Circles of Grace
Circles of Grace
A meditation while strolling through a Japanese garden.
There is in true grace an infinite circle: a man by thirsting receives, and receiving thirsts for more.
―Thomas Shepard, The Works of Thomas Shepard
On Thursday of last week, Dima, Dino, and I traveled to San Diego for the wedding of my nephew. On the day before the event, we spent the day at Balboa Park, which contains what is known as the Japanese Friendship Garden, a symbol of the city’s bond with Yokohama. The garden is lovely, especially as it is built on hillsides, which gives it a sense of depth and vertical perspective that is sometimes missing from Japanese gardens in the United States.
From my years living in Japan, I developed a particular fondness for gardens of this type. The principles that guide their design are ancient and extensive, and the meticulous daily care to keep them pristine has often filled me with awe. I am especially fond of their open asymmetrical Zen gardens, typically adorned with large stones symbolizing hills and mountains and gravel raked in waves or circles— a space for contemplation meant to be observed but never disturbed.
The garden in San Diego contains a small art gallery, currently exhibiting a collection of pieces by the Japanese artist, Junko Isawa. The set of works is called “Memory of Circles,” and it consists of circles and partial circles, some alone and some grouped. On a small plaque at the gallery’s entrance, I read that Isawa’s circles were inspired by the Zen calligraphic form of a closed circle, which “symbolically expresses enlightenment, truth, and spiritual fulfillment as a round shape that represents eternity, a continuum without beginning or end.” I glanced at the art as I read the description but had to pause when I came to the word for this specific form:
Enso (formally spelled ensō) is a sacred symbol in Zen Buddhism meaning circle, or sometimes, circle of togetherness. It is traditionally drawn using only one brushstroke as a meditative practice in letting go of the mind and allowing the body to create, as the singular brushstroke allows for no modifications. While at first glance, the enso symbol appears no more than a misshapen circle, it symbolizes many things: the beauty in imperfection, the art of letting go of expectations, the circle of life, and connection. The enso is a manifestation of the artist at the moment of creation and the acceptance of our innermost self. It symbolizes strength, elegance, and one-mindedness.
Enlivened by the similarity of enso to my son’s name, I began to look at the objects on display with great care. One collection of ensos stood out to me most of all. It is a series of nine circles in which some are closed and some are open to varying degrees.
The more I looked at the work the more the circles struck me as symbolic of human lives: all follow the same course, in varying shades of color and texture, from birth to death, though some end their journeys sooner than others. Though of varying lengths, each enso is equally beautiful, which reminds us that it is not the length of our lives that matters but the beauty we create while we possess it. We each get to make one brushstroke with our time on this earth, and it is what we create with it, however imperfect, that defines who we are and how we will be remembered. This is an ancient Stoic belief, articulated by Seneca, in On the Brevity of Life:
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.
One life, says the Roman philosopher, is all we really need, provided we live it well.
As I contemplated Isawa’s circles, their phonetic and symbolic connections to Enzo were only strengthened when I read that Isawa, like my son, “was fascinated by the textures of graffiti on the walls of New York City” and that she “painted aspects of those walls in traditional Japanese painting.” Complete and incomplete, all the ensos—which are made from organic materials—represent for me life itself, united by both composition and inspiration. They are different views of the human experience, however long or short, and of the earth whose gifts make up the essence of their form.
After leaving the little gallery, we strolled through the hilly paths of the garden, where I saw flowers in colors bold and gentle, waters rushing across stones of various shades of grey and brown, grand trees impossible to grasp with a single glance, and their miniature Bonsai cousins that allowed me to see the entire organism in one view. As I walked across delicate bamboo bridges, bathed in light and surrounded by a nature arrayed in near-perfect harmony, I returned to yet another aspect of the ensos: their expression of connection, perhaps communion, for the enso is a symbol of the union of the individual to the whole, the mortal to the immortal. As I considered this significance, I was reminded of another word—grace, which in the Catholic tradition is a believer’s “participation in the life of God.” Borrowing from the sense of the religious term, we can envisage that grace, in its abstract form, is the union of the human to the everlasting, a fusion, both continuous and momentary, of our fragile existence to that which is universal and eternal. Thus, grace is, in its own way, an enso, a symbolic union of one human being to the great circle of humanity that has come before and will come after.
Thinking about Enzo and ensos, and about grace itself, I wandered along the winding paths of the garden, ascending and descending with the landscape. As I ambled, I recalled another work of art, an obscure one, that I treasure and once shared with Enzo. It is a recording made by the jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi. It originated in the tumultuous years of the 1960s, when the Reverend Charles Gompertz asked Guaraldi to create what the Reverend called “a modern setting for the choral Eucharist” at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Legend has it that Guaraldi spent every Saturday for eighteen months rehearsing with the choir of St. Paul’s Church in San Rafael, hoping to create a seamless union of jazz trio, choral voices, and the spoken words of the Mass.
It was a daunting artistic challenge, and Guaraldi understood the significance of his compositions and performance:I had one of America’s largest cathedrals as a setting, a top choir, and a critical audience that would be more than justified in finding fault. I was in a musical world that had lived with the Eucharist for 500-600 years, and I had to improve and/or update it to 20th-century musical standards. This was the most awesome and challenging thing I had ever attempted.
I have loved Guaraldi’s unique creation, “The Grace Cathedral Concert,” from the moment I discovered it. It is a fusion of the sacred and profane, a thoughtful synthesis of the ephemeral form of jazz and the ancient ritual of the Eucharist. Most of all, it too is an enso, for it was performed only once, in one take— a single sonic “brushstroke” never to be repeated. Perhaps because it is also a creation of California, Guaraldi’s music, especially a track called “Theme to Grace,” filled my mind as I walked. I recalled the gentle piano and soft children’s voices, the hushed murmurs of the worshipers, and the solemn sounds of the sacred ceremony.
Guaraldi’s work is, to me, as beautiful as one of Isawa’s ensos, for it is also a “manifestation of the artist at the moment of creation.” A few years ago, the highlight of a family trip to San Francisco was visiting Grace Cathedral and imagining that Sunday when Guaraldi’s inspired creation filled its grand expanse. On the day of our visit, I stood next to my Enzo in the Cathedral, feeling the grace of human life around me, as the sunlight streamed through the Church’s stained glass windows. That same beautiful sensation filled my soul again as I walked through the flowing gardens last week. There I found my own communion among the cool blowing breezes, the warm rays of sunlight, the splendor of gleaming petals and fluttering leaves, and the laughter of my wife and son. United in another singular performance, the world filled me with grace, as I imagined Guaraldi’s lovely notes floating through the scented air, and I lost myself in the eternal circles of life.
Guaraldi would work again with children of the same choir for his most famous work, the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas.