By Jennifer Mains
Published in December 2012
Many ask us why we do this work. People fill the often awkward silences that entail with such comments as “it must be so rewarding, gratifying etc.” These comments are well meant but are somewhat perplexing as we tend not to think in this way. Obviously there are aspects of the work that are most appealing: work that involves a disenfranchised but vital and passionate demographic group, work that is relationship based with few policies and procedures that inhibit the agility required and work that is challenging but renewing, frequently changing and reinventing itself. All these are possible answers. Another response we have given reflects a core philosophy of The Working Centre: that all work is good work and we are just doing our work.
These responses are all true but do not touch the heart of the issue. So over the years I have remained watchful, wrestling with how to capture the mystery. It is only recently at one of our outreach meetings that I had an awakening. The framework in which we work is one of understanding the role of beauty in our lives. We do the work because we are seeking beauty in the other, celebrating the spirit in the other and renewing our own.
We have frequent outreach meetings in which we carefully listen to each other, hoping to gain counsel, support or a broadening of our understanding but at one particular meeting I was struck by the focus of the dialogue. I heard the outreach workers speak with delight and vigour about their work during the past week, naming situations where they saw insight, caring and compassion, the human spirit rising. This is not to say that their week was not also filled with anger, despair and desolation. But the conversation was not about what was pathological, wrong or negative. They spoke of peoples’ desires, their hopes and wishes. I did not hear the word goals. As a group we have spoken extensively about the concept of goals and what if any value they have in our work.
Our work very frequently is within the realm of mystery and goals have no place here. However, the concept of goals appears to be a comfortable framework for the middle class. Goals speak to a success/failure framework, hierarchy and an individualistic understanding of society. Goals do not sit well with our practice of being non-judgmental or of showing unconditional love to the other. Instead of goals we prefer the practice of walking with the other, which has the possibility of giving dignity to their experience and allows us to be open to the mystery of the human spirit.
Unfortunately we are living in an age where mystery and beauty are not practiced values. We are ruled by technology and reductive economic theory. Our lives are cluttered, not cleared, by technology much of which is not critically examined as to its ethical or moral implications. If it is new, it is good. In an October 13th article in the Globe and Mail, Mark Kingwell, writing about common curriculum, states that technology is not value neutral and that although our world changes rapidly “speed is not of itself a value” and I would add neither is change. Kingwell also states that “change and novelty should not be pursued for their own sake”. Yet we do. In terms of our economic vision, we appear to be chained to reductive logic. The measures of our provincial health, education and social service policies are economic viability and efficiency. Our fear of economic crisis holds great power but also limits vision. One understands the need for economic accountability but if the economic policies are not rigorously held accountable to the ethical and moral values of its society then we decline into reductive logic with nothing to hold it in balance. John O’Donahue in his book, The Invisible Embrace of Beauty, notes that there is “an unseemly coarseness to our times which robs grace from our textures of language, feeling and presence”. He believes this emergence of ‘coarseness’ is a reflection of a society which no longer pursues beauty.
A dear friend, upon hearing of my interest in writing an article on beauty, lent me some of his cherished books on the subject. Reading them was warm comfort as I discovered that there is an extensive, eclectic and growing group of people who have recognized and are responding to the disappearance of beauty from our culture. It is also reassuring to know that there is a plethora of recorded definitions and discussions of beauty dating from the classical period. One of the definitions that speak to our work was written by Agnes Martin, a Canadian and visual artist of the 20th century. “Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye, it is in the mind”.
Once again we return to the concept of mystery. I have heard the outreach workers share stories where a person, despite being in a desperate situation, describes that moment with irony or humour, or has compassion for the person who has shown them none, or shows insight into the perplexing state of being disenfranchised. These stories harken to the strength of the human spirit and we are awakened to a moment of beauty.
O’Donahue also celebrates that beauty lies in our minds and our perceptions and not in “a special elite realm, but part of our everyday life, if we are open to it”. He defines beauty as “A profound illumination of presence, a stirring of the invisible in visible form”. Beauty as the invisible made visible may not be a flash of lightning but similar to Archimede’s bathtub experience, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. In our work we frequently spend extended time in the emergency room, long quiet hours, sitting beside the person as they wait. This is when the invisible becomes visible. It may be an experience of words but often it is in the quietness of sitting together sharing those moments that the presence of beauty becomes visible. We recognize that we share this human experience and that we are not alone. This is a moment of beauty.
So, to return to the original question of why do we do this work. We seek beauty intuitively because we need to. Without beauty we have no symmetry, no balance to the ugliness that is often life. It is a spiritual necessity not only for outreach workers, but for us all if we are to survive. Beauty is a precondition to love; it is what allows us to love unconditionally. James Hillman, a psychologist and author, is visionary when he observes that “for love to return to the world, beauty must first return, else we love the world only as a moral duty” and that, I believe, would add further tragedy to our lives.
