First, I have had to come face to face with my raging anthropomorphism: most of my thinking/understanding about the sacred has been set in human terms. As a Christian, I relate to Jesus as "the Word of God revealed in the flesh." I understand Christ to be God's clearest revelation of divine love that I know - not the only revelation, to be sure - but the best way I have come to trust the essence of the Lord. But now I have to wrestle with how God's first word - creation - is also a true and authentic revelation of sacred love. I have acknowledged this intellectually in the past, but now realize that I don't have much experience comprehending God's love in this way. I cherish the natural order, but I don't really think much about it as one of the ways God has revealed the heart of grace to all the world. In many ways, I have NOT had eyes to see the Lord in this way so I am profoundly inexperienced trying to do so.
Perhaps that is why reflecting on one of the seven Biblical creation narratives
Second, it is equally challenging to me to explore theological revelation without words. Contemplating the flora and fauna, for example, as one of God's revelations (and gifts) to the world pushes me out of my head - and my well cultivated safety zone of words and ideas - into an encounter with living creations that cannot speak (at least in ways that I understand.) And I don't have a lot of practice doing theology without words. Dianne chortled - as a commentary on our simultaneous quest for balance - when I confessed this at breakfast today noting, "That's one of the reasons you are with a semi-autistic person!" (She of few works being with me of many and vice versa.) But I really am a child of my Reformed tradition: rational words have been one of the ways we have nurtured being "created in the image of God" over the past 500 years.
But that isn't what the season of Creation invites. Rather, this season asks me to listen to the cries and songs of the trees, the wisdom of the animals, the challenge of sustaining life in ways that are fecund and beautiful. And it asks me to do this not in a flaky, new age "everything is beautiful" way, but as one who celebrates the Christian tradition. Di thought my intimacy with musical theologizing might be a helpful window for me; improvisation and performance are ways that I have entered into a portion of divine grace beyond words. And there are often moments when "I am in the zone" that are beyond time and understanding - energizing and engaging as well as nourishing - without a word of explanation ever being uttered.
So, while I know this experience in music, I don't have much experience extending it beyond the song. And as a mostly city boy, although I have been embraced by awe before in nature, I don't have an inner vocabulary to describe these experiences even to myself.
As we decorated our Sanctuary today, however, the visual beauty of the cairns and tapestries, the gathered field grass, feathers and flowers - to say NOTHING of the enormous suspended, inflated globe hovering over the chancel (that was a riot to install) - began to give me a deeper sense of what this new liturgical season offers. I will keep you posted as it unfolds. It feels like a real blessing this evening to have joined the experiment.
2 comments:
I can't wait to see it in person! It is beautiful!
I am so totally blown away, my friend, that I am speechless (and for ME that's pretty wild!)
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