This is
pretty subtle thinking, I admit. But the most famous Franciscan scholar, John
Duns Scotus, has been given the title “Subtle Doctor.” So I’m in good company,
even though my subtlety is infantile compared to his.
Wherever
there is a pattern, there is a story.
Archeologists
find a hard object, obviously stone. But is it just an ordinary rock, or is it
a tool that someone deliberately fashioned out of rock, centuries ago? How can
you tell? There has to be some kind of pattern, some kind of design to the way
the rock was chipped or cracked.
I taught a
course in archeology years ago—I admit, I’m no archeologist, but in those days
we were asked to teach courses even if we had to stretch our graduate education
to cover materials in courses we never dreamed of. I bought a display kit of
typical archeological discoveries. The kit contained, for example, plastic
replicates of what we used to call “arrowheads,” but which the specialists
called “projectile points.” What they called a “hand axe” looked pretty much
like an ordinary rock pointed on one end
.
But the hand
axe had features which a scholar argued could not have come from mere chance.
There was evidence that someone had shaped the rock to give it that particular
pointed characteristic. There was a story behind that piece of stone. Some
human being held that stone and worked it until it was able to be used to chop
something. That’s a story. There’s a story there even if no one has ever told
it or ever will tell it.
Wherever
there is a pattern, there is a story.
The whole
physical universe is a packet of stories because it is a packet of patterns.
Patterns all the way from mega-galaxies down to atomic particles. We could say
that God is the Great Story-teller.
In
the beginning was the Word, . . .
All things came to be through him,
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
I don’t want
to be over-dramatic here. But I guess I am subtle. If it is true that all
things came to be through the Word, then all things are story.
There is a
Franciscan tradition that the mineral world gave birth to the plant world, and
the plant world gave birth to the animal world, and the animal world gave birth
to the human world, and the climax of the human world is Jesus Christ. The
universe grew out of person of Jesus Christ. All things came to be through him.
God started with the human body of Jesus Christ and everything in the universe
followed from there. And if you want to play with the Letter to the Colossians,
you can say that everything in the universe will return there, to the person of
Jesus Christ.
For in him were created all
things in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible, . . .
all things were created through him
and for him.
He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
I haven’t read Teilhard de Chardin (they told us his ideas
were suspect), but I think he had the idea that history was leading up to the
point where Jesus Christ would “reconcile all things in himself.”
The Spirit
So if everything is story, and is actually shaped by the
story of Jesus Christ, where does the Spirit come in?
I think the Spirit puts a special slant on the story. The
Spirit makes the story a story of love. All these patterns in the universe are
part of a story of love. God creating and redeeming out of a desire to be
involved passionately, respectfully, vulnerably and faithfully with
creatures—all creatures. Not only is the universe crammed with patterns, but
the patterns are suffused with love. We are bathed in love. Every sparrow is
bathed in love.
Psalm 104 tells the story of all creation, nature, animals,
humans, and sums it up with the verse:
Send forth your spirit, they are
created
and you renew the face of the earth.
*
* *
As I said, this is all pretty subtle. But as I sit outdoors
on one of the first days this spring when we can do that without freezing, I
look at the spruce tree and the maple tree and the three sparrows’ nests under
construction on the corners of our patio, I think, “This is all shot through
with love. We re all loved—me, and the spruce tree and the maple tree and the
three families of sparrows.”
It’s enough to make one break into song.
