Richard Rohr cut to the chase when he wrote: I think what Paul means here is that whatever we need to know about God can be found in nature. Nature itself is the primary Bible. The world is the locus of the sacred and provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth. There are poems and songs in the Scriptures, insights and mysteries about grace, too. And I love much of what I have learned in my study of our holy texts. And, yet, I have come to the conclusion - like Brother Richard - that the heart and soul of knowing God has been revealed fully in nature.
https://seasonofcreation.org) I wrestled with letting go of my anthropomorphic
training. Unconsciously I had long believed that nature was beautiful - and I knew that I experienced awe and wonder in the woods, desert, forest streams, lakes and oceans - but that was it. The season of creation, however, invited me to imagine how the holy was being revealed in nature. What was God sharing with me and inviting me to know about the sacred in the sky? Water? In the essence of a mountain? Or the multitude of creatures that inhabit Mother Earth? I had been intrigued for a few decades by the truths expressed in the rhythm of the Celtic Wheel of Life. I was becoming open to the wisdom of earth-based spiritualities, too. But I never ever considered that God might be sharing something of God with me in rain. Or sunlight. Or the moon and stars.
What an arrogant, limited, selfish, ignorant and utterly 20th century theology I had inherited. My Reformed training had rejected the sacramental theology of the Roman Catholic world as superstitious. Our narrow-minded theology insisted that only human reflection upon the words of Scripture could reveal the heart, mind and soul of the Lord. "Solo scriptura - scripture only" was the bold war cry of the Protestant Reformation that not only abandoned 1500 years of Christian history and tradition, but sacramental wisdom as well as 3,000 years of our heritage from ancient Judaism, too.
And so began a journey of wandering into the wilderness of creation spirituality. Listening for the truths of God in creation put me in touch with Matthew Fox, of course, but also David Stendl-Rast, Rupert Sheldrake, Joan Chittister and Ilia Dello (a Franciscan scholar who works with Rohr) who wrote: The world is created as a means of God’s self-revelation so that, like a mirror or footprint, it might lead us to love and praise the Creator. We are created to read the book of creation so that we may know the Author of Life. This book of creation is an expression of who God is and is meant to lead humans to what it signifies, namely, the eternal Trinity of dynamic, self-diffusive love.
From my perspective, a new and liberating consensus is emerging in 21st century spirituality that takes all aspects of incarnation seriously: the flesh is holy, the earth is holy, the water and the air are holy, too. Women, men and children are holy as are each expression of our gender. The mystics of Eastern Orthodoxy have taught me that all of the flora and fauna of creation are truly holy because animals, plants, insects and the creatures of the water never rebelled against God but have always lived in sacred harmony with the Lord since the beginning. Rohr writes:
The initial Incarnation actually happened around 14 billion years ago with “The Big Bang.” That is what we now call the moment when God decided to materialize and self-expose, at least in this universe. The first “idea” in the mind of God was to make Divine Formlessness into physical form, so that everything visible is a further revelation of what has been going on secretly inside of God from all eternity. Love always outpours! God spoke the Eternal Blueprint/Idea called Christ, “and so it was!” (Genesis 1:9)... Most of Christian history has heard little or nothing about this timeless mystery, and we settled for a small tribal god instead. We put Jesus in competition with other religions instead of allowing him to ground the universal search for God in the material world itself, in nature, cosmos, and history—from the very beginnings of time. In other words, all creatures were capable of knowing and loving God long before the world religions formalized their doctrines and rituals. Were the first millennia of human beings (San or Bushmen, Mayans, Celts, Aboriginals, and on and on) just trial runs and throwaways for a very inefficient God? That cannot be! God did not just start talking and loving 2,000 years ago. Infinite Love would never operate that way. “The Christ Mystery” proclaims that there is universal and equal access to God for all who have ever wanted love and union since the primal birth of humanity. In simple words, Stone Age people already had access to God!
It has been understood but rarely spoken aloud that many men do not feel at home - and certainly not at rest - in much of contemporary Christianity. It feels too safe and scripted, absent of awe and much more interested in control than trust. But men (and women, too) intuitively feel connected to the sacred in nature. I submit that this is one of the reasons so many guys play golf on Sunday morning rather than attend worship. Once, in what was Soviet Russia, I was attending the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg.) For most of the three hour morning liturgy, the congregation was comprised of women of all ages. Young women came and went with their children, old women knelt and prayed before the icons, and the men mostly sat outside the Sanctuary ans smoked. At the liturgy's climax, however, after all the preparatory prayers had been chanted, after the homily and hymns, just as the priests carried the bread that would become the living body of Christ to the altar, the men came inside. They participated fully and passionately in the closing 20 minutes of worship where the sacrifice of Christ was reenacted in prayer and shared with the faithful. Before that, sitting and smoking in the sun was where they preferred to worship.
Until we reclaim, honor and celebrate the first incarnation of God in creation, we will continue to miss so much of the Lord's love and wisdom. Our self-absorbed and self-referential existence will atrophy further as our inner emptiness makes us more susceptible to manipulation and cheap thrills. Today a bit of last night's ice is melting. The sun has been peaking out from behind the clouds, too as the day grows warmer. Take a look at this short film from Dreamy Earth - and rejoice in the Lord ALL ways!
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