I'm pretty sure this video -- "Orthodoxwave" -- is attempting to promote, not critique, Orthodoxy, but I think it does an excellent job of encapsulating the sense of "bombardment" I'm talking about in the essay:
Good morning, Graham. Your essay and the tidbits of comments I’ve skimmed are so nourishing. I can’t muster the patience to read through them all on a screen, and wish this community could sit in a field somewhere and explore all this.
Your reflections stirred up more than I can write here, so I’ll just share a little: For more than a decade our family tried to pray with no vessel but our own longing to be reintegrated with holy Creation. But with no collective vessel – just books, some like-minded friends and our own will – we found ourselves frustrated, wandering, often lost. I'm grateful for those years, but now we are walking into Orthodoxy, and I find the veneration of icons to be very healing, very nourishing, fostering a pattern of perception and relationship that lasts beyond the momentary prayers I make before them.
Like many people, I also think a new Way is emerging – that God is doing something new in the world – and for me praying in a temple and also praying outside is a practice in working the opposites while the new thing grows beyond anyone’s will or intentions or ideas. We're in a liminal state, and for me, praying in a church feels like praying in an egg, or praying in a womb.
Anyway, your essay was good fodder for family discussion, and my children have this to say…
My son (7): I mostly agree with him, but you should just tell him to take his icons outside.
My daughter (11): I know some people don’t understand the world is as holy as the church, but the church is also just as important as outside. They’re two different spaces for prayer, two different ways of praying. If church was outside, it would be beautiful but in a different way.
‘The living things of Earth, which come from God, can awaken new life within us—like a fresh breeze—in a way that artifacts of other peoples' religious imaginations can't.’
You are speaking a language my heart knows, Graham. Thank you.
I read through many of the responses to your essay, and I love the thoughtful debating as this audience works through a form of Socratic dialogue. I will not add to the argument of iconography. I was going to write “though I am not Orthodox” and share more, but caught myself at drawing a lined division. I am a follower of The Way and recognize the Orthodox as my brethren, whether they recognize me or not. I am a servant of the Most High and He has always blessed me in cathedrals of His Creation. I have always heard His voice clearer in the chatter of nature versus the chatter of man. Man is nature as well; I just prefer some nature to others.
And YET, I attend a church that now has cameras and ‘black mirror’ screens in every room. It saddens me to no end. Is nothing sacred? So unnatural! So oblivious to the signs of the time. But I push it aside (with difficulty) and meet my brethren regularly. I am learning to be quieter. I very, very much want to be someone who ‘continues about my business’ in the midst of every storm. Even the technological ones.
Just for fun:
The Lilies-of-the-Field photographed a century ago in Palestine, is Anemone coronaria. Both words come from the Greek. Anemone literally means “daughter of the wind” and coronaria means “crown”. Crowned daughter of the wind. Such holiness! As the scripture says, nothing manmade can even compare to such glory.
I am blessed by reading your journey, Graham, and I can appreciate the gumption it takes to open up sides of your mind that others may not want to see. Keep going about your business, as only you can.
You will be intrigued to know after time spent in prayer to the Father today I had a revelation of the fellowship of the Archangel Michael and Mother Mary who as friends both helped me deal with a sudden bout of temptation and the presence of the tempter and I had an experience of the difference between veneration and the worship which belongs alone to the persons of the Trinity. For me veneration means the respect and reverence due to someone above you, better, with more authority. Unlike Jesus, Mary doesn’t have the taste and feel of humanity combined with deity, but is supremely, beautifully perfectly human. Michael is angelic naturally and is pleased to serve, help, protect me Hebrews 1:14 and I now have new unseen friends to call upon and be with. Despite their being so far above me Mary and Michael in a peculiar way were my servants and brethren, at my side not above me. The greatest in the kingdom are servants of all as it says. Strangely wonderful. It is all a gift of grace to the imperfect not gradual attainment of spiritual worthiness. I will be exploring this. By the way no icons were needed. With a bit of quick thinking and use of my reasoning mind I was able to place the experience into my Biblical framework. Whew! Laughing at myself.
