I might not have gone out today if we hadn’t run out of butter. And I would have missed out! As I walked across the park to the corner shop, I paused multiple times to admire the frost – the glitter of it across the expanse of the football pitch, the soft feathery layers of it on a fallen leaf, the sharp outlines of twigs on the path. Beauty of holiness indeed.
But beauty is not always so obvious. Recently I went walking with a friend who is particularly good at spotting interesting fungi. As we walked across woods and fields, gradually we all started to notice the fungi too. Every now and then someone would call out “fungus!” and point, and we would all gather round to admire it. Now I find myself noticing fungi more than I ever did before. Sometimes we need one another to draw our attention to beauty, and to holiness, which would otherwise pass us by.
The wonderful thing about fungi is that what we see is only the tip of the iceberg. Beyond the visible blooms we see in the grass or on a tree trunk, there is a huge hidden network, complex and sophisticated, on which the whole ecosystem depends. Beauty is not always in the eye of the beholder – sometimes it is hidden from our sight. The holiness of the creator is reflected in “things seen and unseen”.
So yes – let us delight in and give thanks for the beauty of holiness. But let’s keep expanding our understanding of where beauty – where holiness – may be found.
This year for #AdventBookClub we are reading “Sleepers Wake: Getting Serious About Climate Change” by Nicholas Holtam. For conversations and blog posts from various group members, follow the hashtag on Twitter or join the Facebook group
... because God is love 