Chaplaincy | Exploring wabi-sabi

CHAPLAINCY

Exploring wabi-sabi

Every year during Term 2, we hold Sunday Chapel services for each of our Houses. For Year 7 to 13, the House Prefect and deputies work together to decide on a theme for the service, select Bible readings to support their theme, find a contemporary reading, poem or video clip, and assign serving and reading roles to students in their House. The House Prefect then prepares the homily for the service. As Chaplains, we facilitate all of this and work with the prefect on her homily. We have now come to the end of the eight services for the Senior School and there have been some excellent homilies given by our students. The House Service is the one opportunity that a prefect gets to talk to the students in the House about something significant that is not about cross country, swimming, athletics or music. Some prefects already have a very clear idea of what they want to talk about and others have to think quite hard about what theme they want to address. The themes we have had this year included ideas around making the most of every opportunity, resilience and moving forward from adversity, being yourself and accepting who you are, believing in yourself, unity, and community and participation.

Resilience has been a recurring theme of our House Services over the past few years. One of the enemies of resilience is perfectionism, and perfectionism is a significant issue for many teenage girls. Roberton House Prefect Lexie Preen uncovered a Japanese concept that has a lot to offer not only our students but everyone who struggles with perfectionism and therefore finds it hard to be resilient, and accept failure and the imperfection of real life. Lexie’s homily was both challenging and engaging. Here it is below.

Rev’d Sandy Robertson, Chaplain

Exploring wabi-sabi

Is your to-do list spiralling out of control? Do you see nothing but flaws when you look in the mirror? Are you constantly looking to upgrade your

material goods? If you answered yes to any of these questions, there is a philosophy that has recently emerged in popular culture that gives a pause to all of this stress and anxiety. The concept is called wabi-sabi and is a Japanese aesthetic that derives from the Zen Buddhist tea ceremony, a ritual of simplicity in which the most prized bowls were irregularly shaped, with uneven glaze and cracks. Appreciation for the perverse beauty of the bowls is where wabi-sabi was born. Wabisabi is a world view and aesthetic that is described as ‘finding the beauty in what the world considers impermanent, incomplete and imperfect’.

It may not seem natural to find beauty in our flaws, let alone embrace a Japanese concept that celebrates rust and cracks. In fact, the celebration of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete sounds like the antithesis of our Western notion of beauty as something perfect, enduring and monumental. As we’ve been conditioned to have this definitive view on what has value, and we struggle to find beauty in ourselves, we scrutinise our flaws, our shortcomings and our frailties in the same way we scrutinise fruit that isn’t perfectly round, or cracks in a ceramic bowl, or an elbow patch on a worn jumper.

Wabi-sabi presents a different way of seeing these cracks and imperfections. It is in the asymmetrical fruit, the repaired bowl, and the fraying of a wool sweater that we can find the beauty and simplicity of life. Wabi-sabi asks us to cherish these things, as they symbolise the passage of time, and the love and service we have received from these items. This is a powerful change in thinking, as it offers a sense of peace and contentment in yourself as you are now. It is the perfect antidote to a society built on disposable and homogenised goods, as well as the intense critique of ourselves. Once we learn to see a flaw in items as something that enhances value, we can see our own flaws as attributes that enhance our value and beauty.

So how do we understand ourselves as impermanent, incomplete and imperfect?

We are impermanent. It’s easy to take this statement and feel a sense of existential anxiety. Getting caught up in our cosmic insignificance is a normal part of the human condition, where we think about being tiny specs of dust in the vastness of our universe, or only a small person amongst billions. This thought is obviously a difficult one to celebrate. Of course, it is only natural to never be satisfied, and be subconsciously anxious surrounding your own purpose, life or death. But if we try to recognise that, yes, while we are tiny compared to such vast, cosmic space, all of us together, interacting and discussing and creating, collectively make a massive difference on this planet, that has a lasting impression. Our actions do matter to individuals. Our words have the ability to change the course of someone’s day for the better. Just because we are impermanent, doesn’t mean our actions are. This recognition of our impact is found in wabi-sabi thinking, as it tries to address our existential anxiety. It reconnects us to the importance of our relationships, and their tangible impact on the world.

We are incomplete. Whether you’re starting your school journey at Dio, or it’s coming to a close, we all feel incomplete in some way. We fixate on things like ‘I’ll be happy if...’, ‘I’ll be content if...’. However, when that moment does come, and we achieve what we want to achieve, this feeling of completion quickly dissipates. We constantly seek change, improvement, something new, yet we never appreciate how far we have come and the person we are today. In the readings from Genesis 1:24-28a, and Psalm 139 we are reminded that we are made in God’s image, as a reflection of his love and goodness. So while we do search for experiences and achievements to make us feel complete, it is true that just by living, we are complete, as God has purposefully created us and blessed us with life. We can see, though, how the idea that we constantly need to succeed and upgrade has caused us to always feel incomplete. This is why feelings of completion dissipate so quickly. But, we are actually already complete just by being a person, with thoughts and feelings. Wabi-sabi encourages us to focus on the blessings hiding in our daily lives, in our natural ‘completeness’, and to celebrate the way things are rather than how we think they should be. We are imperfect. I am the first to admit to being a perfectionist. I was anxious for weeks while preparing this homily, as I wanted it to be perfect. Same with House Music, ruminating over songs and choreography. As much as I understand this is bad for me and can stand up here and talk about how great wabi-sabi is, I am still neurotic and I still nit-pick over tiny things. Learning to accept myself and my flaws is certainly a very, very slow process. It’s almost a rite of passage for teenage girls to overanalyse their actions and themselves, until they realise its unhealthy and aimless. Striving for personal best and quality work is certainly to be commended. But it is our fixation on full marks, E8 or A+ that is the degrading side of personal excellence. Our relentless pursuit of perfection – in possessions, relationships, achievements – often leads to stress, anxiety, depression and hasty judgement. But, of course, while God made us and therefore we are naturally perfect, as we reflect Him, we still hold such an imperfect view of ourselves. Embracing wabi-sabi will help us to accept traits and qualities of ourselves that we view as imperfect, teaching us that they are what distinguish us as perfect.

Perhaps the best embodiment of wabisabi we’ve seen is Jesus, and his agapeic love. Jesus loved all mankind and could only show this love for us because we had failed him. Romans 5:8 tells us that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He accepts us for all our flaws and our imperfections. While, of course, we see God as perfect, as permanent, and as complete, we should learn to accept that that state of life is one we can never achieve. Seeing our own imperfections and the shortcomings we have in our lives is perhaps the ultimate way to appreciate God’s creation wholeheartedly. After all, as mankind and our universe are a reflection of God, the so-called imperfections we see must be perfect after all.

Even the most revered philosophical mage, Professor Albus Dumbledore, saw the importance in wabi-sabi thinking, and I would like to leave you with his wisdom: “Harry, there is never a perfect answer in this messy, emotional world. Perfection is beyond the reach of humankind, beyond the reach of magic.”