Beauty and Ashes

I am a pragmatic person.  By personality, nurture, and education, I am wired towards productivity and problem-solving. One of my all-time favorite words is efficiency.  I am definitely way more Martha-ish than Mary-ish.

But during this season of Lent I have been challenged to think more like Mary, and even – gasp – an artist. A few weeks ago a friend shared a link to an article by artist Makoto Fujimura, and it has taken me a long time to process what he says.  Beginning with a story about a young Iraqi girl who was killed because she ran back to straighten up a flower she had mistakenly stepped on, and then comparing that “needlessness” with Jesus’ own tears when Lazarus died, Fujimura convinces me that some of the things I might consider wasteful…. are not.  (Read the whole piece here—please.  It’s really, really, thought-provoking.)

Gradually over the years I have come to realize that my concept of math is not the same as God’s.  If I was sending my Son to this messed up earth for only 33 years, I would not have condensed his ministry into only 3 of those years, for instance.  I would have gone for maximum impact, maximum efficiency – using my math.

But Jesus goes about everything in such a different way.  He stops to pay attention to individuals no one else would have deemed worthy or important enough.  He stops to weep – even though He knows Lazarus will soon be raised back to life.

Jesus even praises Mary for “wasting” all that precious perfume on Him in one sitting.  (I, of course, want to suggest that she could at least spread it out over multiple occasions or something!)  He loves her generosity, her sensitivity, her full-hearted worship of Him.  There is something in the giving up, in the cost of the sacrifice, that brings great beauty.

As we think about Lent, with all the talk of ashes and dust and mourning and repentance and mortality, perhaps now is when the idea of beauty can most shine forth.  In another piece (read this one, too!), Fujimura says, 

Beauty, to the Japanese of old, held together the ephemeral with the sacred. Cherry blossoms are most beautiful as they fall, and that experience of appreciation lead the Japanese to consider their mortality. 

Our own realization that we cannot do it - -we cannot be perfect, we cannot reach God, we cannot fulfill His desires for us, we cannot live forever on our own – can lead to tears.  These tears, ironically, make us more Christ-like.  He wept, too. 

As Fujimura says,

Jesus’ tears were also ephemeral and beautiful. His tears remain with us as an enduring reminder of the Savior who weeps. Rather than to despair, though, Jesus’ tears lead the way to the greatest hope of the resurrection. 

Spending our time and other resources on beauty, on choosing the generous sacrifice as an act of worship, this is not wasteful.  Strolling through botanical gardens, buying flowers to bring into our homes, decorating our mantelpiece with symbols of the liturgical season to remind our families of the goodness of God, listening to music that stirs our souls to worship…. all of these “unproductive” things can perhaps be doing more than I ever imagined.  

Simone Weil has said that there are two things that pierce the soul:  affliction and beauty.  Sometimes we need to surround ourselves with beauty, in whatever forms we can find, to pierce our soul, to awaken it from the numbing of consumerism, busyness, or whatever other idols we have chased.

Another quote from Mr. Fujimura:

To seek the depth of beauty, the beauty of being...that is what we should become, to rise to. That is our charge as leaders, as Martha’s and Mary’s of the world.  Yes, to instruct, to ask analytical questions of the Martha’s of the world.  But those questions do not become Present unless we stand, and waste time, with the Mary’s of the world, unless we weep with those who intuit the darker path toward suffering, and rejoice with those who intuit the feast to come.

The season of Lent is unique in its offering of both ashes and beauty.  I read this quote in a story book I was reading to my children this week and it reminded me of this season:

“Would you like to hear, reader, how [the plan] unfolded?  The story is not a pretty one.  There is violence in it.  And cruelty.  But stories that are not pretty have a certain value, too, I suppose.  Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannot always be sweetness and light.”  -- From The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

This season is not all sweetness and light, and the story we will remember in a couple of weeks is full of violence and cruelty.  But in the midst of it all, there is the undercurrent of beauty and the triumph of Hope in the distance. And this is what we celebrate!


p.s. Coincidentally, one of Fujimura's paintings is featured on The Lent Project for March 24!  As soon as I saw it, I knew it must be one of his.  :)