A VISION OF KNOWING
N. B. Last Blog Entry Before Sabbatical Time
N. B. Last Blog Entry Before Sabbatical Time
THE WETLAND ACROSS FROM THE RECTORY THIS MORNING is shrouded by a spring mist. This wetland and I have been together for twenty years and I know its habitat and seasons as well as I know my living room. I see this wetland frequently in a special way, as when musing this morning in the growing light. At such times it becomes briefly a thin-veiled place of knowing beyond knowing, an altar mystery within the nature sanctuary. This wetland is for me a place of sacred encounter and I value it with the intensity of an Orthodox monk in the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem.
I lay in bed during this customary waking hour just before dawn, looking out over the hillside, through the leafless maples; not seeing the wetland because of the mist but knowing its Presence. I wonder is this what it’s like for people without faith, to always be looking yet never truly seeing except what’s only there before one’s eyes.
It takes the knowing eye to see into the wetland when misted over. I see clumps of tough grass, shallow spreads of water barely moving. I see geese moving on the nesting grounds, readying at the slightest provocation to honk angrily at each other - saints forfend that they should ever stop squawking loudly at each other over any and all actual or perceived offense. I see them glide out then abruptly flap furiously, lift off and fly away. With the knowing eye I see them. I see them return again from wherever they have gone and whatever they have done – flying over and then banking down into the hospitality of their watery home. All this in a morning muse before the light of day . . .
. . . I thrill at their sounding and delight in their movement. They are so full of themselves, so loud and present one moment and in the next, silently waiting out there, hidden under their wetland covers, bedded down for a rest from their labors. I cannot always actually see them, even in the daylight, yet they are there; as I know they are there in the mist of a spring day dawning; as I know they are there throughout the dark night. How they manage to sleep a wink with all those peepers, God alone knows! Soon the peepers will give up their racket and occupy themselves with whatever it is they do until winter stills their every action and they disappear altogether until spring returns and life cycles . . .
I wonder is this what it means to be a person of faith, to know confidently that like the geese and peepers out there - invisible in the light of day, yet apprehensible to the knowing eye in the mist and dark - so also with God? Is this what faith brings to the table in nature - the wisdom and knowledge that as these wetland friends go away in the fall, and return again and make themselves known in the spring, so also with God?
Why must we believers prove the presence of God, supernatural and unseen, to doubting, skeptical, thought-proud others? They cannot see in the mist what faith reveals. They see only visible nature. I see invisible God! Let them take comfort in nature’s way. I am truly happy for them. For I too love nature! I love nature's play and drama. Yet I love God more!
Will Nature still see me, touch me, love me, move me like God moves me when I’m ashes to ashes, dead and gone? The answer is a shout-out no, I don't think so and I don't care! for God, my God is mine and I am Thine forever!
The people of God have lived within the mist of human nature by the light of God's revelation for more than two millenniums. We have seen into the Mist for centuries. From the ancient Celtic fellowship of Lindisfarne, Holy Island at the borders of southeastern Scotland and northern England, from this ancient place of similar thin-veiled sanctuary and knowing eye, of kith and kin to this morning's muse -
"Though the sun rise cheerless o'er this Isle this day, I walk in a pathway of Light. I cannot for a moment fall out from Thine everlasting Arms. I know my greatness. I am in the Heart of God and I'm on my way to Glory."
