All right, part
two…
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| A multiple-image collage photo from my friend Lee in Kansas City |
Last week when I
wrote on our experience with The Great American Eclipse 2017 (leave it to
Americans to name and market ‘their’ eclipse!), I realized by the end of my
first page how long the piece might get. I mean, I was already up to seven
hundred words and the eclipse was still hours off! Two single-spaced pages
later, and by the time I was finished just telling about the experience, without
even having taken opportunity yet to reflect on it, I could see the post was
going to likely be the longest I’d ever put up. But the words had just kept
flowing as I thought back on it. (If you didn’t see that post, hit this link.)
So it was about
that time in my writing that I realized I wasn’t going to get everything I
wanted to say into a single post. Yes, it’s MY
blog and I can do anything I want! But it was just getting too long for
comfortable reading. I felt I still had a lot to say, thus, today’s second
installment…
Now, I don’t
think the length was necessarily because I am longwinded. I DO try to be very
intentional with my words (though I confess I can often end up preaching longer
than I probably should). But it wasn’t longwindedness. I was caught up in
something, something beautiful, a grand, even humbling, natural delight (not so
different from preaching after all). I was swept up in the writing just as I
had been swept up in the experience earlier that week, and the words flowed
casually as I relived it.
But I stopped at
that point last week, wanting to do some more thinking this week about just why
it jazzed me so much, and that for a couple reasons. First, for me, I knew it
had much more to do with something other than the phenomenon itself, and I
wanted to drill down on that a little bit more. Most of you who regularly read
this blog are like me in that you find nature an important spiritual pathway to
God. I’ve written on this subject before, and that not infrequently. It is
implicit in everything I write here and bears direct repeating from time to
time. But second, I wanted to do more thinking for the benefit of those of you
who may only slog through this blog because you’re my friend, who may not
necessarily find nature to have this impact on you. I’m not trying to convince
anyone that nature OUGHT to be something that leads you to God. That all depends
on how God has wired you. Maybe it’s music, activism, philosophy, friendship,
poetry, asceticism or contemplation that draws you deep toward the Divine. But
I believe there is a spark of something
in every created soul that can draw them to God-conscience, if they are
willing.
I believe there is a spark
of something
in every created soul that
can draw
them to God-conscience… Creation
love, for me, is about God love.
Naturalists, even
those who are Christ followers, can get excited about the simplest of things,
so much so that some others may consider it a little whacked out. Now, a total
eclipse is certainly not a minor thing, nor a simple one. There are actually
good odds that ours might be the only sun and moon system in the universe where
such a thing can happen. But that is not relevant. Naturalists can still wax
inordinately long about the plainest of things or observations. They can be
driven to huge efforts over what might seem to others minutiae. What’s the big
deal about a unique mushroom, a stunning butterfly, a sunset, an action of an
animal one has never observed even after a lifetime of observation? I’ll tell
you what’s the big deal. At least for the Christian naturalist, it reminds her
of creation, and in reminding her of creation, it reminds her of her Creator.
Creation love, for me, is about God love, for the same reason that a gift
presented to me by a beloved one is little about the gift and everything about
the love.
I mean, why would
two people travel seven hundred miles out of their way to observe a two-minute
twenty-three second event?
Because it
represents something far more than even its spectacular display, than even that
it might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As a Christian high schooler from
the church I am serving described it, who saw totality with friends in eastern
Oregon, “It was totally epic!” Thanks, Jacob. Great phrase for a total eclipse.
I’m sorry I did not come up with it. And I couldn’t agree more.
I don’t expect some
people to get this, but it touches on the way I and many others tick. Others
may not understand it. But many do not understand God love either. Perhaps
attention to nature could help here.
God love. This
brings me to our friend St. Augustine,
one of the first great theologians of the church, who lived in the 4th and 5th Century A.D.
He was an apologist, a defender of the Christian faith in a world similarly
bent on self-destruction as our day. But he was “asked whereon he rested his
claim” of faith, in the words of an old Swedish hymn. For him, it led him to
reflect on just what it is he loves when he loves his God. Now, mind you,
Augustine was a very sensual man, something made starkly clear from his
writings regarding his conversion, so listen for the sensate words in this
testimony, every one of the five senses referenced. Here it is, St. Augustine
on “What do I love when I love my God?”
What do I love when I love my God? It is
not physical beauty or temporal glory or the brightness of light dear to
earthly eyes, or the sweet melodies of all kinds of songs, or the gentle odor
of flowers and ointments and perfumes, or manna or honey, or limbs welcoming
the embraces of the flesh; it is not these I love when I love my God. Yet there
is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God – a
light, voice, odor, food, embrace of my innerness, where my soul is floodlit by
light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize,
where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for
food no amount of eating can lesson, where there is a bond of union that no
satiety can part. That’s what I love when I love my God.
So for me, and
perhaps millions of others who find in nature a spiritual pathway. That’s what
I also love when I love God’s creation. There’s something there -- a Divine
mystery, attraction, self-disclosure, welcome, revelation – that words can
hardly befit.
So there you have
it. Thanks for your patience with my meager musings. I’m not a theologian, nor
an apologist, but I do know what love is.
~~ RGM, August 28, 2017
