Beauty Makes You Better

Many, many years ago I did a wedding for a couple. They were not young, but not yet old. It was a second marriage for each. The wedding was held in a restaurant in the evening. At the time of the ceremony, the twenty or so people in attendance were asked if they wouldn't mind reading a portion of a children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit. 

One by one people read a marked portion and then another person took up the story.  It wasn’t the whole book, only the section about what it means to be real, how a childhood toy, if it were deeply loved by a child, this toy could become real.  This is what they read, the part where the old Skin Horse explains how you become real to the Velveteen Rabbit. It goes like this.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

It was then we went ahead with the vows and the rings and prayers.  The story bathed the room in honesty, transforming the intents and declarations of the couple from a pledge for the future, it changed the solemnity of the moment into a recognition of what was true here and now.  The magic of the nursery seemed to find a place in the restaurant with the seasoned couple becoming husband and wife.  It was as if their words were to acknowledge the realness of their devotion for the other and the realness of the other.  Love had purpose not just promise.

Although the Velveteen Rabbit is about the power of love to transform us, remake us, cause us to be born anew, there is a quiet message also about beauty, how we are to see and enjoy what is beautiful.  I want to say the clue is in the image of “shabby” and the wear and tear of love, how it leaves you bald, and with loose joints, missing eyes, and so on. Love makes us shabby in the story.  And then there is the line, “once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."  You can’t be ugly. Here beauty is more than appearance, it is being beheld by a beloved, being seen by someone for whom we are a delight.  Emily Dickinson said something similar when she claimed of heaven, “you don’t mind your dress when you are going home.”

There is something life changing when you discover the beauty of someone’s heart, when you can see them for who they are.  Often this happens on long bus rides or days in a van driving to Mexico to build houses with teens.  Somewhere along the way, sometime around day five or six, when creation is nearly done, suddenly someone with whom you are acquainted becomes who they are.  Perhaps it’s the lack of sleep, the loss of any privacy or comfort, too much dust and too many nights in a tent, perhaps it is just the inability to give the energy necessary for pretense or the effort required in keeping up a false persona, but suddenly the real person appears.

They are shabby, but in the worn edges and exhaustion, the shabbiness lets their beauty become visible.  This is when I find people to be the most beautiful.  No red carpets, no gowns and tuxes, no tie to match or clutch to compliment, just someone in jeans and a t-shirt with bead head and the need for coffee and the earnest desire for clean socks.  In the shabby sometimes beauty appears.

One way of reading our parable today is to consider beauty and wholeness and yet how life can lose enchantment, how we can be less, not so much shabby as lost or broken.

The woman with the lost coin is often interpreted as someone looking for dowry coins worn in a belt or a headdress.  The ten coins would have been a set; a missing coin would have been obvious. Hence her concern and persistence, as well as the call to celebrate.  The coin had more than monetary value. The coins would have been worn for glory, for celebration, for remembrance of being young, perhaps even something taken out to be given to the next generation.

Before we seek to find the purpose of the coin and what it represents, let us remember why Jesus is telling this parable.  The pharisees grumbled about sinners, how they hung out with Jesus, how the prostitutes and tax collectors were counted as dinner guests.  Why would Jesus dine with such people?  This is the question prompting the parables of the shepherd who finds a lost lamb, a woman who finds a lost coin, and a father who finds a lost son.  Each of the three parables contain someone who seeks, something that is found, and joy.  Each parable has joy and celebration.

The context of the parables, a joyful celebration, is the thread binding them together and celebration is also the contradiction to challenge us.  Remember a parable must upend, turn over something we hold dear, something we believe with certainty. For matters of expedience I will simply state, we often associate repentance with shame, guilt, remorse, even tawdriness.  The penitent heart rent asunder by contrition should be demur, abject, downcast.  When Jesus speaks of repentance none of these appear.  He speaks of joy and celebration, calling people together, not a browbeaten quiet, silenced by shame.  Here is our contradiction: why do we associate repentance with shame, where Jesus sees joy?

Let’s return to the lost coin and the woman who didn’t give up.  The coin is more than money; it is a symbol of hope, promise.  Different meanings could be given, yet, what I believe is this: the coin is restoration of wholeness, the power of feeling an abiding joy in being you, being who you are, being real.  The coin, once found, is the restoration of happiness, the elan and spirit of being alive in this place and in this time.

The coin is unique in the set of three parables.  The lamb and son are alive; the coin is not.  Yet, what if the coin is the woman’s dignity; what if she is the one who is lost?

It may be time of life, it may be the times we are living in, but this is the parable reaching closest to my heart.  I get the persistent curiosity of the shepherd who searches and searches even while risking the 99; and I get the father who hopes against hope, who knows the fragility of raising children, how hard it is watching a child lose their way.  I get that.  Yet the lost coin, if it is the sense of beauty in us lost to weariness, lost to cynicism or the unrelenting tawdriness robbing dignity, the lost coin as dissatisfaction, a lack of right spirit, a heart with just too many breadcrumb sins, this cuts close to home.

What if repentance is not shame or guilt or remorse, what if we remember the Greek notion here of metanoia, to change course, and what if we then consider the call of the woman to celebrate as the true image of repentance, a call to joy?

A family favorite of ours is the movie, Hook. Robin Williams plays Peter Pan, who, after having left Never Never Land, has grown up and become a lawyer.  The movie tells the tale of Captain Hook trying to lure Pan back for one last great battle, one more epic fight to the death.  But Peter now old has lost his happy thought and thus he cannot fight or crow and most importantly fly. He is called an old sad man. 

The scene in the movie we most often quote to someone who has become a bit too grown up and no longer has joy, the scene we quote is when one of the lost boys is trying to find Peter in his face.  He moves his cheeks, twists his nose, but then shoves his mouth up into a grin.  Seeing the smile the lost boy gasps and says, “Ah, Peter, there you are.”  There you are. The lost boy was still in there.

Lots of things can be lost in life.  Sometimes life feels like the sum of our losses not our gains.  I get it.  Yet, we can also lose our self, lose our way, lose our joy for life.

The parable of the woman finding the lost coin is a response to the Pharisees disdain, their need to deride and judge.  Yet, I don’t believe Jesus told this parable to shame them.  He didn’t fight shame with shame.  He turned the world upside down.  Repentance, according to Jesus, is not the requisite despair and self-loathing we associate with penance; repentance is the restoration of wholeness, remembering you are really you.  The love of God made us real.  This real person is in each of us.  It never goes away. 

Blessed is the one who finds this image, like the image stamped on a coin; blessed is the one who removes the layers of falsity and fear to discover, ah there you are.  We are who we are even still.  A bit worn around the edges, shabby even, but the love of God and the love of others has made us, made us real, and thus real always.  Amen.