Mono No Aware

The concept of mono no aware suggests an awareness of the impermanent nature of everything.  Generally translated as "the pathos of things," this awareness intensifies the appreciation of beauty, and evokes a poignant acceptance at its passing.  Unlike Western ideals of beauty - primarily based on a external perfection - in Japanese culture, beauty seems to be embraced in a more subjective fashion; as an experience of the heart and soul, not merely the fives senses. 

With mono no aware, the ground strewn with fallen sakura petals is just as beautiful - or perhaps more so - than the fresh young blossoms clinging to the trees.   And, because everything is impermanent, getting attached to things can lead us to suffering (at least according to the Buddha, who, I think, nails it here).  It's not just a "stop and smell the roses" philosophy, but a "stop and smell the roses and sadly rejoice in their inevitable passing as a proof of this truth" philosophy.

On Sunday I took my daughter and a few of her friends to Sakura Sunday in Fairmount Park.   The weather was perfect and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.  The kids had a great time watching the Taiko drummers, cosplaying, checking out all things Japanese and, most especially, enjoying being together outside of the school building.  It was a pretty good day.

But, as I consider this Sunday, and the previous years' festivals we attended, I can't help but think of how things pass so quickly when the kids are still kids.  Even though this was only the third Sakura Sunday we've attended, I can see how they are all changing, growing older (though, thankfully, not growing up too fast).  Soon enough I'll be completely extraneous. 

So, for now I'm going with mono no aware and reminding myself to appreciate the fleeting beauty in all things - the cherry blossoms, the seasons, and my teenage daughter's need for her mother.

The Idolatry of Fellowship

Lenten Learning 3: Sometimes I think I go to church more to see other people than to worship God.

I don't really have anything deep or pithy to say about it. It's just that, over Lent, I realized that I do this a lot. To the extent that I can't tell where one ends and the other begins

And because I can't always tell the difference between worship and fellowship, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Like I'm putting being with them before God; that I don't believe He's enough. I don't know what to do about it. Part of me thinks I need to walk away from my church until I can guarantee that my focus and priorities are straight.

But when I look for advice, I don't always find the derision I expected:

"I vividly remember how I had, at one time, become totally dependent on the affection and friendship of one person. This dependency threw me into a pit of great anguish and brought me to the verge of a very self-destructive depression. But from the moment I was helped to experience my interpersonal addiction as an expression of a need for total surrender to a living God who would fulfil the deepest desires of my heart, I started to live my dependency in a radically new way. Instead of living it in shame and embarrassment, I was able to live it as an urgent invitation to claim God's unconditional love for myself, a love I can depend on without any fear." -- Henri Nouwen

"When I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and wouldn't go to the churches and Gospel Halls;.... I disliked very much their hymns which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit." -- C. S. Lewis

"Some Christians try to go to heaven alone, in solitude. But believers are not compared to bears or lions or other animals that wander alone. Those who belong to Christ are sheep in this respect, that they love to get together. Sheep go in flocks, and so do God's people". -- Charles Spurgeon

The best I can do is try to be honest about it, with myself and with God, until I decide how to handle it.

The Heart in (Accidental) Pilgrimage

"Everybody prays whether he thinks of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when a sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else's pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with all over your life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world.

According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it. The images he uses to explain this are all rather comic, as though he thought it was rather comic to have to explain it at all. He says God is like a friend you go to borrow bread from at midnight. The friend tells you in effect to drop dead, but you go on knocking anyway until finally he gives you what you want so he can go back to bed again (Luke 11:5-8). Or God is like a crooked judge who refuses to hear the case of a certain poor widow, presumably because he knows there's nothing much in it for him. But she keeps on hounding him until finally he hears her case just to get her out of his hair (Luke 18:1-8). Even a stinker, Jesus says, won't give his own child a black eye when he asks for peanut butter and jelly, so how all the more will God when his children... (Matthew 7:9-11).

Be importunate, Jesus says—not, one assumes, because you have to beat a path to God's door before he'll open it, but because until you beat the path maybe there's no way of getting to your door. "Ravish my heart," John Donne wrote. But God will not usually ravish. He will only court." Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

Lenten Learning 2:  I spend a whole lot of time talking to myself (and maybe to God).

As I tried to pay more attention to my actions over Lent (and, apparently, overdosing on Frederick Buechner), I noticed that I spent a lot of time in my own head.  Mostly holding one-sided conversations, as opposed to actually thinking, heaven forbid.  Is this a bad thing?  Maybe not.  Maybe a little.

Worrying, wondering, speculating, planning.  Deep ideas and dull ones. Sporadic and often disparate thoughts. Occasionally, actual prayers. Often the same ones over and over. Pretty standard fare, right? Just an awkward protagonist delivering a semi-conscious internal monologue. My soul in paraphrase.

But, regardless of what I'm saying or how much sense it makes, regardless of whether it's stream of consciousness stuff, or structured, whether they're introspective or just crazy, it seems all that 'talking' can also be prayer.  I think God knows what's meant for Him.  

Bottom line - I think it's ok to spend this internal inadvertently-sacred time, as long as I start talking to real live people, too.