If you’ve never seen a lotus flower, I commend you to it: the only plant to fruit and flower simultaneously, the lotus emerges pure white or tinged with pink from the depths of the muddy swamp. With fifteen or more oval, spreading petals and a flat seedcase at its center, the lotus rests in perfect beauty on the surface of the water.[1]
I love the lotus; I love that something so stunning can come from something so yucky.
This story is from a book called A Perfect Mess:
“[St. Mary’s Hospital squats just] a block northeast of London’s bustling Paddington Station. [On the fourth floor above the courtyard is a] crowded office, [which] appears to function as a laboratory. A sort of [combination] desk [and] lab bench [runs] along the wall under the windows, [offering] a variety of surfaces and bins, all of it occupied haphazardly by teetering piles of Petri dishes, test-tubes lying helter-skelter on their sides, cigarette [butts], open books, pages of notes, newspapers, and a variety of odd implements and containers.
“You might guess [that] the lab’s occupant has just stepped out, but in fact he did so three-quarters of a century ago. This is Alexander Fleming’s bacteriological lab ... just as he left it when he went on vacation in late August of 1928. When he returned on September 3rd, he was sorting through the clutter when he noticed that a small, ragged circle of mold had invaded one of the Petri dish bacterial cultures. The staphylococci in the culture seemed to steer clear of the mold, describing a sort of bacteria-free moat. Intrigued, Fleming [put] the dish under a microscope and discovered penicillin.” [2]
Out of chaos, creation. Looking with an eye untainted by prejudice at what everyone before him had rejected as a nuisance or a menace, Dr. Fleming magnified something almost as nasty as swamp bottom and saw into the blessing of its true nature: a treasure that has prevented untold suffering and saved countless lives.
“... Years later, [on] a tour of a spotless, ... well-organized lab, [Dr.] Fleming couldn’t resist delivering his backhanded compliment: “You’d never have been bothered by mold here.”[3]
Do you know Leonard Cohen’s song, Suzanne? The third verse about a crazy sometimes-lover is one of my favorites; a mess in the beauty finding beauty in the mess:
Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror[4]
Knowing to look for beauty among the garbage and the flowers is born of faith. Showing where to look is divine.
Ram Dass tells the wonderful story of his first visit to the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India, where he volunteered for a week with the Seva foundation to help Dr. V and his staff restore vision to the blind and near-blind. Ram Dass writes, “[At six a.m.,] in the waiting room of the hospital, ... Dr. V walks about in the river of humanity. Hundreds of village folk stand in lines, [guided by friends and relatives, waiting] patiently for inexpensive, often free, outpatient eye care ... the 10-minute miracle of surgery that will give them back their sight....
“India (entered) the 21st century with 13 million of her people needlessly blind....” [Dr. V and his staff perform 92,000 cataract surgeries a year, and nearly 850,000 outpatient treatments. He] is a hero for these people.... A strangely arresting man, with his gnarled arthritic hands and feet, his grey rumpled suit, [and] his seventy-odd years, [he is] ... a brilliant mirror of compassion to all....
“In the waiting room ... at sunrise, Dr. V is simultaneously the fellow villager that he once was, and continues to be, and the extraordinary healer he has become. For a moment, his hand rests reassuringly on the arm of a frightened elderly woman. He explains a surgical procedure to a man. He is both village elder and hospital chief. He is also keeping an eye on the staff, insisting on their impeccability in service, guiding his superbly honed institution of compassion with a glance, a word, a silent presence, a smile. As [Mahatma] Gandhi once said, ‘My life is my message.’ So Dr. V’s blend of being and doing is his message. He continually seeks to be an instrument of imbuing the physical world with Living Spirit.” [5]
Something exquisite manifesting even in the meanest circumstances ... or, especially in the meanest circumstances. We know that diamonds are only coal that has thrived under pressure. People are like that, too. And we can choose to be like that. Everything in our swamp-bottom, moldy past can be transformed into something beautiful.
My mother has grand mal epilepsy. In my childhood, her seizures terrified me; I never got used to them. As a young minister, I was participating at a memorial service in a small church outside Boston when a woman crashed out of her pew onto the floor. Everyone in the small congregation froze ... except for me. As if guided by an unseen hand, I left the pulpit area and walked down the aisle to where she lay writhing, I felt myself getting smaller and smaller. In my childhood, there had been no one there to watch, no one to see this strange and somehow shameful thing that happened in my house. Now, everyone was watching to see what I would do ... which was not much, really, but to keep her safe until the demons had had their way. I knelt beside her, the image of my mother’s contorted face, bright blue, superimposed on the face of the unconscious woman before me. And then, for the first time ever in the face of convulsions, I wasn’t afraid. This family secret was out, and I felt the compassion of the cloud of witnesses in that sanctuary healing me from deep inside. I felt completely calm and confident.
After the service, an elderly gentleman shook my hand and said, “Somebody raised you right.” I replied, “My mother.” With that, the lotus bloomed; from the shadowed past came forth something beautiful.
My spiritual companions, I think of the lotus, and I think that our lives are like that; we are like that: stunning beauty emerging from the vicissitudes of fortune. We can never justify suffering; it is beyond our ken. But we can make something of suffering; we can transmute it into compassion. And compassion, in turn, can be transmuted into service.
If we want to be happy, and peaceful, and free, we will answer the call to serve. And if we make of ourselves instruments of love and service, justice and peace, there will be joy. The last word goes to Dr. V; he says, “Intelligence and capability are not enough to solve our problems. There must be a joy of doing something beautiful. If you allow the divine force to flow through you, you will accomplish things far greater than you imagined.”[6]
[1] http://www.kingtutshop.com/freeinfo/Lotus-Flower.htm
[2] Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman, “A Lab in St. Mary’s Hospital” from A Perfect Mess
[3] ibid
[4] The Songs of Leonard Cohen, 1968
[5] Ram Dass, “Helping Others to See,” in Marianne Larned, ed, Stone Soup for the World, pp. 222-224
[6] ibid