“Every nature tells of God”-Hugh and Holy Reading #1
“You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.”
John 15:3-4
“By contemplating what God has made we realize what we ourselves ought to do. Every nature tells of God, every nature teaches humankind…”
Hugh of St Victor, Book 6, Ch 5, Didascalicon
I wonder how you listen for the voice of God in the things you encounter of the earth?
A couple housekeeping notes: Today I’ve begun posting these accounts of my workshop ponderings on friday. Please write or call with your responses to the posts! Along with these efforts in a more monastic style of theology, I’ll also post some links to make it easier for those who are able to give alms. This month, it will be some go-to organizations in W. WA and NWPenna. I also invite and encourage you to discern and connect with a local church congregation, and offer your financial support to it.
Dryad’s Saddle, May
+++
Anyway, I wonder how you listen, read in a full-bodied and whole sense, for God’s word?
You may be blessed with a garden to tend and enjoy, or a hillside of knotweed or blackberries to give thanks for and reclaim. You might live on or near farm or forest or wildland. You might have some urban green space nearby, or lots where wildlife finds a home. Or a plant on your apartment window sill. Or a lake or creek or canal within walking or biking distance, a place where you can go to fish, sit, stare into the water, receive consolation, just be.
I’m grateful for the home we rent, and the garden beds here for me to use. During the week, I tend to look at them more with an eye to what I need to do-dig, weed, plant, water, tend, stake, tellis, harvest, pick worms, and more. But on Sunday especially I try to just spend an hour looking, walking around, reading the garden. If something grabs hold of my ‘must do this’ energy and anxiety, I mostly let these go. It will remain, I can come back as a task later. What is the weed, the dew on the quackgrass, the vibrant growth, the spotty germination, saying to me, asking of me? What of God does it say? How is God seaking this day in the things of this little patch of earth? It’s part of what reading holy scripture also does so importantly to help the heart resonate in tune. This unhurried time lets the mind expand to hold more of the fullness of life present. And I may see more than I think I see, for later in the week I notice and respond with readiness and wisdom beyond my own to the tasks that present themselves.
Whether garden, channelized urban creek, forest, or window-sill aloe, you can look, listen, and read the world of nature for God. These are acts of devotion, of intent listening, of readying the heart to receive and follow. Everyday we engage in an act of reading with the world, the worlds we inhabit. By faith this reading becomes part of the instruction offered to us as we try to walk in a better way. We read to listen for we receive a word that expands our heart, guides our steps, renews our whole mind. “Your word is a lantern to my feet/and a light upon my path.”
Hugh of St Victor was a big reader, not only of books and other texts, but of people, his students and brother monks, the world and the ‘higher’ things these spoke of. As I described in my explorations of his account of the mechanical arts, Hugh looked upon manual laboring, skills, sciences, and arts for the light of wisdom that operated within them.
The word and wisdom to be sought in the liberal and mechanical arts is the word and wisdom we seek, and find given freely by God in Jesus Christ. You might think of prayer, or attending worship, receiving the sacarements, and the attentive reading of the sacred scriptures as more central or typical of the way and the places such word and wisdom is found and sought. Certainly this is true, and for Hugh as well
Hugh devotes three of six books in his treatise on reading and teaching to what and how to read the holy scriptures. This is so important for him that he wants to teach us what to read, in what order and how to go about reading, in such a way that it leads us to learning and life. I’ll explore scripture through the perspectives of Hugh’s disdascalicon in upcoming posts, and simply notice just how earthed his approach to reading and prayer is.
But I want to observe what you may have already gathered from the quote above. For Hugh, all of the created world speaks of God to human kind. The hardness of some metals, the softness of others. the rigidity and lightness of bird feathers. The order and rhythm of the heavens. The fire of the sun and the green plant receiving that light. The natural properties of stone and wood themselves, and which make them suitable for building in human hands. These things speak of more than just this world, and invite us to shape our lives and lift our hearts in accordance wth heaven and earth and the God who brought it all into being.
My hope is that by reading Hugh’s careful thoughts, you and I might receive some wisdom from another time, another place, for life here and now. We might draw upon the communion of saints, and some under-appreciated resources of the tributaries on the Christian watershed as we seek to live a faithful disciples on earth, tending and attending with inner fire, knowing better what we must do.
Historic Peace Church, Camp Hill, PA
“Oh God, were all who listen here to your word awakened to conduct themselves aright…”