more light

My super warm Cuddl Duds shirt covered by my thickest sweater. Then my winter coat, with one of my husband’s winter coats over that, thick mittens, a cozy headband to cover my ears, and wool socks and hiking boots. And a heavy blanket to wrap in if needed.

The temperature was hovering around freezing that Sunday morning, with the wind creating a real feel lower than 32 degrees, and I was headed to our 10:30 AM church of the wild gathering in Lancaster County Central Park. I can almost see your eyes opening wide and hear you asking “why were you meeting outside when it was so cold?!”

I have been learning that some Christ-followers over the centuries have spoken of two books through which God is revealed. I’ve known about the first, the book of Christian scripture, since my parents shared the Bible with me as a child. But the second “book,” the expansive living text of the whole natural world—sun, moon, stars, earth, sea, sky, creatures, trees, plants—no one taught me to read this book or to recognize it as a revealer of God.

An Irish theologian and philosopher named John Scotus Eriugena (815-877 AD) taught the wisdom of reading both books—the sacred text of scripture and the sacred text of the universe. If we read only the little (physically small, not unimportant) book, he said, we will miss the vastness and wildness of what is revealed. And if we read only the big book, we are in danger of missing the intimacy of Love’s voice. ¹

Because I’ve spent years reading and studying the little book while barely noticing the big book, I’ve begun spending time outside with trees and birds and creeks and clouds as often as I can, opening to what I can learn from the big book. Might I begin to open to the “vastness and wildness” of God as I begin to see rather than ignore the created world?

The more I pay attention to the expansive living text around me, the more I notice how often elements of the big book are mentioned in the little book. The psalmists wrote of thunder and trees, hills and hail. The prophets saw blooms in the desert and an ever-widening river. Jesus spoke about birds, lilies, soil, and seed. I have been so disconnected from the natural world and so busy deciphering the meaning of “symbolic” natural elements in scripture that I often miss what is revealed through their material reality.

Another John (Muir, 1838-1914 AD), father of our national park system in the US, also came to experience the natural world as a divine manuscript. His pastor father made sure that John knew the little book from cover to cover at a young age. And, as John grew older, he came to see that the earth, though made of matter, is infused with the Light and Life of God. It’s not, he said, that the earth and all its creatures and elements are God but that they are a manifestation, a showing, of their Creator.

He experienced the earth itself as a divine “incarnation” (our word for when a spirit or abstract quality takes form in matter) and noted that even earth’s geological formations are “heaven incarnate”—specific, material, dwelling places of God. He wrote that rocks could be called “instonations” of God. ² Instonations . . . this playful word keeps rolling around in my mind and my mouth.

Later this month, Christ-followers around the world will celebrate the divine incarnation at the heart of our faith—the embodiment of the Spirit-Being we call God in the form of a baby boy whose parents named him Jesus. Yet a third John (the Biblical writer, c. 6-100 AD) described this incarnation of God as the True Light coming into the world, enlightening everyone. Wonderfully, I have experienced some of this enlightening.

And . . .

This December, might I be further enlightened as I see the Light of The Three in One shining through the “instonations” over which the creek waters sing? And through the sycamore and white pine and shagbark hickory “intreenations” that grace the park? Could I perceive that Light in the poinsettias and holly branches I’ve brought into the house? In the cardinal who flashes across the backyard and the moon that shines before dinnertime?

Might I begin to see more of The One Revealed if I look more intently into the second book? In the darkness of these December days, may our gaze upon Christ open and open and open, until we see the Light of Christ everywhere it shines. 

¹ John Philip Newell’s phrasing of Eruigena in Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul, HarperOne, 2021.

² Another fascinating bit from John Philip Newell in Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul.