WATERmeditation January 2024
Follow-Up to WATERmeditation
with Brad Lutz
“Beauty: An Invitation to a Year of Wonder”
Monday, January 8, 2023, 7:30 PM ET
WATER is grateful to Brad Lutz for contributing “Beauty: An Invitation to a Year of Wonder” as the opening meditation theme for 2024, a year when we need all the beauty we can find.
Video can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0uL-3jiB1g&ab_channel=WATERwomensalliance
The text of his remarks which he shared generously follows:
Beauty: An Invitation to a Year of Wonder
WATER Meditation, Monday, January 8, 2024 with Rev. Brad S. Lutz
Last September, I satisfied a deep desire and traveled to the Isle of Iona in western Scotland; the trip was part of an Earth & Soul pilgrimage with John Philip Newell. After travel that included 3 planes, a train and bus, and 2 ferries, I arrived in this ancient center of Celtic Christian spirituality. The day was bright, the air crisp (for my Florida blood), the welcome gracious. It was a dream come true.
Except – yes, except that my luggage never arrived in Scotland and efforts to locate it could have tested the patience of a saint (which I’m not!). After two days exploring Glasgow and with just 2 ½ hours before departing for Iona – no luggage. So, I went shopping. In one hour, assisted by two travel companions and one kind store clerk, I had a new but limited wardrobe.
My new apparel, however, offered minimal warmth and protection from the extreme weather that developed the next day. Temperatures dropped sharply, gale force winds blew fiercely, and rain pelted everything and everyone (only the ubiquitous sheep didn’t seem to mind). Shivering and damp, I thought that perhaps visiting Iona should have remained a dream – the reality was disheartening.
Each early morning of the pilgrimage began with a period of silent meditation in the Michael Chapel, part of the Iona Abbey complex since the early 13th century. Sitting in silence, the presence of monks who had prayed here for eight centuries was palpable. Arising from deep in my subconscious, came a memory of the late Brother Roger, founder of the Taizé community, saying during my rainy 1983 visit there, that all weather is beautiful for it’s a gift of God and is to be treasured with gratitude despite any inconvenience it may cause. This recollection transformed my stay on Iona. The weather remained inclement but was suddenly beautiful: whistling wind, chilling temperatures, pelting rain, and the dawning light provided a grand background chorus to the deep silence of meditation. The “cathedral of earth, sky, and sea” had become a place of unimagined beauty, even amidst the intensity of a Hebridean storm.
And then, rainbows. Not one, not two – but three rainbows at the same spectacular moment. “The heavens declare the glory of the Creator; the firmament proclaims the handiwork of Love” (Psalm 19:1, Psalms for Praying by Nan Merrill). Indeed!
What I realized is that “A journey without challenge has no meaning…” (Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred). What dawned on me is this: in the midst of all the sorrow and sadness of our pain-filled world, there is still beauty. When I’m able to shift focus from my inconvenience, anxiety, or fear, I am able to discover beauty even in challenging situations. “Beauty,” Oscar Wilde wrote, “is the only thing that time cannot harm.” And Albert Schweitzer: “Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf” or, I daresay, in a Hebridean storm.
As 2024 unfolds with its troubling uncertainties and stark realities, I invite you to join me and commit to a year of wonder. Walk with wonder at the beauty of nature. Open your eyes to the natural kindness of human beings. Listen for the music of the spheres. Living with wonder “enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal (Abraham Joshua Heschel). Such wonder leads, not to withdrawal from the challenges facing us, but guides us to the healing and strength needed to embrace them with meaning and purpose.
Finally, from Peiro Ferrucci (philosopher; psychotherapist; author of The Power of Kindness and Beauty and the Soul):
Who can afford to live without beauty? Beauty fills us with passion;
it graces us with joy and lights up our existence.
A landscape, a piece of music, a film, a dance –
suddenly all dreariness is gone,
we are left bewitched and dazzled.
If we get lost in dark despair, beauty takes us back to Center.
While your meditation will take you where it will, you might consider these questions: 1) What graces your existence with joy and fills you with awe?; 2) Does your pace or your focus tend to make you oblivious to the grandeur all around you?
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Many participants found Brad’s remarks a wonderful spark for new ways of being in the New Year. Among the comments:
1. People were reminded of their own trips to the Iona Community in Scotland and the power of the place.
2. The need to find a “contemplative pace” as per Brad’s second question
3. The ability to find beauty in so many places, including in “radiant darkness”
4. “Wondrous remembering”
5. The exquisite beauty of a premature baby growing into fullness with her mother’s milk as sustenance
6. The “gift of change” of pace after surgery
7. The need to see beauty in the printed word and well beyond
8. A chant on beauty
With thanks to Brad, we are off at a “contemplative pace” for 2024.
