BEING BENEATH

EACH Spring and Summer I would cycle with my mother through the green lanes that wound their way from the suburb’s edge where we lived, through the countryside, to the little village where she grew up and where she tended the grave of a child she had known. My memories are of sitting on the handlebars of her bicycle (until I was old enough to ride my own) as we passed through cool, green tree-tunnels until we emerged into hot, dry days and arrived at the wooden gate leading into the sun-burnt land surrounding the Norman church – a church which served a hamlet abandoned over the years in favour of the site of the present village a mile away.

Most of us can trace our roots back to that ancient farming world. The life of our ancestors would have depended on the natural world in ways we can hardly imagine and part of the attraction of the countryside might be that our roots remember the world from which we came. Clearly, many are attracted to spend time drinking from this spring; urban rush and noise fall away. The blessed silence, broken by the sound of birdsong or leaves rustling in the wind, sweet smell of air unpolluted by exhaust fumes can give a sense of entering a different world and touch memories stored deep within us. Unlike our rural forebears we of today’s suburb and city often forget the need to reverence our sustaining Mother, the Earth, reminding ourselves that the internet can never truly satisfy our deepest desires but can blind us – prevent us from penetrating further than what the screen before our eyes allows. Of course, it's easy to sense God in the glories of a garden and the beauty of nature, but saints find God in the weed growing through a pavement of a city street.

Yet gardens, when cultivated and not paved over, can reveal the beauty of bush and flower; allotments allow some to sink bare hands in humus enabling a connection with our Mother. Our roots can only be satisfied by that way of earthy humility. But even then, some fear the encounter and, responding to a developing generation increasingly separated from the world, shield skin with gloves preventing thus that encounter.

However, there’s a wonderful practice within the Orthodox tradition of Christianity which forever remembers our at oneness with Earth. In praying before an icon of a heavenly saint (or at other times) the Sign of the Cross – with Trinitarian fingers held together, one bent into contact with the palm – by touching the forehead and then bending low to the ground (on which our feet walk and into which we will be buried) before concluding with a horizontal marking of the shoulders from left to right, a final marking tracing the horizon of earth and sky and sea. Naming the Source of all life, the One who came to make all things whole, and the Spirit constantly – invisibly – moving through creation, that faith-full encounter with the ground and what lies hidden beneath, affirms that whilst we’re of the earth, we come from and are destined for glory.

Christian faith is Incarnational – it says: ‘I may be flesh and blood but to be fully human I need to be in touch with the Spirit which gives life.’ Maybe we sense an echo of an oh-so-dim memory planted deep within of the divine Spirit flowing throughout Nature; the Spirit who penetrates everything in Nature and binds us together – the divine ‘glue’ that helps make us whole. At every Mass when bread is taken and wine poured, blessed and given our Faith tells us that this blessed Creation can be transformed to reveal the divine – the yeast of Christ leaving the flour that made the Bread of Life.

I find the same sense of seeing through outward things into the universe beneath when I pray before the Tabernacle in a church. There, Christ is present beneath the fragile form of a wafer of bread. In that ever-so-ordinary form there is something extraordinary, and the Divine which inhabits and transforms bread is also present throughout nature. So I sit or kneel and am moved to whisper, ‘Lord, I adore you; lay my life before you, how I must love you’.

ALL CREATION SINGS YOUR PRAISE

Sitting in the gardens of the 16th century hotel in which we stayed one March day, the song of the birds filled me with joy and I immediately thought of those words from Eucharistic Prayer III - 'Lord, you are holy indeed, and all creation rightly gives you praise.'  That morning it felt as if the birds could not contain themselves for the joy they felt and I was reminded that this chorus is sung every day, yet how often I'm not aware of it.  But that morning I was and recalled what St Augustine said: "And I said to all those things that stand about the gates of my senses: 'Tell me something about my God, you who are not he. Tell me something about him.' And they cried out in a loud voice, 'He made us.'"   

The way that nature is filled with joy is something of which the psalmist was aware. He frequently allows his soul to sing::

Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars.

Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies.

Let them praise the name of the Lord,

for at his command they were created, and he established them for ever and ever—

he issued a decree that will never pass away. (148.3f)

The saints also allow themselves to express their thankfulness; St Francis sang his great Canticle of Creation:

Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures,

especially Sir Brother Sun,

who is the day and through whom you give us light.

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour;

and bears a likeness of you, Most High One.

Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars:

in heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

It's easy to go around with the ear and eye of our heart closed to the way the wonders of creation is not only a sacrament of the glory of God but that that glory exults and cannot keep silence.  Priests, in particular, need to be aware of this ways in which God's glory cries out, but many people realise this and write about it, not least in poetry.  But many don't cultivate a heart which can listen for this divine song of creation, preferring to listen to songs coming out of their ipods, blind to the beauty around them.   Cultivating a silent heart that can hear this song is the way in which it can become open to this awareness.  Not just outward silence, 'tho that can help, but silence of the mind so that it's not constantly distracted, silence of the soul so that it's not distracted from being open to God and silence of the spirit which stills the heart.  Each morning we need to open ourselves, open our hearts, to this joyful praise that nature is expressing so that our hearts, too, can sing for joy like the sons and daughters of God.