Interesting piece, Graham. I think this is becoming a running theme of ours: me being highly sympathetic to where you're coming from and loving your view of the Earth, but just not seeing the reality of the conflicts you see. And to be fair to you, I've met many who see the same conflicts but are just on the other side. But whether it's simply me wanting to have my cake and eat it too, or a failure of imagination on your part and the part of others, I won't bother to speculate. I just don't see the need for a fight.
The whole idea that images and temples weren't part of the early Christian experience I think is a misread of the situation; they just didn't use them in the same way as the pagans. There's plenty of archeological evidence for veneration of relics and use of iconography in the earliest centuries of Christianity, and we have 1st century synagogues that are COVERED in iconography. Many of these practices Christians simply continued from the local Jewish communities.
But even if there was a hesitation of the Christians at the time of Celcus around the use of icons, temples, and alters, that probably had more to do with the fact that Christians were a persecuted sect that had already been excluded from synagogue and Temple worship by the time the Romans sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and made the Jews a diasporic people. The reason why I say this is because RIGHT AFTER THE RESURRECTION, the Scriptures say the Apostles worshipped in the Temple nearly continuously. And once social and legal acceptance of the Faith became a reality, we went BACK to the temple.
I think the truth, as long as we are the church militant, is to analgously apply St. Paul's teaching of being content in plenty or in want. The Temple, by God's condescension to our weaknesses, has been consistently sought, but as Christians we have no need of it. The forest, the farm, the home, the catacombs, and the Temples are all places we meet God because we have the Holy Spirit.
I'm not saying that YOU, Graham, HAVE to be in the Temple or find it helpful. I just hope you keep in mind the distinction between not helpful and lesser or wrong.
That said, the Church militant has NEVER been perfect as it is full of people not yet fully perfected living on an Earth not yet fully transfigured. So, there IS valid criticism to be made. Where, in fact, the mainstream HAS focused so much on the Temple that the truth that God does not dwell in a building made by human hands is lost, and iconography becomes exclusionary to the nature from which it is made, then it can and must be said that the Church, understood as its members, is on the wrong path, precisely because it is failing to be itself.
And this leads to what I see as your most potent point: that of MASS PRODUCED icons. The actions of and logic behind mass production is simply antithetical to what the Church is called to be and to our mandate to be a royal priesthood and stewards, nay shepherds, of the Creation and all its creatures. Icons really out to be handmade at a scale that our forests can handle, and really ought to stay away from toxic, synthetic materials. I really think the Ethiopian church, with their forest temples, covered with iconography by the way, has it right.
Personally, I'm a sort of Blakean, such that I see a powerful nexus between the spiritual human imagination and the Holy Ghost.
But I'm also aware of the dangers of the imagination, like you saw in the essay on my blog: specter versus presence, muddled romantic vs. lucid romantic. So I think that I have mixed feelings about your thoughts here—because while I agree with you about not building an illusory realm of unreality for ourselves, I also believe that's an abuse of the imagination, not the only thing it can do or what it is made by God to do.
I've also thought in terms of idols vs. windows. Basically, an idol is a self-enclosed specter that cuts us off from God, whereas a window allows our minds to become more translucent to the Light from Above and perceive the shining-forth of that Light through the Creation. So, I would consider icons to be windows that help to enchant the Creation, not a virtual simulation (or idol) that cuts us off from the Creation.
Overall, I believe that artistic creativity has real spiritual value. I love trees about as much as you do—but if the tree was enough, then why do we have symphonies and novels? And for that matter, why do we have your quite poetic writings? It seems to me that we have a co-creative role to play with God in the realm of the spirit, even if that role primarily consists of purifying and elevating consciousness to a point where we can fully perceive what is already there.
Finally, I've also suggested somewhere that there will be no art in the Kingdom of Heaven, because there will be no need for windows when all the walls have tumbled down. But in the meanwhile, we have art and need it, and I tend to think of icons in those terms.
