The Transforming Sanctuary of Nature

Probably for my entire life I’ve known, at varying degrees of awareness, perhaps in a deep level  more than any other knowing, the importance of getting into nature. I remember from early years when we lived on the farm outside Anson, Texas, how often I’d feel the need for walking into the unplowed acres, among the prickly-pear cactus and scrubby mesquite trees. not knowing why except that my being needed it. Interestingly, we called that area “the pasture” quite unaware of the potential link to “pastoral,” connecting to nature’s role of “giving spiritual guidance.” 

         Those walks evolved into hiking and then through midlife into jogging on woodland trails. The crucial purpose for these practices remained fuzzy, but I still learned to sense when my being cried out for the clearing, the cleansing available from the earth. These semi-conscious engagements with nature sustained me during the time from leaving the family farm for college in 1965 for forty years until the move from D.C. suburbs to our West Virginia 4.5 acre sanctuary. By 2005, my being was pretty desperate for the solace of nature, and my consciousness had awakened enough to push for significant and difficult commitments to the natural world. 

         Our new homeland already featured several organic gardens, but it also presented woodlands that were infested with thickets of invasive plants choking out the native oaks and maples. As we stewarded these grounds, nature more than equivocated by tending our souls. Then with the resources introduced by digital photography and computer editing of images, the nature/spirit dialogue opened further into frontiers of wonder. Now, with an expanse of time and energy made available through retirement, this relationship stands at the brink of an awesome landscape, or perhaps it’s better to call the opening a soul-space.

         A recent night, reading in Alan Williams translation of Rumi’s Mathnawi, Book 1, these lines leapt out: “The sciences of sensual men’s the muzzle/ preventing them from milk of higher knowledge” (line 1020). Even within the context, the meaning of these words remained terse, almost as if Rumi offered an intact puzzle, inviting each person’s mind to wander for personal meaning. The next morning, I checked Nicholson’s translation:

The sciences of the followers of (external) sense became a muzzle, so that he (the believer in sense-perception) might not receive milk from that sublime knowledge. علمهای اهل حس شد پوز بند ** تا نگیرد شیر ز آن علم بلند  (line 1016) 

In the third version of the Mathnawi that I have readily available, Mojaddedi translates: “Physical senses are like muzzles too/ That keep the milk of mystic truth from you.”

         Nicholson’s commentary on these lines (pp. 82-83, Commentary, Book I) admits “these verses are difficult,” and it offers “the whole drift of the passage exalts mystic knowledge (Adam) as opposed to intellectual knowledge (Iblis).” His elaboration in the commentary focuses on attaining knowledge of God (p. 83) and adds “the physical heart has an immaterial soul (jani rubani), which, when purified and illumined by love, develops another heart, viz. the spiritual organ that perceives the Unseen.”

         Almost certainly, the particular lines from Rumi struck me because of the reading I’d been doing in Nasr’s Religion and the Order of Nature. As mentioned in the previous blog,

Nasr’s text widens the window of nature as it informs the way humans have been cut off from feeling God’s presence in nature. Although I have long sensed my need to commune in the natural world, I’d been veiled from opening my heart to the treasure. Imagine the revelation made increasingly possible when we enter the holy place trusting that it’s “a living creature with soul and intellect.” Nasr’s elaboration on cosmos includes this:

“the Greek term for the world of nature in its vastest sense…meant not only order but also beauty, harmony, and intelligibility. It was never a bland word like ‘world’ in English whose original meaning as the ‘great man’ corresponding to Purusa or al-insan al-kamil has been totally lost. For the Greeks to call the universe cosmos meant that the universe was a perfect exemplar of order, both beautiful and intelligible, or according to Plato the highest sensible being, ‘in very truth a living creature with soul and intellect.’ [Timaeus] That is why this order was to be imitated by human beings, and the order of nature remained inseparable from the moral order as asserted already by Hesiod…” (S.H. Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature, p. 51).

