For some, the call of beauty may initiate an ongoing pilgrimage that lasts a life time.

For example, I am thinking of Bede Griffiths whose faith journey began early in life. Throughout his youth he found solitude in the woods and hills and read both philosophy and theology to uncover more about the power that pervaded the universe.  He found not only beauty and truth beneath appearances but also a moral power that made demands on him. At a crises point he recalls: “God brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I was reborn. I was no longer the center of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.”*

Later, Griffiths entered a monastic order and found that his mature belief allowed him to perceive the world with new eyes; everything had a sacramental character. Distance vanished and he felt a profound participation in the rhythm of the seasons and in a universal order.

Reading Griffiths and others like Hildegard of Bingen, Teilhard de Chardin, Abraham Heschel and Thomas Merton, I recognize how my own passion for beauty has taken me beneath appearances and toward a discovery of the divine in the ordinary. Nature, for me, is most real when it reflects a sacred dimension. However, I know this vision does not come easily but is nurtured only by acts of faith and loving attention to the world around me.

Once during an autumn camping trip in the Allegheny Mountains I awoke chilled to the bone and immediately found a clearing where I knew the light would settle as the sun journeyed through the hills. Sitting against a tree, basking in the first warmth of the day, I watched the glance of light unleash a fine mist in the high grass. At that moment I realized that the morning landscape possessed more reality than I had imagined. The sun became a gift radiating the power of life; it was grace without which I could not survive.

I treasure this experience because there was no separation, only one sacred reality, the beauty and power of sunlight filling my being and all the world.

Medieval mystics realized that the world was primarily symbolic, a “language” that expressed the mind of God.  They saw the script of beauty writ large in the sun, moon, and stars.  They identified with the psalmist who raised a voice with all creation: “The heavens proclaim your glory, God…  Day carries the news to day, and night brings the message to night (Psalm 19:2-3).”

Today we struggle to recognize the power and beauty hidden in all of nature; we prefer a one dimensional view.  Created things are not God’s speech.  Yet, still, we catch hints of this potential when we hear the wind washing through the boughs, watch rain splashing on leaves, listen to a bird singing at dawn in the stillness of dark trees.  On some level we acknowledge every day the depth of nature and of our own beings whether we are conscious of it or not.

The broad sky, lush foliage, fertile earth and the human pilgrimage are archetypes rooted in the history of human consciousness; they are entrances into the forces that work in the human soul. Writes Franciscan scholar Eloi Leclerc: “These great images (earth, sun, moon, water, air, fire) have the power to draw consciousness out of its isolation and put it in contact with the transcendent fullness of life.” *

So why not let nature ply open our hearts just as the desolate Sinai desert molded the stiff hearts of the Hebrews and caused a prayer to issue from their mouths. Trudging through a barren landscape, the Israelites discovered a reality known to every Bedouin: the desert does not suffer pretense.  The heat of day and the cold of night reminds a pilgrim at every step that attention should be directed toward someone greater than oneself.  Why not allow the hidden beauty of wild nature to break into our own consciousness and reveal a divinity whose ways are truly mysterious?

In the end the surprise of beauty and grace invites us to answer a call. We are truly gifted creatures, but sometimes we wait too long to recognize this.  “Too late have I loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new, too late have I loved you!” laments St. Augustine. We cannot stand the heat of divine nearness so we tend to hide our days in business. All the while we hear intimations of beauty in a pacific breeze, in the flutter of wings, and in the rocky crevice where a single flower grows.  There are times when we know God is speaking personally to us in the warm glance of the sun on the nape of our neck inviting us on an adventure into the unknown if we would only be present to the moment.

It is no secret that the ancient passion for beauty and grace expresses the soul’s deep longing for happiness. Exploring this passion leads us to Beauty itself, and the revelation that all is grace.

Even later, when the revelation of beauty fades, when the doe in the meadow with steam rising from her flanks disappears into the woods, the eye still glows from this brush with innocence and memory stores it for future contemplation and the journey continues.

Notes:

* Bede Griffiths, The Golden String: An Autobiography (Springfield, Ill.: Templegate Publishers, 1980), p. 108.

* Eloi Leclerc, O.F.M., The Canticle of Creatures: Symbols of Union (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1966), p. 65.