Years ago I was given a mug with Van Gogh's "Starry Night " printed on it. I used it, sure, but always felt unsettled; the marketing, the ubiquity, the aesthetic blindness. Well, over in the Orthodox "market place" one can find a mug with the Theotokos of Vladimir printed on it... to be filled with the drink of your choice.
Your quote from Ohiyesa Charles Eastman:
"He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous winds of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas—He needs no lesser cathedral!"
...or, you could just go online and buy a mug.
--------
The heart is deep. We stay in the "shallow end" - the deep is too mysterious.
In the 21st century we are programmed to be led away from our heart, though something mysterious, and natural, draws us. That which draws us (ever so gently) is wind, real wind that blows through trees. We may not recognize the wind that is calling our deep heart to the Messiah if our skin and face our skin and face have not felt a gentle breeze, or a strong, wet, gale at the edge of Mother Superior.
Forgive me Graham, and commenters here- the above relates to the image, though I don't have the words to say it (I'm a bit...simple).
You had me at that Black Elk prayer, of course. So much in that simple.
This place hasn't been the same with you gone, Bud.
There is a theory that the Adams Event 42,000 years ago, when the magnetic poles reversed, the increase of UV rays, electric storms and other wild events caused mass extinctions and made sanctuaries of places like caves. Many of the images made in those sanctuaries, in some sense from the sky, where human embellishing of forms already present that recalled bull or bear or horse. One gets more of a sense of a forming of company than of worship.
Both the coming in to sanctuary from out, and the people-ing of the sacred topography appeals to me. I don't know how that relates to icons but the mere fact that something might be "made" from a tree or a stone, even fashioned with a tool also attracts me and feels as capable of being sacred work as it is capable of being desecration.
Maybe its the direction of the company's gaze. Peers would be in a circle, deer, serpent, human, satry all circling from equidistant points the unnamable Ein Sof of our center, maybe? While worshipers line up before the image looking down, several types of hierarchy established at once.
Then again, there is that story of the serpent held up by Moses, surely an older Hebrew way that is buried under later whittling of the animal and weird of it. And there is Yeshua tied to that ancestral animal image aloft.
Vital truth in that sense though of gathering before an iconic company of countenances that do not wish to be Here. The conflation of the World with the Earth may be the great poison of Christianity. That and the aberration of Eternal Seperation/Torture Chamber. Remove those two knives from the body of the Way and so much of the mischief of Christedom can come clean.
Of course I am remembering here your taste for Angkor Wat and suspect you of leaving more room or great feats of sanctuary making and company forming in the end.
Yesterday for the first time ever I stood at ground zero of a new beaver pond-to-be. They are taking large trees down along the creek, in a lowland. two days begun, a grand beaver sanctuary raised in the middle and the water level just beginning to rise. It was as total in its adjustment of the earth as any clearcut but somehow it was magical. The valence was different. I will take photos when the snow stops. SOmething in there 'making' , there un-treeing yet still wilding is related here.
“Nurturers of the real” yesterday I told God I’ve had it, I can only know what’s really there in front of me and with me, it can’t be just ideas held in my head, I just sat there with reality in front of me and with me in my apartment and the living God was there - the past 24 hours or so - “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counselor (Comforter, Helper, pick the translation you like) to be with you forever — the Spirit of Truth. The world can not accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and is in you” John 14:16-17 “the Spirit of life” standing ready to be stirred up in you as a gift given to sinners in the name of Jesus for “power, love, and self control” The appropriate response is to dance.
"Just quietly walk away". Amen. I am doing that rather regularly. It seems like a pretty good response to so many situations. Anyway, great to have you back. Sounds like a lot has transpired since we last heard from you... Thank you for the photo of the lilies in Palestine! I won't comment on the other photos, except for you in yourself in the forest: beautiful. I am definitely going to recommend to anxious people to HUG A TREE (maybe I won't shout;-))
Hey Graham, it's SO good to read your words as gift again. I hope you'll excuse my crude comparison, but I've just gotta say that your words are like a sacred alarm clock! You wake me up, brother. Thank you
Graham, this morning I walk in a huge, glorious, equinox wind under trees, blue skies, light rain, and rainbows. This evening I listen to your wonderful essay and the birds. And it's all the breathing earth, it's all the temple. It's so good that you are writing to us again.
