Beautiful things…or just stuff

I've always had an appreciation for pretty things.  And then I tend to over-analyze myself "is that just my covetousness"?  “Is it my materialistic bent?”  “Is it my latent metro-sexuality (not so latent)?” “Maybe I’m just a hoarder?”  (Don’t talk to my wife) Maybe a combination of all of it?

Way before I became a social worker I was a 'bleeding heart' as the profession is often labeled. I saw my 'bleeding' as a weakness for years primarily due to the pain and sadness it brought me.  It was useless to  try and hide it. 

Our first piece of Heritage Crystal from Blarney, Ireland

Tears came easy for me.  I cry at movies and some television shows.  I even teared up during the trailer for the movie Les Miserable's before I ever saw the movie!  My father couldn’t appreciate this about me, so I was grateful for men Iike Bob Kannady, a tall and slender, quiet, pre-maturely gray guy. Bob was a peer of my father at our church where I grew up. I would see him quite often in worship overwhelmed with feeling, tears running down his cheeks.  His open display gave me permission.  Later, as a young adult I came across a book title There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among the Wolves by James Kavanaugh and I immediately identified with the title.  Even now as I write I still have twinges of fear of judgment.  I have come to enjoy the way I experience the world and people around me.  Does it overwhelm me at times?   Yes.  But life should overwhelm us at times...the beauty of it...the pain of it.

With these moist eyes, I see beautiful things...different kinds of things…just stuff some say. I’m not sure everyone sees ‘it’. The beauty I see in all of 'the stuff' works to balance the sadness and darkness I also see.  What kind of 'stuff' am I talking about?

Here's what I mean:

the Heritage crystal bowl we bought in Blarney, Ireland on one of our trips years ago--you should see it as the morning sunshine strikes the buffet and is refracted in all the cuts!

the stargazer lilies that continue to bloom in my backyard despite the brutal summer heat 

the hand-painted lamp we found in Taormina Sicily purchased from the couple who spoke no English

our day hike down from Gornergrat just below the Matterhorn into Zermatt, Switzerland 

the Thomas Moran painting of the Snake River falls at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa--spectacular!

the carnival glass collection in our foyer that reminds me with each glance of my grandmother, Birdie

the inlaid wood table and cart we found at A. Gargiulo & Jannuzzi's in Sorrento

the view of the hillsides covered with rows and rows of olive trees in the valley below in Assisi, Italy 

the San Juan Mountains viewed from Black Bear pass above Telluride Colorado

the birth of our two healthy girls…and the births of four healthy grandchildren!

all the gorgeous hybrid day lilies that bloom in my yard in June each year around Father’s Day

the view from chimney tops across the valley at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico

the kaleidoscope we bought in Kapa'a, Kauai with oil inside that constantly creates one beautiful design after another..out of broken bits of shells and junk floating in the fluid (there's a metaphor in there)

the gifted writings/preaching of Barbara Brown Taylor

the Strauss concert we heard in Vienna in one of the halls where Strauss himself performed his music

Cappuccinos in the coffee bars all over Italy!

the minute detail of the Robbie House by Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park Illinois

Our Christmas tree that flashes, twinkles, spins, sings and bubbles! (it looks even more beautiful with my glasses off...or squinting...tears make it even better)

the view of Cal Turner's barn and silo rising from a ‘lake’ of low-lying, early-morning fog (Brentwood) now rebuilt after a storm destroyed the original

Inlaid wood table from Sorrento, the hand painted lamp from Taormina

Enough examples for you to get the idea?  Beautiful stuff. People. Places. Art. Architecture.  Is it only stuff?  I don't think so.  In this stuff I see reflections of God. My take is that God's original intent was that the world would sparkle every day...that it would glisten and shine like stained glass windows, crystal bowls and kaleidoscopes.  The grand truth is, the world still does, if you can 'see' it.  And I got the gift of seeing it all through watery eyes...which makes it even more beautiful.  In contrast with the pain and sadness...the beauty glimmers even more gloriously.  Ever notice that they lay diamonds on a black cloth for viewing?  So, for me,  what began as an embarrassment became a gift.  

The preface in Lewis Smedes book How Can It Be All Right When Everything is All Wrong? (1982) begins:

"If you are trying hard to believe in God while a hundred voices inside tell you to stop believing, you are my kind of person.  I wrote this book for you.  Believing does not come easy for me either.  It never has come easy; I suppose it never will.  I almost always believe in God in spite of problems and pains that tell me things are so wrong that believing in a good God doesn't make sense.  The things I say here are filtered through many years of believing against the grain.

Too many people I care about hurt too much to let believing come easy..  People close to me get cancer and die too soon; my prayers do not take away the pain or hold back the tolling of the bells.  My friends marriages turn into battlefields and their children go through a hundred kinds of mini-hells.  God does not do many miracles for my crowd.  But the pain of people in my little orbit are just starters.  Those starving children I pray for across the sea keep dying;  and the oppressed peoples I pray for keep getting their heads banged and their freedoms choked.  I am not whimpering.  I know we make many of our own miseries.  I am only admitting that, when I believe that God really cares, I feel a lot of hurts that tell me he does not seem to care enough."  

Smedes goes on to write one of the most hope-filled books I have ever read.  I think it is back in print…go for it.

Growing up in Tulsa, the daily paper, the Tribune, had a column titled Think on These Things taken from the verses in the fourth chapter of Philippians:  "I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious---the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse."

 If your eyes aren't watering---start by squinting, and take Paul’s advice to the folks at Philippi.

It 's not just stuff.

Edited 3/2021