In a former life, I routinely paraded out one of my secular versions of the Bible. I had several of these, believing they best explained the overarching reality of my life. At least the life away from home and hearth. The one that comes to mind is a very insightful book by the 80s management guru, Tom Peters, entitled Thriving on Chaos. Now, I actually believe a large part of living in this time and place involves the concept of chaos. When I think of it, chaos represents disorder, unpredictability, constantly shifting conditions and an aversion to identifiable patterns. Things are just not as they seem and get used to it. Heck, learn to thrive in it. A synonym for thrive is flourish. Full disclosure: I loved a remarkable photograph of a man standing firm in the lee of a lighthouse as a massive wave stood poised to overwhelm his perch.

The opposite of chaos is order. Interestingly, Peter’s purpose in his (very thick and detailed) book is to give us tools to manage the chaos, as thriving or flourishing is only possible if can “use” the chaos to function effectively. That is, bring a kind of order out of chaos. Perhaps another way of saying this is to locate the rhythms within disorder that allow us to function best. This is, of course, a spiritual prescription as well as a means to effectively manage one’s professional situation.

There’s a popular religious movement that has gained a whole lot of traction in our society of late. We can loosely call this “spiritualism.” While those who align themselves with this would probably reject the label as being “religious,” of course it is. It’s a set of beliefs and tenets to help explain reality. One of the driving forces of this is the strong motivation to “calm things down,” “control the energy,” “become one with one’s surroundings,” etc… There is nothing new about this, it’s all a variant of Eastern philosophies and practices that are built around bringing order out of an unordered world. There’s a lot of truth in this. I bring this up because most of us are hard at work trying to do the same thing.

Which brings me to my topic (bet you didn’t think I’d ever get there!)

A thriving life, in my opinion, is one in which there is a sense of balance. An understanding of equilibrium. This is far from easy, perhaps impossible, in some situations. Two images come to mind, as I experienced them in the past 24 hours.

The first one involved about 15 minutes listening to perhaps the most beautiful piece of music ever composed (again, my opinion). I was alone in our home, quietly watching the sky, clouds and light of the day with the movement of our garden in the foreground … gently swaying shrubs and trees, the color of the flowers and the to and fro of small birds and butterflies. I called up on our nice living room speakers a piece called, A Lark Ascending, by the British composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, in the early 20th century. The composition was an attempt to put to music a poem by George Meredith about the song of the skylark. One critic termed the poem,

“matchless of its kind, a sustained lyric which never for a moment falls short of the effect aimed at, soars up and up with the song it imitates, and unites inspired spontaneity with a demonstration of effortless technical ingenuity… one has only to read the poem a few times to become aware of its perfection”.^[1]

Perfection from inspired spontaneity. Hmmmm. The musical composition is technically a violin concerto which means a single violinist is supported by a full orchestra. Perhaps because I was a violinist, I never tire listening to it. When so much of life is about bringing out things that are not good or healthy, how do we carve out moments when we are truly called higher and deeper … where we can set aside space to consider beauty?

I imagine some of you who are reading this are not drawn to that thing we can loosely call “classical” music. While I’ve never seen A Lark Ascending performed, I have listened intently to every note more times than I can remember. I found a performance on YouTube and invite you to set aside the 15 minutes or so to watch it. Seeing it performed in all of its fullness, from the sounds of the instruments to the movements of delicate fingers, directed by nerves and muscles, to the facial expressions of the performers as they give themselves to the piece, I cannot image that emotions of anger, resentment, and contempt are possible in that space. The opposite of beauty is a thing we use words to describe as ugly, repulsive, dark and foreboding. The song of the lark, rising up, surrounded by the elements of a melodious life, is that antithesis. If you can make it, stay with it to the end.

One commenter, after watching this piece said it, “Evokes the deepest longing for the light and joy that C.S.Lewis tried so valiantly to describe in his writings.”

However, both the poet and composer performed their respective artistry fully aware and conditioned by the nature of the war that began in 1914 and only truly ended in 1945. It is with that backdrop that last night I pulled up and watched an early segment of the well-known television version of Stephen Ambrose’s great book, Band of Brothers. The book and the series are the true account of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne of the U.S Army as they parachuted behind enemy lines on D Day and made their way through major battles and skirmishes until the end of the war. If there is beauty in this telling, both written and visual, it is of the camaraderie or brotherhood that blossomed out of all of the brutality and inhumanity of their circumstances, a kind of flower in a dystopian landscape. The death and destruction, the deep animus that drove men to slaughter one another almost indiscriminately on the muddy, bloody battlefield, is present in far more subtle forms in our own relatively peace-filled existence.

As Jesus said in Matthew 5:21, a piece of his most well-known teaching:

“You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother will be subject to judgment.”

I do not want to open a can of worms in order to try to fully interpret what this passage means and the context in which Jesus spoke it. But suffice that it is a caution note that the same thing that drives us to murder is in operation when we let anger take control of us. Unbridled anger ultimately breeds both contempt and hatred, the state of which drowns out nearly every semblance of beauty, which itself is a wellspring for joy, a state for real human flourishing.

I write in the shadow of our country being ravaged by divisiveness and incivility. Colleague against colleague, resorting to the kind of invectives we haven’t seen on this scale maybe since the Civil War. Leaders and dominant personalities litter our lives with venom, not so well clothed in high minded ideologies, conjuring up dark images in the human hearts, poisoning bonds of family and friendship. Beauty quashed in the interest of pursuing some crusade that, in itself, demands full allegiance.

We are out of balance.

Perhaps like you, I live in two worlds that are represented by somewhat different but related features. In one, I am called to battle while also called to peace. The tension between these two things is strong. As such, I strive to find a rhythm through which both can be accommodated.

My friend Paul spoke recently about the importance of restorative health. While his context was ostensibly about balancing the mutually important activities of work and rest, his key point in my take away was that, absent restoration, we are captive to forces that cause us to wither away, whether extremely or subtly.

Perhaps the most well-known verse in the Book of Ecclesiastes is 3:18.

To every thing there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time of war, and a time of peace.

When, seemingly, battle lines are constantly being drawn these days and discordance is the dominant feature, do we awake each day to say, “No, you will not own me. I will choose today to be a means of bringing beauty into this reality, to touch another human being so that they may get even the slightest hint of what the violinist is demonstrating.” We are created for good. We are created to be a restorative force in this world. We have the power to choose. Who or what controls our hearts, which are the font of our behavior? The world can be a dark and foreboding place. I cannot change that. But, I can choose to introduce a flower into a troubling landscape. I can choose to guard my heart against judging others, against letting anger and discontent form a firm beachhead. Today, I will consider the nature of restoration, where patience, kindness, compassion and hope find their nourishment. Ascendence is available for each of us.

Thriving on chaos? Perhaps. Better, perhaps, thriving amidst chaos by introducing symmetry and the patterns of beauty that are anything but chaotic. They are the true wellsprings of life.

Thank you for listening.