In Deliberate Pursuit of Splendor

The preacher last week talked about the need for building a repertoire of splendor.  She observed that it is easy for preachers to talk about depravity -- we see it all the time.  We know what it looks like simply by looking within us and around us.  We boast a very large, full-color portfolio of ways that people treat people badly, even despicably.  Say the words and the images spring to mind.  But, she went on to argue, we are also supposed to be talking about glory -- the very desire and experience of God.  Surely our calling is not simply about berating our baser instincts, but finally about whetting an appetite for something better.  The problem, she pointed out, is that most of us have so few experiences of splendor.  Say the words and what images appear?  For most of us, they are likely to be only the faintest impressions.  We know so little about it first-hand.  We can talk boldly in abstractions, but only tentatively by experience.

Her recommendation was to be deliberate about splendor -- building a repertoire of such experiences; planning for them; seeking them out.  She revealed that when she goes on sabbatical she intentionally builds in plans for splendor.  She offered a few examples.  Hers, of course, are not the point.  The point would be reflecting upon and designing and seeking out our own.

I have certainly been blessed by more than few glimpses.  Some of them have been geographic -- the compelling beauty of the South Pacific; the intricate, fragile balance of the Galapagos; the awe-filling grandeur of mountain vistas and the silencing wonder of the sun setting over the ocean.  Some of them have been interpersonal -- in humbling conversations with a saint or a sage.  Some of them have been participatory -- in the rhythmic descent into baptismal waters with a wonder-eyed youth or a cancer-laced dying adult; in the prayerful heavy/lightness of elders' hands on my head in ordination; holding hands and repeating vows in front of family and friends and an evergreen tree.  Some of them have been purely personal -- late night vespers in a lakeside church of rocks when, for all the silence, the very stars of my soul exploded; that expansive, momentary hush on Christmas Eve just after the singing has ended but before the candles have been blown dark.

Splendor (n): 

1. Great light or luster; brilliance.
2. A Quality that outshines the usual
   
3. 1. Magnificent appearance or display; grandeur.
   2. Something grand or magnificent.
4. Great fame; glory.

I am in favor of it.  And I am in favor of building a vast repertoire of it -- so that we can talk about it, taste and smell and hear and feel it, if only in its imperfect part.  But I don't think the world can afford for any of us to wait for sabbaticals to begin executing the plan.  Surely there is splendor to be found somewhere in the hours and experiences of today.

I will watch for it...
...so that I can remember it.