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.

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.

A Moment of Autumn

“For God, His creature reflects an exteriorized aspect of Himself; for the artist, on the contrary, the work is a reflection of an inner reality of which he himself is only an outward aspect; God creates His own image, while man so to speak fashions his own essence, at least symbolically. On the principial plane, the inner manifests itself in the outer, but on the manifested plane, the outer fashions the inner, and a sufficient reason for all traditional art, no matter of what kind, is the fact that in a certain sense the work is greater than the artist himself, and brings back the latter, through the mystery of artistic creation, to the proximity of his own Divine Essence.” F. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane East and West, p. 30.

Breaking Beauty

I’m setting up for a photo on the back porch that will show fall harvest, holding the Diné pottery from Monument Valley that will highlight the display, when a squash rolls from the bench and I move to stop its fall. Although I feel no impact, the pot shatters—as if it had long been holding its breath, anxious to break apart. I can only cry out. It’s another reach into the great Why? that never answers more than to demand further movement into the Mystery.

     I’m reminded of the reading last night from Attar’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr  (Conference of the Birds), about the sigh that goes up as a human's special offering to God. Preparing for the journey, one traveller asks about taking along a gift for the Presence, and the guide advises the seeker to take “that which is not found there. . . the burning soul and agony of the heart. . . If out of a spasm of yearning a single sigh is fetched, it carries the smell of a burnt heart to that Court” (Avery, Speech of the Birds, lines 3163-3167). The Darbandi/Davis translation has “If one sigh rises from the inmost soul, that man is saved, and has attained our goal” (Conference of the Birds, p. 177).

     We are after all but vessels waiting to dissolve; and anxious to voice our separation from the Divine, a shudder waits trembling just aside every breath. S.H. Nasr includes in the section on African Religions:

“As for the Bambara, ‘The heart of the esoteric teaching consists of the mysteries surrounding the Word. All of the universe is generated by the primal (and still continuing) vibrations that make up the Word. . .’  When these vibrations double back on themselves in thought, consciousness is established. . . ‘Yo is the silent word that ‘speaks’ all that we know and can detect in the world.’ . . . Beyond the noise of the world lies that silence or Yo, which is also the harmony and order underlying all outer discord, while man himself is the image of Yo and contains this primordial harmony and order within himself.” (Religion and the Order of Nature, p. 36)

     Beauty, of the sacred direction, flows toward the Creator. Schuon says it’s expressed in the vibration of living.

“Beauty, whatever use man may make of it, fundamentally belongs to its Creator, who through it projects into the world of appearances something of His being. Thus, one must live the experience of beauty so as to draw from it a lasting, not ephemeral, element, hence realizing in oneself an opening towards the immutable Beauty, rather than plunging oneself into the current of things; it is a question of viewing the world, and living in it, in a manner that is sacred and not profane; or sacralizing and not profanating.” (F. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane East and West, p. 23)

The closing prayer from the Navajo Way Blessing Ceremony tells of Walking in Beauty. I see the dance of yellowed leaves falling, through a mirror, to the Source.

Living with Bewilderment

The congregation of woodland sunflowers determined to stand at our derelict picnic table, abandoned mostly due to the persistent love of gnats for that moisty space, slightly downhill from our higher-ground backporch refuge. 

a wider view 

Does good stewardship include abandonment?

& more toward the inner

I like looking, yet not sitting over-close, to the lichened slats; the admittance of decay intertwined with beauty emits musty whiffs of reassurance. Also, having never reveled in parties much larger than four, this worship of near silence more nearly bows. The whispers I want cross from the other world.

     In Chapter 4, “Ibn ‘Arabi’s Garden among the Flames: The Heart Receptive of Every Form,” Michael Sells moves into the Ringstone of Noah and especially considers “mystic perplexity or bewilderment (hayra).” He translates Ibn “Arabi into blank verse (pp. 101-2, Mystical Languages of Unsaying), in this passage beginning with the prayer “Lord, increase me in bewilderment in you” as a paired companion/contrast with the more comfortable “Lord, increase me in knowledge”:

     For the bewildered one has a round [dawr]

     and a circular motion around the qutb [the pole or axis of reality]

     which he never leaves

     But the master of the long path 

     tends away from what he aims for

     seeking what he is already in

     A master of fantasies which are his goal

     He has a ‘from’ and a ‘to’

     and what is between them

     But the master of the circular movement

     has no starting point

     that ‘from’ should take him over

     and no goal

     that he should be ruled by ‘to’

     He has the more complete existence

     And is given the totality of the words and wisdoms.

Sells brings this together in a note ending with “The highest understanding is the deepest awareness of mystery” (p. 257). A few lines later (p. 104), another passage focuses the way of the seeker:

     “… in every breath, in every time, in every condition

     he is the image of what that breath, time, or condition requires”

Of Butterflies and Polishing Mirrors

A butterfly, this one or one much like it, lit on the corner of the opened book resting on my knee, page 66. The butterfly crawled out of sight, down onto my knee, then back up onto the page, and soon enough flitted off. The butterfly: symbol of transformation, of psyche, beauty and the transitory life. A reminder, perhaps, to take this moment to open the wings of awareness. 

     Of course, we need not read anything into this visitation, but it might be worth looking again at the page. To wonder. I would anyway because sticky tabs were already marking passages in these opening pages of Chapter 3, “Ibn ‘Arabi’s Polished Mirror: Identity Shift and Meaning Event,” in Michael Sells’ Mystical Languages of Unsaying.

     The particular pink sticky tab near where the butterfly lit marked phrases concerned with “the issue of the divine image.” What might we make of the image involved in creation? Not considered on Sells' page but coming to my mind are relevant Biblical passages beginning with Genesis 1:26-27.    Passages also might include Eph 4:24 (“and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”), II Cor 4:4 (“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”), and many others. Since in this chapter Sells focuses on Ibn “Arabi, he works from the saying of Muhammad “Allah created Adam in his sura [image, form]” (p. 65).

      Sells develops the issue by pointing out that theologians ask: “How could a transcendent, unbound, absolutely unified deity have an image or form?” Did God create Adam “as a fully developed human, rather than having him develop through various embryonic and postembryonic stages of development” (p. 65)? Instead of focusing the meaning of “image” on either the deity or the human, on page 66, Sells pushes for something beyond:

“the issue of the divine image… is at the moment of mystical union, symbolized by the polished mirror … His/his image is constituted. The constitution of this image occurs within the heart of ‘the complete human’ (al-insan al-kamil).”

These passages invite me to wonder about ways I can participate with greater frequency and depth in the divine inheritance. How can I more fully realize the Presence? That’s why my desktop gets littered with books on mysticism, the holy, beauty, as well as teaching stories (e.g., Rumi’s “Mathnawi” & Attar) and poetry. It’s also the reason for my dedication to horsemanship and stewardship of these woods and gardens. 

     Of course, it’s easy to get distracted, distanced from the divine, by books and in words. Sells prefaces his close textual study in Chapter 3 with the reminder that “the absolute unity” is “beyond the dualistic structures of language and thought, beyond all relation” (p. 64). And yet our God-given languaging can participate in the mystical dance, flowing into it and with it. It’s a bit like the moments in riding when, after years of study and work, I finally find the awe of not-knowing, a kind of aporia, about whether it’s the horse or me that's transitioning. It is the time to breathe as long as possible in the “ahh.” Be watchful for the flow, for the time of the butterfly. Perhaps in some form this is always present and yet it's so easy to rush past without even noticing.