“A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist.
Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on. In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people.
The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?”
I was alerted to this story in a recent Facebook post. The glory of the internet. But some of you may already know of it. It took place in 2007, and was, as said, devised by the Washington Post as a study on priorities and perceptions. The authors won the Pulitzer Prize for their work. The authors had identified a gap in the way we appreciate the world, in the way we seek to define and pigeon-hole beauty, and art, and worthwhile things.
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Although this is of course an extreme example, I suspect that we can all too often rush through life, missing the small beauties and treasures out there for the taking. At this time, a damp grey January, we are often even less inclined than usual to dwell on the possibility of beauty all around. We are persuaded by our own untested assumptions that all is dead, dying and decayed. The promise of Spring may be there, but there isn’t a lot to see right now.
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James Roose-Evans, in our first reading this morning, talked of the importance of recognising the presence of God in everything around us. For him, the phrase, ‘thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us’ is the mantra he suggests is repeated to remind us of the integral beauty of the world.
For many of course, the notion of ‘O Lord’ will not work so readily, but the principle of looking for, and finding, the presence of goodness and beauty in all still stands. For some, perhaps, the mantra ‘the most beautiful and perfect things are within everything we see’.
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This can of course be quite easy on a superficial level. If we set our minds to it, we can find ourselves more observant on our walks. We will spot the hidden flowers nestling in old walls. We might notice the long-forgotten architectural flourish on the side of an old cottage. Perhaps just the wonder of a golden sunrise or sunset.
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But these are non-sentient things. When we are encouraged to remember there is beauty and love in all things, that God dwells in everything, we are also perhaps challenged to recognise this in not just everything, but also in everyone we see.
And this is not always easy
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This is a form of Immanence. For centuries debate has raged in philosophical and theological circles as to whether God, or the Eternal Spirit, or the Divine, or the source of all goodness, or however you might want to describe that ‘something’ that can appear to pervade all, the debate is on whether God is immanent – that is, God is intimately part of everything in the world – or perhaps God is transcendent – that is, God is separate to the world.
For me, God, the eternal Spirit, is too impossible to define and categorise for there to be any certainty between those two positions.
Marcus Borg, a liberal Christian theologian, refers to the notion of Panentheism. Panentheism defines God’s transcedence, that sense of otherness, and God’s immanence, that sense that God is here, within and around us.
For those for whom ‘God’ is a difficult proposition, it might be easier to consider the notion of God as perfection. Perfection and beauty is not just transcendent, it is not something that is outside of us and unattainable. Rather it is, also, immanent. Perfection and beauty is contained in everything and everyone. So beauty is abstract, to be attained, yet also something that is very much part of our everyday lives and beings.
Of course, this cuts across my favourite dependable line from Jean-Paul Satre’s from his play Huis Close, or ‘No Exit; that ‘L’enfer est les autres’ or, ‘hell is other people’.
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If you can accept that beauty and perfection can reasonably be part of everything and everyone, then other people cannot be described as hell. Frustratingly, we can no longer see everyone else as the ‘problem’, rather everyone we meet provides the opportunity to meet with the Divine, to experience a sense of that ‘something’ that connects and brings us together.
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In the Christian Church, this idea of Immanence is celebrated in the Feast of Theophany. Or, as it is better known, Epiphany, which was celebrated yesteerday, 6 January. This aligned with the notion, for orthodox Christians, that God is revealed in the form of a particular man, Jesus.
For Unitarians, there is often a twist to this notion. For Unitarians, who have traditionally seen Jesus as a human – a very good one – but human nonetheless, we all of us have the same connectedness to God as Jesus. Yes, God was in Jesus, but God, the Divine, the spirit of goodness, is in all of us. Immanence for Unitarians is the recognition the presence of the Divine in all people. Not just those supposedly ‘chosen’. We are all filled with goodness.
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So we might consider this notion of beauty as being present in all things and people.
And all people includes ourselves.
If we are prepared to look again at the world and seek the spirit of goodness in other people. Then we need also to see the beauty in ourselves.
I was reminded this week of the words of Stephen Patrick Morrisey, singer with the 1980s Mancunian band, The Smiths. In one of their most well know songs, How Soon Is Now, the chorus states, simply:
“I am human, and need to be loved. Just like everybody else”
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“I am human, and need to be loved. Just like everybody else”
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We’re very good, as Unitarians and as people in the real world more generally, to look at others in wonder, and to ignore ourselves. Perhaps it’s a British thing, others here today will be able to comment perhaps, but we have a horrible tendency to ignore our own goodness – even to deliberately put ourselves down.
Why is that?
If we are to recognise the good in others, we must surely start to look at the good within ourselves. If we are to contemplate the meaning of a world in which we might consider God, or the Spirit, or the Divine as ‘immanent’, as being within and around everything and everyone, then that must include ourselves.
I do not claim we are each of us perfect. I do not suggest we take this as good reason to ignore the darker corners within each of us. I do not claim or even hint that there is no room for improvement – certainly within my life.
Nevertheless, it is surely the case that an immanent presence will ensure I am part of it, and it is part of me.
And I need to recognise that. I need to remember that I need to be loved, just like everybody else.
And that ‘I’ is, in part, recognising and supporting those things that are already a part of me. The things that make me, ‘me’. The things that make each of us, individuals.
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In our second reading, from his book ‘New Seeds of Contemplation’, Thomas Merton talks of poets and monks who never get to be the people that they might. He talks of them as being too fixated on endeavouring to write someone else’s poems, and to have someone else’s religious experiences.
What Merton is saying, I believe, is that we can be all too willing to see good in others and to try and emulate it, to try and be the good that lies elsewhere. We miss the obvious. We overlook the beauty that is right here, under our noses, within ourselves. We are too busy focusing on something different, something abstract, that we miss the goodness, opportunity and value of our whole being.
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Yet it is us, you, me, each and everyone in this world, that can make the difference. In one of the apocraphal books of the Bible, the Book of Sirach, which is basically a book of wisdom sayings by a man named Jesus, not Jesus of Nazareth, but Jesus, son of Siach, who lived around 130 BC, there is a great saying:
‘Heed the counsel of your own heart, for no-one is more faithful to you, than it is’
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It takes trust to listen to the counsel of your own heart. It requires a firm commitment to recognise the goodness and beauty that is there inside each of us.
Through focussing on the beauty within, we might become stronger in ourselves.
By looking through our own goodness, we might see better the good in others, the beauty that all bring to the world.
We might notice also the awesome wonder of the world around us.
If we’re really lucky, we might notice the beauty of a virtuoso violinist hiding in the rush and rumble of daily life.
We will, I am sure, see things of beauty that we would otherwise miss.
We might see God, or goodness, or love in ourselves,
in others,
in all we encounter,
By being aware to the beauty around, we might be strengthened in ourselves.