My response to the rest of your thoughtful essay. The treasure we have in our earthen vessel is the visceral presence of the Holy Spirit. I say visceral for Jesus said the Spirit would flow from the koilia a Greek word in the NT translated 11 times as belly or your gut and 12 times as womb. “Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit” This treasure is to be alive and flowing tangibly in the believer as pure gift (not earned as a fruit of spiritual discipline over time) but alas as Jesus said to the disciples on the way to Emmaus “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have written” This “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” Romans 8:2 is not conditioned on sacred man made spaces or immersion in nature but may be had in any space or place in fullness. There is a new way and ministry of the Spirit the church in unbelief hasn’t fully walked in similar to Israel in the Old Testament failing to follow consistently the Old Covenant Romans 7:6, 2 Corinthians 3:5-8, Galatians 3:2-5, Ezekiel 36:27, John 6:63, May we get to that place of thirst where a continual ongoing gift to us is our only hope and way. John 7:37-39.
My observation about large old trees also. They are a fount of giving. I walk in a patch of valley oak woodland. The oaks that have attained a certain size have a sweet gravitas. I thank and touch them at times. What you called Christian normalcy is a Christianity that was poisoned by the stark dead materialism that crept into the European mind beginning in the 1600’s. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien who through education in culture prior to that time honored the living being of trees. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis has could be termed Christian animism running through it. The understanding of the aliveness of the parts and whole of the created order was present in the renaissance and medieval Christian worldview. Can’t locate my killer quote by Rupert Sheldrake concerning this. Now to read on past the paywall break. Had to comment immediately.
I'm pretty sure this video -- "Orthodoxwave" -- is attempting to promote, not critique, Orthodoxy, but I think it does an excellent job of encapsulating the sense of "bombardment" I'm talking about in the essay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWoCkA1E3W8
Good morning, Graham. Your essay and the tidbits of comments I’ve skimmed are so nourishing. I can’t muster the patience to read through them all on a screen, and wish this community could sit in a field somewhere and explore all this.
Your reflections stirred up more than I can write here, so I’ll just share a little: For more than a decade our family tried to pray with no vessel but our own longing to be reintegrated with holy Creation. But with no collective vessel – just books, some like-minded friends and our own will – we found ourselves frustrated, wandering, often lost. I'm grateful for those years, but now we are walking into Orthodoxy, and I find the veneration of icons to be very healing, very nourishing, fostering a pattern of perception and relationship that lasts beyond the momentary prayers I make before them.
Like many people, I also think a new Way is emerging – that God is doing something new in the world – and for me praying in a temple and also praying outside is a practice in working the opposites while the new thing grows beyond anyone’s will or intentions or ideas. We're in a liminal state, and for me, praying in a church feels like praying in an egg, or praying in a womb.
Anyway, your essay was good fodder for family discussion, and my children have this to say…
My son (7): I mostly agree with him, but you should just tell him to take his icons outside.
My daughter (11): I know some people don’t understand the world is as holy as the church, but the church is also just as important as outside. They’re two different spaces for prayer, two different ways of praying. If church was outside, it would be beautiful but in a different way.
Peace,
Joseph
‘The living things of Earth, which come from God, can awaken new life within us—like a fresh breeze—in a way that artifacts of other peoples' religious imaginations can't.’
You are speaking a language my heart knows, Graham. Thank you.
I read through many of the responses to your essay, and I love the thoughtful debating as this audience works through a form of Socratic dialogue. I will not add to the argument of iconography. I was going to write “though I am not Orthodox” and share more, but caught myself at drawing a lined division. I am a follower of The Way and recognize the Orthodox as my brethren, whether they recognize me or not. I am a servant of the Most High and He has always blessed me in cathedrals of His Creation. I have always heard His voice clearer in the chatter of nature versus the chatter of man. Man is nature as well; I just prefer some nature to others.
