From Hart to Hearts
A Message from Rev Linda Hart for the month of June 2010
We were on the tube on a rare Saturday afternoon when we can plan adventures. As it was my birthday weekend, we had gone to the Handweavers Studio in north London, getting off at the stop nearest to the Arsenal Football Stadium. After doing a small bit of shopping, we had begun our return journey: the tube to Waterloo Station and then the train back to Richmond.
The tube was busy, but we found a corner where we could stand and lean. I found myself watching the people and noticing that it was a more diverse crowd than we often see on the District line. A few stops along, two Muslim women got on. One was of the sort that I often see: head covered with a scarf and dressed modestly – a skirt that went all the way down to her ankles, long sleeved shirt, very little flesh showing other than her face and hands.
My eye was drawn to her companion who came in full burqa, the Arabic dress that is meant to hide a woman’s shape from men who might see her. What struck me at first was a glimpse of her skirt under the long, flowing covering she wore. Flashing out as she walked was a burnt orange skirt bedecked with sequins that had an underskirt of netting or mesh that gave it an almost flirty swing to it as she moved. It was not what I would have expected. Intrigued, I examined her more closely as she and her companion went to sit in the empty seats just slightly down the car from me. A careful long look showed that not only did she have on a beautiful skirt, but she wore slippers in a similar colour that were also decorated with small jewels and glittery beads.
Musing on this glimpse of sweet, feminine beauty, and my own utilitarian dress of leggings and a long wooly jumper, I lifted my eyes to find her considering me as well. The headscarf that she wore over the burqa didn’t cover her whole face, but had a bit cut out around her eyes with a slim bridge of fabric in the middle to keep the bottom portion of the veil lifted to keep her face well covered. Her eyes, I noted, were carefully outlined with dark eyeliner, and I was struck by what beauty showed there, too. It was not only the look of the eyeliner border, but her eyes themselves: dark, aware, observant and clearly young.
A little embarrassed by having been found out, but also still feeling the pleasure of seeing small glimmers of a hidden and not-hidden beauty that she expressed even as she kept to the spirit of the demands of her religious community, I started a bit and then smiled. Her eyes, taking on the brightness that comes when we smile, sparkled as we shared a brief connection. We both turned away, she to her conversation with her companion, me back to Peter and Claire. A few stops later, she got off small glitters of glamour showing as she walked.
It was just a smile between two women who live radically different lives, but as I continued on from there I found myself blessed by her beauty and the curiosity and appreciation that joined us together in those brief moments.
Philosopher Richard Rorty suggests that this is the way that we build solidarity with each other. It is by noticing what we share, what is similar between us that the bonds of humanity are truly built. Vastly different in our customs and our beliefs, still our eyes and our smiles joined us in a common humanity.
So let us look. Into the infinitely beautiful faces of those we pass on the street, or who sit next to us in a café. Let us watch for the lift of the eyes that let us know that the pleasure of a smile is filling those we love, those who are in our lives day in and day out. Let us watch for that which joins us one to another that the world be made ever so slightly more whole.