The heavens proclaim the glory of God
And the firmament shows forth the work of his hands.
Day unto day takes up the story
And night unto night makes known the message.
No speech, no word, no voice is heard
Yet their span goes forth through all the earth,
Their words to the utmost bounds of the world.
There he has placed a tent for the sun;
It comes forth like a bridegroom coming from his tent,
Rejoices like a champion to run its course. (Ps 18/19:1-6)
Love this. It’s essentially a commentary on, or perhaps ecstatic song about, Creation One. Notice in line three how creation is portrayed as a story. It’s the story of adorning glory. There’s a whole cosmological vision here which we’ve touched on in previous posts, (here, here & here), but it’s well worth exploring further, [Hebrew Cosmology].
As the above Psalm declares, the heavens themselves reveal God’s glory. In other words, creation is its own proclamation of prayer and praise. This is another implication of that super-goodness we explored. We all stand on holy ground under the mantle of a sacred sky. The whole creation is God’s Holy Temple, a place of majesty and worship.
The emphatic message is: joyful praise is everywhere unconfined, leaping hart like. There’s a thrilling transcendence to be discovered in creation, a polyphonic Gloria ringing out. God cannot be confined to musty old churches but is for ready and heady imbibing in the sacrament of the sun, (to borrow a Chesterton).
We’ve noted this isn’t about making Arguments from Design, still less is it a question of Pantheism. Being open to God’s presence within the whole of creation is prerequisite to any genuine encounter with Him. Weirdly, this includes the void. We don’t need to boldly go where Captain Kirk recently did to be overwhelmed by the seemingly endless dark of space. Yet our mysterious God inhabits all space even as we can barely survive on this tiny one called Earth. It’s a reminder of His incomprehensible transcendence. A spiritual goal of Creation Story One.
Thus, God makes all space sacred and so our sacred spaces are meant to serve as reminders of this universal sacredness. They are meant to be places of awe, where we might be lost for words as before the Milky Way, and not mausoleums for dreary and forgettable gods or ecclesiastical prisons of false holiness. Equally, we should treat all creation with the same reverence as our finest cathedrals.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.
(To Nature (extract), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834 AD)
For the beauty of each hour
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale, and tree and flower,
Sun and moon and stars of light:
CHRIST, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.
(Extract from Hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Folliott S Pierpoint (1835-1917)) [And lovely Rutter setting]
This is about much more than ‘nature appreciation’. Even though we may not hear the precise speech, word or voice of creation’s praise, still that story echoes unto the utmost bounds of the world. It is being told right now, its song filling the air. By consciously seeking it out and entering into its beauty each day, we can learn its sacred speech, feel a new flame kindling upon our tongues and within our pens, and so weave heavenward words, rising like incense in loving gratitude for God’s good earth.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.
(Extract from How To Be A Poet, by Wendell Berry)
May the baby Jesus be ever in your arms. Christmas Blessings, good people.
Header photo: Aidan Formigoni, Unsplash