And YET, I attend a church that now has cameras and ‘black mirror’ screens in every room. It saddens me to no end. Is nothing sacred? So unnatural! So oblivious to the signs of the time. But I push it aside (with difficulty) and meet my brethren regularly. I am learning to be quieter. I very, very much want to be someone who ‘continues about my business’ in the midst of every storm. Even the technological ones.
Just for fun:
The Lilies-of-the-Field photographed a century ago in Palestine, is Anemone coronaria. Both words come from the Greek. Anemone literally means “daughter of the wind” and coronaria means “crown”. Crowned daughter of the wind. Such holiness! As the scripture says, nothing manmade can even compare to such glory.
I am blessed by reading your journey, Graham, and I can appreciate the gumption it takes to open up sides of your mind that others may not want to see. Keep going about your business, as only you can.
You will be intrigued to know after time spent in prayer to the Father today I had a revelation of the fellowship of the Archangel Michael and Mother Mary who as friends both helped me deal with a sudden bout of temptation and the presence of the tempter and I had an experience of the difference between veneration and the worship which belongs alone to the persons of the Trinity. For me veneration means the respect and reverence due to someone above you, better, with more authority. Unlike Jesus, Mary doesn’t have the taste and feel of humanity combined with deity, but is supremely, beautifully perfectly human. Michael is angelic naturally and is pleased to serve, help, protect me Hebrews 1:14 and I now have new unseen friends to call upon and be with. Despite their being so far above me Mary and Michael in a peculiar way were my servants and brethren, at my side not above me. The greatest in the kingdom are servants of all as it says. Strangely wonderful. It is all a gift of grace to the imperfect not gradual attainment of spiritual worthiness. I will be exploring this. By the way no icons were needed. With a bit of quick thinking and use of my reasoning mind I was able to place the experience into my Biblical framework. Whew! Laughing at myself.
Interesting piece, Graham. I think this is becoming a running theme of ours: me being highly sympathetic to where you're coming from and loving your view of the Earth, but just not seeing the reality of the conflicts you see. And to be fair to you, I've met many who see the same conflicts but are just on the other side. But whether it's simply me wanting to have my cake and eat it too, or a failure of imagination on your part and the part of others, I won't bother to speculate. I just don't see the need for a fight.
The whole idea that images and temples weren't part of the early Christian experience I think is a misread of the situation; they just didn't use them in the same way as the pagans. There's plenty of archeological evidence for veneration of relics and use of iconography in the earliest centuries of Christianity, and we have 1st century synagogues that are COVERED in iconography. Many of these practices Christians simply continued from the local Jewish communities.
But even if there was a hesitation of the Christians at the time of Celcus around the use of icons, temples, and alters, that probably had more to do with the fact that Christians were a persecuted sect that had already been excluded from synagogue and Temple worship by the time the Romans sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and made the Jews a diasporic people. The reason why I say this is because RIGHT AFTER THE RESURRECTION, the Scriptures say the Apostles worshipped in the Temple nearly continuously. And once social and legal acceptance of the Faith became a reality, we went BACK to the temple.
I think the truth, as long as we are the church militant, is to analgously apply St. Paul's teaching of being content in plenty or in want. The Temple, by God's condescension to our weaknesses, has been consistently sought, but as Christians we have no need of it. The forest, the farm, the home, the catacombs, and the Temples are all places we meet God because we have the Holy Spirit.
I'm not saying that YOU, Graham, HAVE to be in the Temple or find it helpful. I just hope you keep in mind the distinction between not helpful and lesser or wrong.
That said, the Church militant has NEVER been perfect as it is full of people not yet fully perfected living on an Earth not yet fully transfigured. So, there IS valid criticism to be made. Where, in fact, the mainstream HAS focused so much on the Temple that the truth that God does not dwell in a building made by human hands is lost, and iconography becomes exclusionary to the nature from which it is made, then it can and must be said that the Church, understood as its members, is on the wrong path, precisely because it is failing to be itself.
