Naming God - Nature
Recently I wrote, “No word by itself will ever be able to capture God because words limit. However, the gracious call upon us, is to seek and wonder and delight in Life, both in the present and the eternal. Words assist us when they help orient our awareness and then become an invitation to falling into that which is behind and underneath everything.” Now let us explore several words that hold the idea of God in particular ways and help us to “name” the Divine.
Christians, and spiritual seekers of all stripes, have always debated the question regarding how God is revealed to us humanoids. Protestants say God is revealed through Christ and the Scriptures. Roman Catholics say that God is revealed through Christ, the Scriptures, and the tradition and authority of the Church. And Celtic Christians, both past and present, tend to claim that God is revealed through the manifestation of God in our material world which is called Christ, the Scriptures, and through the whole of Creation which can loosely be referred to as “Nature”.
As I have mentioned previously, for me, it is helpful to capitalize words to indicate their ability to transcend common definition and somehow illustrate a “name” of God by inviting us to consider God’s presence and identity within the concept that the word represents. One such word is this lovely word “Nature”. However, the obvious problem in taking such a noun or subject as a “name” of God is fraught with problems. The biggest problem sounds like this: “If you are going to claim that Nature is a name of God, are you suggesting that Nature IS God?”
Of course not ... but a little bit, maybe. The “Being” of God, the Source of all things, and the essence of “Life” itself, cannot be contained in any one aspect of things. God cannot be defined as a thing. In the same way that a painter is not the painting that she or he creates. We would never look at a painting by Mary Cassatt and exclaim that IS Mary Cassatt. However, in American English and perhaps in other versions of English as well, we may claim something like “that’s a Cassat” or “that’s a Picasso” or “that’s a Lawrence”. When we name paintings as such, we mean more than that is a work of art produced by a particular person. We are seeming to imply that there is an “essence” in a painting that carries the unique skill, style, or message, or mystery of a particular person. We could use the same sense to say “that’s an impressionist painting” or that is “postmodern installation art”.
So … when I say Nature am I saying it is God. No. Am I saying that it is not God. No.
Nature, in all of its magnificent and billion-faceted manifestation, is an outpouring of Life itself. Each and every way that molecules are arranged to illustrate the strain toward order, life, expression, and interrelationship is an illustration of the particular skill, insight, passion, and meaningful message of the Creator. There is not one atom, molecule, cell, or body that does not reflect that glorious energy of Creative Force that strains toward Life and can not stop from perpetuating itself and displaying the grandeur and utter miracle of existence out of nothing. And in the case of us humanoids, a particular form of that created goodness, that Creative Force is manifest, not only in the miracle of our existence, but also in the call that is upon our heart toward beauty and love and the redemptive and restorative possibilities that are ever-present when we fail at that same task of beauty and love.
Nature is not God in itself. And yet, the interconnectedness between the Creator and the created or the Imaginer and the manifest, is quite clear. And the line between the two is not absolutely distinct. It’s a bit blurry isn’t it?
What a miraculous and gracious and astounding invitation is presented to the bits and pieces which are all of us. We are to expand the Creator’s Essence into every thing. Each thing, each person, all that is natural, all that is Nature is here to not only be a representation of the Artist, but to be a bit of how that Artist is manifest out into all of Creation. Nature is not God. And we humanoids are not God. But in the way that we might say “that is a Picasso”, perhaps we could look at a person, even ourselves, and say “that is a God”. And the same could be said for a tree, an ocean, a worm, a bacteria, and moon, a fingernail, a homeless person, a blade of grass, a manatee, or a volcano. Ponder that for a moment.
Kirk Webb
Director of the Celtic Center