         The photo at the top comes from our recent trip to Australia where the holy voice speaking from the natural world can hardly be avoided. A few lines later in the section from Rumi’s Mathnawi, we are advised “Be still so that your senses are transformed” (Williams’ translation, p. 101, line 1043). I’m pulling this line out of context just to affirm that our engagement with nature can be transformed, and I believe it can develop along the lines noted by Nicholson so that our hearts perceive more of the Unseen. In short, my experience of nature has been affirmed so that I’m more confident of attending for the Presence and resonate more deeply with the divine qualities, particularly Serenity, Beauty, Vitality, Majesty . . .

The World Turning Gold

About four in the afternoon on October 25, 2018, when I look through the window over my desktop, the world is turning gold. The alchemy of autumn.

unedited photo in "landscape"

The image shown above does not, of course, show exactly what I beheld, but neither does the one represented in the unedited “landscape” setting on the camera.

         A representation that is closer to the vision revealed might be forced in a slightly edited version of this second image—but I’m not showing that because a few moments later, sunlight drizzled the woodland forcing a third or fourth viewpoint to be considered.

unedited image taken in “aperture priority”

         If we’re looking for the Truth through our encounters with nature, our journey might lead into works such as S.H. Nasr’s Religion and the Order of Nature. Progressing slowly in order to absorb the rich material, I’m now about halfway into the book. Nasr details and interprets the modern framing of our world as it

“moved away from the almost universally held view of the sacredness of nature to one that sees man as alienated from nature and nature itself as no longer the progenitor of life (the very root of nature being from the Latin nascitura, meaning to give birth), but rather as a lifeless mass, a machine to be dominated and manipulated by a purely earthly man. It also divorced, in a manner not to be seen in any other civilization, the laws of nature from moral laws and human ethics from the workings of the cosmos” (p. 4).

Nasr’s opening paragraph asserts quite explicitly his concern for human destruction of the environment: 

“The world of nature is being desecrated and destroyed in an unprecedented manner globally by both those who have secularized the world about them and developed a science and technology capable of destroying nature on an unimaginable scale and by those who still live within a religious universe… (p. 3).

         In the 4.5 acres that my wife and I tend, we’re able to participate in eco-friendly stewardship, and through this our lives continue to be blessed both physically and spiritually. But a related and somewhat different focus seems to take a higher priority for me. My intended direction, especially in this late stage of life, focuses on capital T Truth which I find turned a different way from the one quite well known from the academic career.  Now retired, I seek devotion to Truth, and this requires a kind of knowing that differs from the truth needed to publish in academic journals, including those of the “arts and humanities” as well as those of “mathematical and scientific disciplines.” Academic truth has its role and importance. I don’t intend disrespect for that work; it’s just that I find it necessary to demand, for myself at least, a distinctly different take on truth.

         For one thing, this different track requires a tolerance for imprecision. Language for this Truth always falls frustratingly short, often calls for teasing paradoxes, and even lapses into significant silences. Yet words have been put to the pathway that sound right enough, although they must be handled with considerable care. A few titles gleaned from my bookshelves illustrate: Knowledge of God, The Book of the Lover and the Beloved, and The Secret of the Love of God. 

         As suggested by these titles, movement along this pathway finds guidance from dynamic interactions, especially among Truth, Beauty, and Love. Each person engages these qualities in accordance with his or her God-given nature. My personal walking gets animated by looking into nature and playing with representations in an artistic and alchemical way, with consideration for realism but also letting the magical possibilities come through. To do this, I believe I must see and engage nature more in line with Nasr's radical direction away from the modern view. This, perhaps, opens more of the “imaginal” world (using Ibn Arabi and Henry Corbin’s terms) and allows for a closer walking with the beloved. I’m looking forward to the delight of wondering with photos taken during our week in Australia because the rain forest captivated me with my full consent toward an imaginal world. For this moment, a glimpse might come through a playful look in today’s window.