As I’m working on (yet again) restarting this blog, I thought I’d bring back a series I wrote in 2014 about a youth choir tour, originally published in July 2014. Enjoy.
This is one of a set of blog entries inspired by the 2014 tour of the Living Proof Youth Choir (LPYC) of Christ UMC in Plano, Texas. It isn’t meant to be a summary of the tour, but a set of reflections prompted by events on the trip.
Day Three (a Monday) ended in Chicago at The Bean. Its real name is the Cloud Gate, but no one calls it that. It’s the large reflective sculpture sitting in Millennium Park. The tour logo is “My Life is in Your Hands” written into the outline of The Bean.
Travelling to The Bean was a pilgrimage for me. Two years earlier, I heard Amy Krouse Rosenthal speak at TEDxSMU 2012. In June 2008, she posted a video to You Tube called “17 Things I Made”. She showed 17 things she made, then asked people to join her at The Bean at 8:08pm on 8/08/08 to make an 18th thing. She’d be carrying a yellow umbrella.
She expected 40 people to show up. There were 400.
She filmed the event. They made all kinds of things. They made a grand entrance. They made new friends. One guy got a bunch a flowers and passed them out to passersby, so he made their day. The goal was to beckon lovely. There is so much ugly in the world, it was time to focus on lovely, to beckon lovely. They tried to make the most of their time here.
At 9:09am on 9/09/09, Amy returned to The Bean to help people have a lovely day. She gave directions to tourists, gave away gifts, and brought a musician to serenade passersby. It was a lovely day. She made the most of her time here.
At 10:10pm on 10/10/10, Amy called everyone back for another Beckoning of Lovely at The Bean. They shared ten special moments. They found the flower guy from two years ago and gave him flowers, making his day. They jumped for joy. They concluded by listening to a classical quartet play Vivaldi while someone blew thousands of bubbles into the air. They made the most of their time here.
At 11:11 am on 11/11/11, Amy held the final Beckoning of Lovely at The Bean. The theme was: We Are All One. (The video is 11:11 long.) They sang Happy Birthday to all those with birthdays that day, including a phone call to someone whose 11th birthday was on 11/11/11. One of the attendees proposed to his girlfriend. They passed out pillowcases and markers; you were to make a new friend and get them to sign your pillowcase. Amy called up women who had travelled the farthest to get there, gave them matching necklaces, and told them to always keep in touch with each other – and they do. They all made the most of their time here.
Amy took the yellow umbrella she always carried to Beckoning of Lovely and hid it in the bushes in the park.
Amy was at TEDxSMU on 12/1/12. She told us someone named Angela found the yellow umbrella and is holding on to it. She then issued a challenge. According to the Mayan calendar, the world was going to end on December 21, 2012. That gave us ten days, from 12/12/12 to 12/21/12, to Beckon Lovely and Save the World. We all got little yellow PostIt pads and were told to leave little “Beckon Lovely” notices wherever we went. In those ten days, we were to add something lovely to the world and make the most of our time here, hopefully inspiring others to do the same.
Amy left us with this thought: What you seek, you will find. What you summon, will find you.
At 7:55pm on 7/14/14, I arrived at The Bean with LPYC and chaperones. The Bean is the perfect public sculpture because you don’t look at it, you interact with it. I took a selfie with myself.
Interacting with The Bean means interacting with each other. Everyone was taking photos with friends, pulling people together for photos, and photographing their reflections. We made friends with man who had a lizard. We saw a group of dancers there for a photo shoot. We saw what kind of bizarre reflections of ourselves we could create. As the sun set, we took a group photo in front of The Bean.
It was fitting to start three amazing days in Chicago visiting what is for me a place to connect with others and focus on what is most uplifting. While in Chicago, what we sought, we found. What we summoned, found us. We beckoned lovely and made the most of our time here.
Totally true fact: I looked around in the bushes for a yellow umbrella. Just in case.
The Feral Deacon 