And this leads to what I see as your most potent point: that of MASS PRODUCED icons. The actions of and logic behind mass production is simply antithetical to what the Church is called to be and to our mandate to be a royal priesthood and stewards, nay shepherds, of the Creation and all its creatures. Icons really out to be handmade at a scale that our forests can handle, and really ought to stay away from toxic, synthetic materials. I really think the Ethiopian church, with their forest temples, covered with iconography by the way, has it right.
Personally, I'm a sort of Blakean, such that I see a powerful nexus between the spiritual human imagination and the Holy Ghost.
But I'm also aware of the dangers of the imagination, like you saw in the essay on my blog: specter versus presence, muddled romantic vs. lucid romantic. So I think that I have mixed feelings about your thoughts here—because while I agree with you about not building an illusory realm of unreality for ourselves, I also believe that's an abuse of the imagination, not the only thing it can do or what it is made by God to do.
I've also thought in terms of idols vs. windows. Basically, an idol is a self-enclosed specter that cuts us off from God, whereas a window allows our minds to become more translucent to the Light from Above and perceive the shining-forth of that Light through the Creation. So, I would consider icons to be windows that help to enchant the Creation, not a virtual simulation (or idol) that cuts us off from the Creation.
Overall, I believe that artistic creativity has real spiritual value. I love trees about as much as you do—but if the tree was enough, then why do we have symphonies and novels? And for that matter, why do we have your quite poetic writings? It seems to me that we have a co-creative role to play with God in the realm of the spirit, even if that role primarily consists of purifying and elevating consciousness to a point where we can fully perceive what is already there.
Finally, I've also suggested somewhere that there will be no art in the Kingdom of Heaven, because there will be no need for windows when all the walls have tumbled down. But in the meanwhile, we have art and need it, and I tend to think of icons in those terms.
Years ago I was given a mug with Van Gogh's "Starry Night " printed on it. I used it, sure, but always felt unsettled; the marketing, the ubiquity, the aesthetic blindness. Well, over in the Orthodox "market place" one can find a mug with the Theotokos of Vladimir printed on it... to be filled with the drink of your choice.
Your quote from Ohiyesa Charles Eastman:
"He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous winds of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas—He needs no lesser cathedral!"
...or, you could just go online and buy a mug.
--------
The heart is deep. We stay in the "shallow end" - the deep is too mysterious.
In the 21st century we are programmed to be led away from our heart, though something mysterious, and natural, draws us. That which draws us (ever so gently) is wind, real wind that blows through trees. We may not recognize the wind that is calling our deep heart to the Messiah if our skin and face our skin and face have not felt a gentle breeze, or a strong, wet, gale at the edge of Mother Superior.
Forgive me Graham, and commenters here- the above relates to the image, though I don't have the words to say it (I'm a bit...simple).
I miss you Graham,
bk
Graham,
My copy of Sunlilies arrived yesterday from Cista Mystica, and I sat up reading it last night. Lovely piece of work.
You had me at that Black Elk prayer, of course. So much in that simple.
This place hasn't been the same with you gone, Bud.
There is a theory that the Adams Event 42,000 years ago, when the magnetic poles reversed, the increase of UV rays, electric storms and other wild events caused mass extinctions and made sanctuaries of places like caves. Many of the images made in those sanctuaries, in some sense from the sky, where human embellishing of forms already present that recalled bull or bear or horse. One gets more of a sense of a forming of company than of worship.
Both the coming in to sanctuary from out, and the people-ing of the sacred topography appeals to me. I don't know how that relates to icons but the mere fact that something might be "made" from a tree or a stone, even fashioned with a tool also attracts me and feels as capable of being sacred work as it is capable of being desecration.
Maybe its the direction of the company's gaze. Peers would be in a circle, deer, serpent, human, satry all circling from equidistant points the unnamable Ein Sof of our center, maybe? While worshipers line up before the image looking down, several types of hierarchy established at once.
