We are made to love, both to satisfy the necessity of our active nature and to answer the beauties in every creature. By love our souls are married and soldered to the creatures, and it is our duty like God to be united to them all. We must love them infinitely, but in God, and for God, and God in them, namely, all his excellencies manifest in them. When we dote upon the perfections and beauties of some one creature, we do not love that too much, but other things too little. Never was anything in this world loved too much, but many things have been loved in a false way, and all in too short a measure.
Imagine a river or a drop of water, an apple or a grain of sand, an ear of corn or an herb: God knows infinite excellencies in it more than we. He sees how it relates to angels and to humans, how it proceeds from the most perfect Lover to the most perfectly Beloved, how it represents all God’s attributes. And for this cause it cannot be beloved too much. God the Author and God the End is to be beloved in it. O what a treasure is every grain of sand, when truly understood! Who can love anything God made too much? His infinite goodness and wisdom and power and glory are in it. What a world would this be, were everything beloved as it ought to be!
From Centuries by Thomas Traherne (London: Mowbray, 1960).
There are other ways to see the world. The “other way” with which I am most familiar is the world as icon. Of painted icons we say they are “windows to heaven.” Though no more than wood and paint, faithful believers find them to be something which points to something yet more – they both point to and make present here.
The house in which I live has a marvelous feature. The living room – dining room (more or less one large room together) has one entire wall as floor-to-ceiling windows. In addition, the living room is cantilevered so that parts of two additional walls consist of windows as well. The effect is that the main living space of my home constantly includes the outdoors. In the Autumn the room is suffused with golden light from the leaves of the many trees that overlook the rear of our house. In the Spring and Summer, the room takes on a radiance from the many trees and flowers. Even in winter as the room looks out over the naked wood of trees and offers views of neighboring streets and houses – the room remains transformed.
To say that something is a window is to recognize both its “literal” presence as well as its “iconic” function. It provides both wall to enclose and yet reaches out to include. The world, I believe, when properly seen, does the same. There are occasional views of certain aspects of the world that make the most hardened, literal heart pause and recognize that something transcendent, or something which certainly hints at the transcendent has come into view. –Fr. Stephen, Glory to God for All Things.
C.S. Lewis was absolutely right when he said, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” (He was an Anglican by the way.) And the chief objects of our love, besides God, are our fellow human beings, but our love as human beings is not exhausted there. Our capacity to love is inexhaustible, and this shown in the infinite number of things we love.
We can love so many things, the stray kitten we find in a pile of old tires, the crooked tree by our aunt’s house that we used to climb, the old schoolyard where we’d get lost in the fog. This is natural to us; children do it as easily as breathing. They learn to love things as naturally as they learn to speak and walk.
Now we don’t love these things just because of what they are in and of themselves. The old pile of tires becomes beloved as an extension of the love for the kitten; the crooked tree and the schoolyard mediate the experiences of childhood and become beloved because of them. Matter comes to mediate a hidden reality. It is no longer opaque but translucent, shot through meaning beyond what it is in itself.
What is true of children in our society is true of humanity in general. The Ancients saw a universe pregnant with spirit. There were mountains that could transport you to the realm of the Gods, springs and rivers redolent with sprites and gods. Matter was not some inert lifeless thing but shot through with Divinity, and while the world could be a frightening place, it was never a lonely one.
Then came Christianity, proclaiming that which had been previously been unknown: the Creator. It came banishing fear, giving order to the competing powers of nature, driving out chaos. The heavens and the earth were still shot through with Divine Life, but now it was not competing independent powers, but rather they all shone with the light of the one God.
But there is something wrong; our society does not see the world like this, at least outside of a few rare individuals. Matter is not thought of as mediating Divinity or even being capable of it. Modern man sees the heavens but they no longer declare the glory of the Lord, and the mountains and hills no longer sing, the trees no longer clap their hands. Creation has become dumb; or rather we have lost our capacity to hear.
“The world is what you see and nothing more” is the root philosophy of our secular age. Is it any wonder then that Modern humans look about them and see a world devoid of God? Whence comes this dichotomy?
Ultimately, one has to concede that it is the Swiss Reformers' rejection of the Sacramental principle that sundered God from Creation.
