Thursday, April 16, 2015

Small yet Vital

Two writers from very different times have touched me this week in leading me to reflect on my place in the vastness of Creation. Julian of Norwich, a late 14th-early 15th century mystic wrote:
      “And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.” Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love.
When I read this, I had the sense of myself in the midst of a galaxy in a Hubble telescope photograph. The colors swirled around me as we joined in a dance of loving praise to our Creator.
“There appears to be a law that when creatures have reached the level of consciousness, as humans have, they must become conscious of the creation; they must learn how they fit into it and what its needs are and what it requires of them, or else pay a terrible penalty: the spirit of the creation will go out of them, and they will become destructive; the very earth will depart from them and go where they cannot follow.” Wendell Berry, Traveling at Home.
Both Julian and Berry transform our relative smallness into a position of vital import. Through the love of God, we find our meaning, place, and purpose. When we ignore that, it is almost as if we tear a hole in the fabric of Creation. As small as we are, our lives are not without meaning. With the psalmist, we can stand amazed at how God has included us.

Psalm 8:3-4

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

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