Then again, there is that story of the serpent held up by Moses, surely an older Hebrew way that is buried under later whittling of the animal and weird of it. And there is Yeshua tied to that ancestral animal image aloft.
Vital truth in that sense though of gathering before an iconic company of countenances that do not wish to be Here. The conflation of the World with the Earth may be the great poison of Christianity. That and the aberration of Eternal Seperation/Torture Chamber. Remove those two knives from the body of the Way and so much of the mischief of Christedom can come clean.
Of course I am remembering here your taste for Angkor Wat and suspect you of leaving more room or great feats of sanctuary making and company forming in the end.
Yesterday for the first time ever I stood at ground zero of a new beaver pond-to-be. They are taking large trees down along the creek, in a lowland. two days begun, a grand beaver sanctuary raised in the middle and the water level just beginning to rise. It was as total in its adjustment of the earth as any clearcut but somehow it was magical. The valence was different. I will take photos when the snow stops. SOmething in there 'making' , there un-treeing yet still wilding is related here.
Hi Graham, lots of thoughts come to mind thanks for the conversation.
“Nurturers of the real” yesterday I told God I’ve had it, I can only know what’s really there in front of me and with me, it can’t be just ideas held in my head, I just sat there with reality in front of me and with me in my apartment and the living God was there - the past 24 hours or so - “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counselor (Comforter, Helper, pick the translation you like) to be with you forever — the Spirit of Truth. The world can not accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and is in you” John 14:16-17 “the Spirit of life” standing ready to be stirred up in you as a gift given to sinners in the name of Jesus for “power, love, and self control” The appropriate response is to dance.
"Just quietly walk away". Amen. I am doing that rather regularly. It seems like a pretty good response to so many situations. Anyway, great to have you back. Sounds like a lot has transpired since we last heard from you... Thank you for the photo of the lilies in Palestine! I won't comment on the other photos, except for you in yourself in the forest: beautiful. I am definitely going to recommend to anxious people to HUG A TREE (maybe I won't shout;-))
Hey Graham, it's SO good to read your words as gift again. I hope you'll excuse my crude comparison, but I've just gotta say that your words are like a sacred alarm clock! You wake me up, brother. Thank you
Graham, this morning I walk in a huge, glorious, equinox wind under trees, blue skies, light rain, and rainbows. This evening I listen to your wonderful essay and the birds. And it's all the breathing earth, it's all the temple. It's so good that you are writing to us again.
My response to the rest of your thoughtful essay. The treasure we have in our earthen vessel is the visceral presence of the Holy Spirit. I say visceral for Jesus said the Spirit would flow from the koilia a Greek word in the NT translated 11 times as belly or your gut and 12 times as womb. “Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit” This treasure is to be alive and flowing tangibly in the believer as pure gift (not earned as a fruit of spiritual discipline over time) but alas as Jesus said to the disciples on the way to Emmaus “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have written” This “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” Romans 8:2 is not conditioned on sacred man made spaces or immersion in nature but may be had in any space or place in fullness. There is a new way and ministry of the Spirit the church in unbelief hasn’t fully walked in similar to Israel in the Old Testament failing to follow consistently the Old Covenant Romans 7:6, 2 Corinthians 3:5-8, Galatians 3:2-5, Ezekiel 36:27, John 6:63, May we get to that place of thirst where a continual ongoing gift to us is our only hope and way. John 7:37-39.
My observation about large old trees also. They are a fount of giving. I walk in a patch of valley oak woodland. The oaks that have attained a certain size have a sweet gravitas. I thank and touch them at times. What you called Christian normalcy is a Christianity that was poisoned by the stark dead materialism that crept into the European mind beginning in the 1600’s. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien who through education in culture prior to that time honored the living being of trees. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis has could be termed Christian animism running through it. The understanding of the aliveness of the parts and whole of the created order was present in the renaissance and medieval Christian worldview. Can’t locate my killer quote by Rupert Sheldrake concerning this. Now to read on past the paywall break. Had to comment immediately.