The Sanctuary of Nature

Autumn flowers, September 23, 2018

Recently I’ve been drawn to reading books on beauty and on art, especially as connected with spirituality, e.g., Frithjof Schuon’s Art from the Sacred to the Profane East and West. The book collects excerpts from a dozen of Schuon’s works, and it has been lavishly illustrated with cross-cultural images from visual art, sculpture, dance, apparel, and architecture. Art from the Sacred has been particularly helpful to me because it articulates key reasons why I do what I do, especially involving the extensive time spent in tending gardens and woods as well as the devotion given to photography that focuses on these grounds. Schuon says it’s “the role of virgin nature” to remind us of where our center lies. As quoted in my previous blog, he says that “the mystery of artistic creation” brings a person back “to the proximity of his own Divine Essence” (p. 30). 

     From the days we first began living in our West Virginia home with its four acres of woodlands & gardens, when walking in the woods we were drawn to (if not driven to) removing invasive vines and bushes that were crowding out the native oaks and maples. It was as if some instinct of stewardship pushed for closer movement toward that essential nature—both ours and the woodlands. Schuon helps explain this drive with the assertion that, like artistic creation, virgin nature also offers communion with our “own Divine Essence.” 

     Schuon further specifies an important quality of nature: “but in fact its language is only grasped where it assumes traditionally the function of a sanctuary” (p. 132). A sanctuary! That’s why this labor of love in tending the woods and the gardens feels so compelling, why the work feels sacred, and why the time spend with it feeds the soul. 

     Although Schuon does not give special attention to photography as a visual art, I believe it fits within his treatment of sacred art. He says, “the two perspectives—sacred art and virgin nature—are not mutually exclusive, as is shown notably by Zen Buddhism; this proves that neither can altogether replace the other.” For me, tending the woods has this sacred reciprocal dynamic with making artistic representations involving nature using the camera. As often happens, I already knew that on some level, and yet having it elaborated and articulated so well by Schuon gives delicious confirmation and reassurance.