grab a flower from the altar display and plant it in the remaining pile outside?

What a stack of fertilizer! Why, it could be a blossoming tree within days, right? 

Argh.

So,  there was that.

All a bit of a detour from a sadder, perhaps, definitely more bizarre dive into derailment of human interaction through just plain ignorance, minus intentionally defecating on sacred ground.

Earlier this week, we finally got our new flooring installed by Lowe's contractors. Two men, one a bit older than the other, of Middle Eastern origins and with little English, did a fine job. Arrived with smiles . . . until they saw the T-shirt I was wearing.

It was an old one, a black short-sleeve with a symbol the seller told me years ago was representative of the Antiochian Eastern Orthodox Church, the one I'm associated with here in Utah.

Our church is Greek Orthodox in liturgy, traditions, etc., and its mostly multi-ethnic membership in the U.S. dwarfs its primarily Arabic parishes back in its ancient stomping grounds -- Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Iraq, etc. But our Patriarch in still back there, and our Archbishop, although in New York, is Lebanese by birth. 

The symbol on the T-shirt? Your typical Orthodox three-bar cross, though imbedded inside an Aramaic-originated letter. In Hebrew, it is the letter "Nun," and pretty much identical to the Arabic version, pronounced "noon." In Hebrew, it is associated with "faithfulness," "inheritance," "fish," or "seed."

But it eventually was adopted by Arabic Orthodox Christians to evoke the "Nazarene," Jesus, and -- like the Star of David treasured by Israel was used by the Nazis to identify Europe's Jews for death camps during WWII -- the radical Islamic death cult, ISIS, has used the Nun symbol to identify Christians for torture and death.

I knew that thousands of my spiritual siblings in the Middle East have been slain by such terrorists in the "Holy Land" over the past few decades, but the "Nun" use by ISIS was a sad revelation to me.

So, finally, back to this story.

My flooring installers, seeing the symbol on my T-shirt, abruptly became silent. They hurried through their work, wouldn't make eye contact, and said nothing more until the older one, in a monotone, asked me to sign the paperwork. They rushed to pack up their gear and left.

Did the T-shirt offend him? Was he angry? Ashamed? Afraid? 

I'll never know.

But my own ignorance . . . now, that bothers me.



Sunday, November 8, 2015

This Pilgrim's progress, and yours

Saturday morning, I took the dogs for a walk along the Jordan River's back trails. 

Once I got past the abandoned shopping carts, one homeless man's well-established and, uncharacteristically clean campsite (and a few impromptu refuse dumps, it was beautiful. 

The trek was a John Bunyanesque metaphor AND, to a point a metaphor, for a spiritual journey. I walked into areas where the well-worn foot trails became hints in the brush and through the limbs of trees, raining down gold and red foliage with each sigh of breeze; into sunlight filtered through the canopy and reflected in the frost on a downed cottonwood, and glistening from the moss on rocks. Beyond, power-blue skies, and clouds of fluff.

I stepped out of the pain, the detritus of human shortcomings, the bitterness of some lives expressed with disdain for themselves, and nature, the cast off wreckage of dreams, even, and into beauty.
It was like going to a cathedral, quiet but for the sighs and whispered prayers of the private penitent, looking up and finding myself walking inside the sunlight of stained glass with saints and sinners, all of us forgiven.


It was, for a blessed, crystal clear moment, being caressed and absorbed in that deep, abiding Love. . . and being reminded, again, that He is with me, and with all who just pause to let go the offense, to forgive, and be aware, to be present.


This, my Lord, transcends mere human doctrines, buildings and their grasp at the out-of-context pieces of scriptures while willfully ignoring the whole.


And, finally, here is a truth I've discovered. If you say you are a Christian that "whole" calls upon us to judge OURSELVES. We, and often poorly and with failures too numerous to count, "sin" -- fall short of the mark, from the word's Latin roots.


Paul put it this way in 1st Corinthians 5:12-13: "For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges."


And from what I believe, that latter part is in Love and compassion beyond our imagining.


Thus ends the sermon. smile emoticon



If all, some or part of it resonates, I didn't waste my time, or yours.

Be blessed. It's up to you.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Beauty and imitation: Real world unrivaled when God's 'special effects' are displayed


One of the reasons I enjoyed the movie "Avatar" so much was the stunning special effects, the beauty of the exotic, extraterrestrial jungles, floating mountains, plants, animals, etc., created for the backgrounds.
The same appreciation was evident in the "Lord of the Rings" movies in the mammoth sculptures on the rivers, mountain fortresses and especially the abodes of the Elves with their surreal light and detail.
All fiction, those things.
But, to me, they pale next to the reality of breathtaking beauty in our "real" world. I was reminded of that when I stumbled upon this website, featuring the photo above -- and more than 20 others.
Stunning scenes, all the more so because they are places we can visit, touch, see, experience and . . . wonder.
So, take a look, and then, I dare you, go back to your daily tasks without a lingering sense of the inexpressible beauty of our planet, and gratitude to its Maker.