THIS I BELIEVE
I stood on a hillside overlooking Doone Valley. I was
nine years old. It was the perfect day - bright clear
sunlight, bird song, a slight breeze, the sort of day when
all’s well with the world and God is in his heaven. I
stared across the tops of the trees far into the horizon,
and for a split-second moment I lost everything -
sunlight, breeze, bird song, and in that ‘infinite moment’
it seemed to me I glimpsed eternity. What this huge
panorama of an immortal landscape so golden, so
delicate, so strong, seemed to be showing me was my
own insubstantial finite mortal self looking as if through
an invisible window into a world both infinite and
immortal, stunningly beautiful but to a child
frighteningly powerful. Its essential loveliness was
overwhelming, and so also was my sense of loss that I
could not remain for ever a part of this miraculous
vision.
Over the years the experience has been repeated,
but never with quite the same power, never with quite
the same sense of awe as I knew then. I have come to
look on these slivers of joy as times of spiritual
revelation; not so much like that first Exmoor invisible
window onto the otherness of eternity, but rather as the
absorbing of the individual that is myself into both the
greater wholeness of the natural world and into the
immanent hand of God. With this blessed sense of
absorption comes the perception, the belief that I must
as best I can care for this world in which I live and its
inhabitants amongst whom I live, and honour the God
from whom ultimately all this world has come.
I have no formal Creed, but since the age of nine I
have looked on the natural world and all its inhabitants
much as a girl looks on her first lover - exciting,
beautiful, pristine, unmatchable. I have heard God in the
music of Mozart, I have recognised God in the greeting
of a smiling stranger, I have seen God at work in the
meticulous and generous care taken by our street
cleaner. I have shied away from the ugliness of decay,
been sickened by the stench of blood and the injured
scream, and mourned for lives broken and wasted by
cruelty and greed. Where, in these things, is the love and
the presence of God? But as the shining beauty of the
memory of the first love is never wholly lost, so I have
never quite failed to find the a reflection of God
everywhere and in all things. A God who is omniscient,
eternal and ineffable and yet a God who knows and
loves each sparrow who falls to the ground - in this God
do I believe.
nine years old. It was the perfect day - bright clear
sunlight, bird song, a slight breeze, the sort of day when
all’s well with the world and God is in his heaven. I
stared across the tops of the trees far into the horizon,
and for a split-second moment I lost everything -
sunlight, breeze, bird song, and in that ‘infinite moment’
it seemed to me I glimpsed eternity. What this huge
panorama of an immortal landscape so golden, so
delicate, so strong, seemed to be showing me was my
own insubstantial finite mortal self looking as if through
an invisible window into a world both infinite and
immortal, stunningly beautiful but to a child
frighteningly powerful. Its essential loveliness was
overwhelming, and so also was my sense of loss that I
could not remain for ever a part of this miraculous
vision.
Over the years the experience has been repeated,
but never with quite the same power, never with quite
the same sense of awe as I knew then. I have come to
look on these slivers of joy as times of spiritual
revelation; not so much like that first Exmoor invisible
window onto the otherness of eternity, but rather as the
absorbing of the individual that is myself into both the
greater wholeness of the natural world and into the
immanent hand of God. With this blessed sense of
absorption comes the perception, the belief that I must
as best I can care for this world in which I live and its
inhabitants amongst whom I live, and honour the God
from whom ultimately all this world has come.
I have no formal Creed, but since the age of nine I
have looked on the natural world and all its inhabitants
much as a girl looks on her first lover - exciting,
beautiful, pristine, unmatchable. I have heard God in the
music of Mozart, I have recognised God in the greeting
of a smiling stranger, I have seen God at work in the
meticulous and generous care taken by our street
cleaner. I have shied away from the ugliness of decay,
been sickened by the stench of blood and the injured
scream, and mourned for lives broken and wasted by
cruelty and greed. Where, in these things, is the love and
the presence of God? But as the shining beauty of the
memory of the first love is never wholly lost, so I have
never quite failed to find the a reflection of God
everywhere and in all things. A God who is omniscient,
eternal and ineffable and yet a God who knows and
loves each sparrow who falls to the ground - in this God
do I believe.
Naomi
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