Seeing Beyond the Surface

Interfaith Celebration Gathering

Back in the fifties when television was usually referred to as a new-fangled contraption, if children accidentally caught a glimpse of another child's underwear, they sang a little song: "I see London, I see France, I see so-and so's underpants!" Seeing someone’s underwear back then was a big deal because underwear was actually worn under something, and having one's underwear show was highly embarrassing.

The Sears and JC Penny catalogues were titillating erotica back then because they dared to actually show male and female models wearing underwear. Young women as well as young men in those days passed the information along when a new edition was available. Nowadays, however, thanks to the Secret that Victoria no longer has, the popularity of these two icons' catalogues has declined considerably.

Nowadays, both television and print media leave nothing to the imagination when it comes to under garments. Nor do many celebrities leave any room for speculation as to what they are wearing under their designer outer garments. We have evolved into an era of 'show and tell' in which the media feeds our need to know even the most intimate details of the lives of public personas. When these public figures make mistakes, the media lathers up into a feeding frenzy reminiscent of sharks going after bait.

Thanks to the media's help, as a society, we have also developed a habit of black and white thinking. This bipolar view of things leads us to believe we have to categorize everything and everyone. Anyone who makes a mistake gets labeled 'bad.' Criminals are often even further labeled as incorrigible (incapable of being reformed due to bad habits). We give up on people who commit crimes in our society. We put them in penal institutions, and vote down monetary appropriations for behavioral modification programs that might help them change. Prisoners in most areas of the world are merely warehoused, given little more attention than yesterday's garbage.

Yet, what did Christ and other spiritual leaders throughout the ages do with persons who had erred? Christ showed them the error of their ways and forgave them. He offered them another chance to be whole in God's love. And, if they failed at the second chance, He gave them a third chance, and a fourth.

Why was Christ so open with God's blessings? Many think it is because He saw within each person the face of God, the perfection that came from God and must rejoin God. He reached out and encouraged each individual to see his or her own inner beauty, for it is in connecting with our inner beauty that we truly connect with God.

There are even some theologians who feel that Christ's ability to heal the sick and disabled who were brought to Him was based on His holding such a strong a picture of each individual's inner beauty. They say He held this picture so firmly in His mind that He caused each person He viewed like this to see himself or herself as Christ saw them, whole and perfect. Once the mind saw the body as whole, it proceeded to create the reality that went with the mental picture.

If Christ and other spiritual leaders can do this for us, why then can we not do this for each other? Rather than disparaging each other, we can learn to look for each other's inner beauty. Instead of expecting the worst from each other, we can learn to allow others to show us their inner beauty.

Rather than judging each other, we can learn that what we do in any given moment is the best we can do. Instead of condemning each other for behavior we do not like, we can look into our own hearts and know that we have or could have done the same behavior given the same circumstances. Let’s make it our daily task to search for inner beauty in everyone we meet.

If we can learn to see only the inner beauty in others, maybe we can learn to be as healing as Christ was. After all, we are the light of the world - that is why we are here. Who knows?! Maybe we can even learn to sing, "I see London, I see France, I see so-and-so's inner light dance!"

May God add a blessing to these humble words.

AMEN