Humanity and Nature through the Lens of Incarnation part 2

Now, here and now, in the language of our senses, in all that we are saying: “What would be the spiritual horizon?”

Think of the day, think of your life, think of your daily routines. Whatever you are doing – your work – and how do you see all that at the deeper level of God’s presence?

As I was writing this, I just thought to try it out, so I looked out the window and I saw a bird flying by, children were running around the front door, a packed bus was passing, a family was getting out of a car in a church car park, someone was ringing the door bell. The most ordinary things that you could imagine – a bus, children, the family, the door bell. So how does one begin if one has the time? The idea would be that it would happen almost simultaneously. How would it be to begin to practice this stillness or this vison or this Catholic imagination at a time like that?

Well, the way I see it is – it would be to look at these things as if for the first time – a bird flying across the window is an amazing moment. Live children laughing around your doorstep, the bus of people passing, the family unloading itself from the car. Even just to spend a moment longer with all of these – but with beginner’s mind.

We introduced this whole course if you remember by suggesting that beginner’s mind is a wonderful way to start this kind of contemplative living – I suppose that is what you would call what we are learning – the mystery and the deeper meaning of what seems ordinary. How to look at ordinary happenings and somehow see them as extraordinary – to recognise the depth in them – the amazing love and beauty in those common moments. They are all a portrait of the God we believe in – the one we love with all our hearts.

Remember again what we said during the course of these episodes – what St. Bonaventure wrote about – the Vestigia Dei. Flying birds, a travelling bus, children around the door, they are all full of the Vestigia Dei – the fingerprints, the foot prints, the heart prints of God. They are more – they are God’s own self enfleshed In the common, ordinary ways – but disguised – God’s presence disguised in them. It is more than the traces – the Vestigia Dei – it is the very love energy of God.

When one approaches it in this way, there is something grounded about it. That is what I love about Incarnation – its language, its reality, its experience. It is never something up in the clouds – some kind of levitation – some kind of existence in a heavenly place. Its Incarnation wearing wellingtons if you like. Its there, its real. Our senses are involved. There is no self-hypnosis involved in any way. It is real, utterly real. It is revealed. It is really real. It is God’s own Presence.

So I looked again and realised that what I’ve just described was the Sacrament of Now – the here and now. It is another most safe place to be. It doesn’t get more real than that. It is because it is the really real – that is why we can be assured that Incarnation is where God is found.

It is the only place where God is found. God is there in all that was going on as guide to what was happening. There wasn’t something missing that they had to add to it to make it holy – to find God in it – God was already there. It was I that needed to change. It is not just about looking but it is about seeing and recognising. You may remember those words, phrases, steps that we have already discussed. All that was needed was the vision, the sight and the insight to recognise that – to believe in God’s presence in the birds, the bus, the people, and what I was watching was the Spirit of God – the Incarnate Spirit of God at work and at play.

It is all too often as T.S. Elliot wrote – “We have the experience but we miss the meaning”.

This whole new way of seeing can be compared to when something in black and white is transformed into colour. There is nothing has changed. Nothing changes in itself but it is given depth in the hidden depth & more meaning by the colour.

It is the same with our lives. We don’t have to change anything about our lives to be Christians – but we have to see what happens to us. Take for example something in 2 dimensional and then like a miracle we can see the same outline in 3D. It has a new resonance and a new depth. I often think of those little examples of trying to understand more fully the effect of grace on nature if you like.

Grace doesn’t change nature but it gives it colour. It gives it depth. It gives it more attraction and resonance.

You see the view through my window did not change. What does it mean to change. What needs to change is how I saw it.

I remember a story of a friend of mine who was impatient with the patch of ground outside her back door. It was a long winter – it was still muddy when it was wet and it was frozen when it was cold. Then one late April morning she went out. Instead of the hard and soft mud, there was the beginning of lovely spring flowers emerging – imagine – and she stopped and looked in astonishment. Where were all those beautiful colours, were they buried beneath the earth? And of course, nothing had changed fundamentally – the seeds were there, the earth was there. What had happened was that what was before and out of vision suddenly erupted into most beautiful shapes and smells. Nothing had changed really in the patch of grass and soil – not the slightest aspect of nature but the disguised beauty was revealed; so that is another way of looking at the mystery we are exploring. Everything is deepened, infused with new meaning – energised by love. Nothing changing or emerging for the whole to emerge into our consciousness. What was always there is revealed. Everything is already holy and beautiful.

(Transcript from Episode 8 of An Asonishing Secret video course)