On Beauty and Beer, Dutch Masters and Dogs

Helen Blier

Earlier this year, I took a detour on my way home from a conference in Copenhagen and flew to Amsterdam just to see the Vermeer exhibit at the Rijksmuseum. It was a show all of the major news outlets called “once in a lifetime.” Twenty-eight of his thirty-something extant works were going to be displayed together, and I needed to be there.

This was a watershed decision for me. I do travel a lot, but almost always for family or work. Doing something so extravagant and indulgent is not part of my vernacular. But it was Vermeer—an enigmatic, mercurial Dutch master whose capacity to evoke the holy in the ordinary and render light in oils has captivated me since my formative early adult years.

I brought one traveling companion with me: David White. Well, I brought his book Tending the Fire That Burns at the Center of the World. I read it at the brew pub the day before my timed Vermeer entry ticket and found it paired excellently with a Belgian-style dubbel. When I later told David this he said, “Beauty is made more perfect with Belgian beer. I believe Balthasar said that. If not, he should have.” I read it like lectio before boarding the tram to the museum.

I recall visiting a show of Dutch painters in my late teens that included works by Vermeer. But I remember vividly the first time I really saw one of his paintings. It was nearly forty years ago, and the painting was The Concert. One woman plays a harpsichord while another woman sings. A man, back turned, sits between them holding a lute. The scene is intimate, ordinary, yet transcendent. Sunlight filters in from a window behind the harpsichordist and plays on the black and white tiled floor. The singer raises her hand to start, fingers barely splayed. I caught my breath and suppressed a desire to touch the rug portrayed in the foreground. I just knew the wool was rough and warm, just as the marble floor was smooth and cool. The painting ignited a fire within me, and in the years since I’ve tried to see as many Vermeers as possible.

The Rijksmuseum show did not disappoint. The gallery evoked the hush and wonder of a sanctuary. Dark backdrops and spotlights drew all the attention to the master’s works, hung singly on each wall so that each piece invited the viewer into singular conversation. Vermeer’s subjects often appear as though they were caught unawares at a private, threshold moment: a milkmaid pours milk from a jug; a young woman looks up from her writing table, mid-note; an ensemble of musicians pauses during rehearsal. I had the sense of being given privileged access to the everyday lives of his subjects. And oh, the detail with which he rendered these captured moments! A pinpoint of light on a pearl earring. A spot of blue rubbed away on a windowpane. Such precise, deep attention is rooted in love and manifests in beauty. One painting drew me to tears. The viewer looks past a green velvet curtain to a young woman who is catching her breath as she reads a letter. What does it say? It’s not clear. But we sense we are glimpsing one of those moments that clearly demarcates an irrevocable before and after. Vermeer did not simply paint domestic scenes; he rendered them holy, suffusing them with a surplus of meaning.

I re-read sections of Tending the Fire after walking the exhibit. And I recall texting David, and telling him that I felt as though my face was shining like Moses’s after descending from Mt. Sinai. “Vermeer was like going to church,” I said. “But better, because in this church eucharist was a charcuterie tray and more beer afterwards. I like this religion.” The exhibit did for me what institutional religion—and its liturgical rites—have of late struggled to do for me. For an afternoon, I was reawakened and the world was reenchanted. I had experienced, as David describes it, “a real, if invitingly brief, glimpse into the deep truth of the world’s absolute contingency … given precisely as gift.”

I first met David in the mid-’90s when we both served as faculty for Candler’s Youth Theological Initiative. He was teaching the teens about discernment. I was teaching metaphorical theology. My first impressions were of someone with a rich interior life, someone who paid close and affectionate attention to who and what was around him. Our professional and personal friendship grew over the years, and his book Practicing Discernment with Youth became a mainstay in my youth ministry classes. Students were transformed by the possibility of doing theology with young people instead of teaching them about it. This has been David’s gift to the world of youth ministry—reminding all of us that youth have vocations as young people, not as adults-in-waiting. He reacquainted us with the curiosity, wonder, and joy that are the hallmarks of adolescence, gifts sorely needed in a world flattened by modernity’s transactional and instrumental logic and a church that has fallen victim to the same. To this end, it’s no surprise that his scholarship has wended its way to an exploration of beauty, which has been the ever-present muse in all of his teaching, writing, and—well, living.

David has not only invited people to explore the fire that burns at the center of the world. He has created spaces that welcome them into the experience of that beauty. And he regularly seeks those spaces out. If the world is full of epiphanies of God’s creativity and glory, “God’s beautiful poem,” why not chase them down and let ourselves be part of them? To this end, it took surprisingly little convincing to get him to change his plane ticket at the last minute and accompany a few of us to Edinburgh after a conference (he clearly has a higher comfort level with spontaneity and indulgence than I do). From windy moor to whisky bar, the four of us made our way through the city with delight, reminded of the transcendent power of good friendship and the Holy One eternally at play.

I recall a story he told me once about his beloved border collie, Wink. He was walking Wink off-leash in a parklet near his house. Wink ran ahead to greet a man who was likely living in the park. The man thoughtfully stroked the dog’s ears and held his gaze. Meanwhile, David hustled up to rescue him from his off-leash animal; the man demurred. “This dog is holy,” he said solemnly. Those of us who knew Wink agreed that he was a theophany. What strikes me about this story is how this man could see it, too. David’s care for this remarkable beast provided space that allowed Wink’s beauty to be evident and compelling enough for a stranger living on the margins to recognize—a beauty that drew the two to each other, and then drew in a third, and generated a sacramental moment of recognition. The kind of beauty David writes about demands this kind of fidelity and care, and he does it so well— well enough to let a surplus of glory and meaning shine through the most ordinary moments. Not so different from Vermeer, to be honest.

David tells me that his retirement will be spent visiting with his granddaughters, cycling, practicing jazz guitar, enjoying the company of his wife. None of this is surprising, and all of it promises to immerse him fully in those places and practices that put him in the crosshairs of joy and creativity and wonder. Encountering the Holy One at the speed of two wheels, through the eyes of a young child, or while making music all sounds to me like the best way to gather up the strands of a vocation committed to beauty, truth, and goodness.

I’ve asked him to add one more thing to the list of post-retirement activities— an epic road trip to visit beloved colleagues and friends. I can just picture it: David going from house to house, friend to friend, making his way across the Southeast, then the mountain states, over to the West Coast. At each stop, he’ll sit on the porch or by the fire, share a good beverage, and have the kinds of conversations that follow Mary Oliver’s instruction on how to live a life: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

In suggesting this pilgrimage, I have an image in mind of my favorite liturgical moment—something that brings me to tears every time, like Vermeer. It’s the start of the Easter Vigil service. The sanctuary is dark. The Paschal candle has been lit and carried with song down the aisle, announcing (again!) Christ’s victory over the tomb. The community is drawn (again!) into the holy act of anamnesis that proclaims the Incarnation full circle. A single taper is lit from the candle and the flame shared with the people sitting in the first pew. The flame is passed from congregant to congregant, hopeful believer to hopeful believer, as the wave of Light that dispels the Darkness fills the sanctuary from front to back. The Exsultet is sung and we hold our candles, accepting with joy the invitation (again!) to tend the fire that burns at the center of the world.

Helen Blier is the director of Lifelong Learning at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. She also serves as the president of the Association of Leaders in Lifelong Learning of Ministry. She earned the PhD from Emory University, the AB in theology and the MEd from Boston College. Like David, she enjoys Belgian beer and good dogs, and she is learning how to be a bit better at chasing beauty.