You think beautiful thoughts! (Mar 12-18)
This week in snapshots:
Happy Saturday!
Our commute has been an hour long in Seattle traffic, and with the glimpses of morning sun I’ve seen Mt. Rainier peeking over the horizon just like Mt. Fuji - astonishing in its hugeness as the solitary peak on the horizon. On the other side of the interstate you can see peaks in Olympia national park, and while the traffic is soul-crushing, the beauty of house lights reflecting in the water like a thousand stars is uplifting.
I continue coming back to the healing you can find in beauty. I know that human experience is a diverse multitude of stories, but I am finding the healing in two realities of beauty.
Ever since I turned 21, on my birthday I ask those who gather to celebrate the day I came onto the Earth to partake in Communion with me. And while my birthday bread and Barefoot wine is no sacramental Eucharist, it is one of my favorite things to do with people!
First, because it is a beautiful experience. Your fingers tear into the fresh loaf and brush against the hands of a person who loves you and loves Jesus with you as you pass it down, at best, the bread is still warm in your hands and the scent rises into your face with a softness that is cut by the pouring of wine (and sparkling juice for minors and abstainers) into glasses that may or may not be shaped for the purpose of sheerly enjoying the sight and smell. People become slightly more solemn, but remain broadly smiling as you sit together at a table in the sunlight or around a fire that is warm against the cool, arid air of the night and their presence makes His presence all the more tangible as you taste and see God’s goodness as remembered in the sacrifice of Jesus.
I can describe this to you, but unless you have eaten fresh bread and wine in remembrance you haven’t experienced the beauty of that kind of moment - though, if you’ve had an experience like it, I’d love to hear about it :) Hit reply right now and draft up your experience of beauty before you read on.
Second, the sights and smells and tastes and sounds aren’t the only beautiful part of Communion. It can be easy to get swept up in just the experience, but I always find complete beauty in the remembering - the meditation. After all, we don’t break bread because it feels good or tastes good, but because Christ broke his body for us. His sacrifice is what makes it smell good and take on the meaning of goodness. We don’t pour wine because we’re responsible adults; we pour wine because he shed his blood and gave it all so that we could have the option to be loved the way he wants to love us! And I don’t ask my friends to remember with me so that they are humiliated by their sins that his blood washes away, but because we all are invited to bring his presence onto this planet through our presence. I need them to know him more fully!
I need YOU if I want to know HIM more fully, because your person is a reflection of who he really is! It’s terrifying and beautiful and sometimes painful and tragic, but in the gut-wrenching experience we can see His reflection. When we experience beauty, it causes us to think about it. And the opposite is true as well: when we stop and really think, look at the details, ask questions, we then experience the awe, wonder, and majesty of God’s goodness. And that thought, that realization, that meditative conclusion of whose we are, more than sheer beauty, is what heals.
The experience and the meditation. The meditation on beauty, and the experience of beauty. God is in it. And where God is, there is healing too. Not always in the way we imagine it, but faithfully from the moment of our brokenness to the completion of our wholeness. Letting beauty redirect me to him? It heals.
So thanks to you for being beautiful. Thanks to God for being beautiful.
Tell me about a favorite Communion moment of yours?
Peace be with you,
–Beth
