Natural Elements

Sometimes we do not know what we know until we touch – touching the truth with our minds alone is not enough – we are made to touch it with our bodies. And so as I touch stone, wood, glass, and clay I allow touch to teach me of God's creation.

In renovating the main floor of our house [it's not quite done yet!] it gradually occurred to me that we were being drawn to natural elements and when we could not afford the ‘real’ we opted for the man-made in a form as close to the original as possible.  For example, rather than a stone pebble floor in the washroom, which would be too heavy for our older house, we opted for a vinyl that “spoke pebbles” to us.  And pebbles in the washroom makes sense to me because that is where water is - where cleansing takes place – and on my more imaginative days it seems I am standing on the edge of a stream...

Through looking more carefully and touching contemplatively I rekindle my love of natural things.  I allow my senses time to pay attention, to ponder the feel and look of the elements - and in this way learn a greater reverence for God’s creation. And reverence happens when my senses move from taking things for granted to standing in awe of what God created.  Reverence is hard to define – but you know it when you feel it.

Paul Woodruff [Taylor, An Altar in the World] argues that true reverence cannot be for anything that human beings can make or manage by ourselves.  By definition, he says, “Reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self – something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding.” 

But, I believe that the path to reverence is ‘paved with the ordinary’ and it is the ordinary and even the modified that pushes us along the path to recognize and reverence God’s Creation. We begin with where we are – we touch, listen, see, & taste – and as we ponder these we may find ourselves standing in awe of that which is beyond human. 

The photos in this blog highlight the ‘natural elements’ and manmade materials that we have used to create a place of harmony that provides me with a pathway to creation.  A place were one can run a finger along the grain of wood, feel the smoothness of stone, the coolness of porcelain, watch the beauty of light as it passes through glass, clear or coloured, marvel at the diverse shades of slate the simply beauty of soapstone and marble.