Ideal Nature

Man steht mit der Natur gerade in so unbegreiflich verschiedenen Verhältnissen, wie mit den Menschen; und wie sie sich dem Kinde kindisch zeigt, und sich gefällig seinem kindlichen Herzen anschmiegt, so zeigt sie sich dem Gotte göttlich, und stimmt zu dessen hohem Geiste.

                                                                                       --Novalis, Die Lehrlinge zu Sais

One’s relationship to nature in unfathomably different circumstances is the same as with human beings; she shows herself childishly to the child, and nestles pleasingly in his childlike heart, and shows herself divinely to God, in agreement with his high Spirit.

I remember how, as a child, I first came to know nature.  It was a magical encounter; magical, because it seemed full of a hidden potency that could be experienced but never fully understood. I was especially overwhelmed by three particular qualities of nature: its sensuousness, its profligacy, and its mystery.  Why did mint smell so sweet?  Why did even the humblest sparrow seem so perfectly designed, like a flawless work of art?  Why did the date palm freely offer such sweet, earthy fruit?   Why were grapes ripening in the sun so warm and juicy?  Why was the mulberry tree covered in sweet purple fruit and sour red fruit?  Why were even the leaves of chile plant so spicy hot?  Why were sunsets so spectacular?  Why were trees so green?  Why did the blossoms of the lantana contain so many florets, each one perfect and unique?  In addition to the sensual richness of nature, there was all its superabundance.  The mulberry tree didn’t just make fruit, it made thousands of fruits.  The dandelions did make a single perfect sunburst, they made fields of sunbursts.  A single bird didn’t sing an incomparable song, there were always flocks of coloratura sopranos.  It all seemed a riddle to me.  Why did the lantana offer so many florets?  Why did the date palm make so many giant clusters of dates?  Why did the sunset paint the entire firmament?  Nature’s generosity was a mystery beyond compare.  But it was a joyful mystery.  Nature’s plentitude didn’t blunt its sensual power.  At that time, I had no real understanding that sickness, death, and decay were also a part of nature.  And the first theology I was taught claimed those things as products of The Fall, of purely human wickedness.  They remained somehow apart from nature’s intrinsic character—if a bird died it was because of human cruelty; if a tree died it was because of human neglect.  Wo Kinder sind, da ist ein goldenes Zeitalter (Where children are, there is the Golden Age), Novalis wrote.  As a child, I believed in, and also experienced, nature as it existed in the Golden Age.  Like most children, I had a very active and very rudimentary spiritual life, but it seemed to exist on a different plane than that of nature.  Morality, for example, was a necessary part of one’s spiritual growth, but it was hard to understand how it applied to the natural world.  Birds stole from farmers and even each other.  Lions and wolves killed to eat.  Spiritual beings could protect you from harm, but nature was indifferent to human problems.  It gave what it could but had no interest in assuring that you had everything you actually needed.  It was benevolent, generous, and beautiful, but those qualities seemed somehow separate from the same virtues in the spiritual world.

     As my spiritual understanding grew (in its own halting, confused, and humble way—still infinitely far from a divine understanding of things), I began to see that nature contained qualities of a spiritual design: things like unity, order, simplicity, and perseverance, to name but a few.  I began to understand the sacramental essence of nature.  Nature was no longer just a joyful day at the fair.  It was also, in Novalis’ words, ein Universaltropus des Geistes, ein symbolisches Bild desselben (a universal trope of the spirit, a symbolic picture of it).