Awakening: Nature and Spirit - Part 2

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Awakening: Nature and Spirit - Part 2

 

(p.33) As time went on this kind of worship of nature began to take the place of

any other religion. I would get up before dawn to hear the birds singing and

stay out late at night to watch the stars appear, and my days were spent,

whenever I was free, in long walks in the country. No religious service could

compare with the effect which nature had upon me, and I had no religious faith

which could influence me so deeply. I had begun to read the romantic poets,

Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats, and I found in them the record of an experience

like my own. They became my teachers and my guides, and I gradually gave up my

adherence to any form of Christianity. The religion in which I had been brought

up seemed to be empty and meaningless in comparison with that which I had found,

and all my reading led me to believe that Christianity was a thing of the past.

 

An experience of this kind is probably not at all uncommon, especially in early

youth. Something breaks suddenly into our lives and upsets their normal pattern,

and we have to begin to adjust ourselves to a new kind of existence. This

experience may come, as it came to me, through nature and poetry, or through art

or music; or it may come through the adventure of flying or mountaineering, or

of war; or it may come simply through falling in love or through some apparent

accident, an illness, the death of a friend, a sudden loss of fortune. Anything

which breaks through the routine of daily life may be the bearer of this message

to the soul. But however it may be, it is as though a veil has been lifted and

we see for the first time behind the facade which the world has built round us.

Suddenly we know that we belong to another world, that there is another

dimension to existence. It is impossible to put what we have seen into words; it

is something beyond all words which has been revealed.

 

There can be few people to whom such an experience does not come at some time,

but it is easy to let it pass, and to lose its significance. The old habits of

thought reassert themselves; our world returns to its normal appearance and the

vision which we have seen fades away. But these are the moments when we really

come face to face with reality; in the language of theology they are moments of

grace. We see our life for a moment in its true perspective in relation to

eternity. We are freed from the flux of time and see something of the eternal

order which underlies it. We are no longer isolated individuals in conflict with

our surroundings; we are parts of a whole, elements in a universal harmony.

 

This, as I understand it, is the " golden string " of Blake's poem. It is the

grace which is given to every soul, hidden under the circumstances of our daily

life, and easily lost if we choose not to attend to it. To follow up the vision

which we have seen, to keep it in mind when we are thrown back again on the

world, to live in its light and to shape our lives by its law, is to wind the

string into a ball, and to find our way out of the labyrinth of life.

 

But this is no easy matter. It involves a readjustment to reality which is often

a long and painful process. (p.35) The first effect of such an experience is

often to lead to the abandonment of all religion. Wordsworth himself was to

spend many years in the struggle to bring his mystical experience in relation

with orthodox Christianity and it may be doubted whether he was ever quite

successful. But the experience is a challenge at the same time to work out one's

religion for oneself. For most people today this has become almost a necessity.

For many people the very idea of God has ceased to have any meaning. It is like

the survival from a half-forgotten mythology. Before it can begin to have any

meaning for them they have to experience his reality in their lives. They will

not be converted by words or arguments, for God is not merely an idea or a

concept in philosophy; he is the very ground of existence. We have to encounter

him as a fact of our existence before we can really be persuaded to believe in

him. To discover God is not to discover an idea but to discover oneself. It is

to awake to that part of one's existence which has been hidden from sight and

which one has refused to recognize. The discovery may be very painful; it is

like going through a kind of death. But it is the one thing which makes life

worth living.

 

I was one of those who came of age in the period after the first world war, and

I shared its sense of disillusionment at the apparent failure of our

civilization. In an effort to escape from the situation in which we found

ourselves I was led, with two Oxford friends, to make an attempt to " return to

nature " , and to get behind the industrial revolution. (p.36) The attempt was, of

course, in one sense, a failure, but it led to the unexpected result that I made

the discovery of Christianity. I read the Bible seriously for the first time,

and found that the facts were quite different from what I had supposed and that

Christianity was just as much a living power now as it had ever been. I then had

to find a church in which I could learn to practise my newfound faith, and after

a long struggle, which cost me more than anything else in my life, I found my

way to the Catholic Church. From that it was but a short step to the monastic

life, and so by successive stages a radical change in my life was effected. In

recording these stages I have tried to show how each step was accompanied by a

long course of reading, in which all the reasons for the change were worked out.

 

The One Light - Bede Griffiths' Principal Writings

Chapter I, Mind, World and Spirit, p. 33-36

Edited and with Commentary by Bruno Barnhart

Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-254-8