Christian Comment with Penny West, Biomedical Scientist and Semi-Retired Anglican Priest

The Natural World as a Sacrament

YOU may not be a musical buff but within the human make up there is an inherent affinity with music of all different types.

Some music may cause memories, both sad and happy to come to the front of an individual’s thoughts or create a picture in their mind’s eye.

Beethoven’s Symphony Number 6, the Pastoral, is often referred to as an awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country.

Beethoven loved the countryside near to Vienna and regularly walked there.

On the title page to this Symphony he wrote: “Recollections of country life …….more an expression of feeling than a painting.”

Music does bring intense feelings and emotions to the individual’s mind and spirit.

Music cannot be seen, each note is history the moment it is played but its effect remains.

The instruction of Beethoven to regard his sixth symphony as an expression of feeling rather than a picture is powerful one.

Fortunately we see, and hear Creation and like music it also has a Spiritual and revelatory effect on our senses.

In a poem by Dorothy Francis Gurney, God’s Garden, such feelings are well articulated: ‘One is nearer God’s Heart in a garden, Than anywhere else on Earth.’

This poem is very close to the title of this article, which is ‘The Natural World as Sacrament’.

Without the use of profound theological words, how can Sacrament be interpreted, what does Sacrament mean?

A Sacrament seems only to apply to certain services within Church.

They mark important moments in an individual’s spiritual journey i.e. baptism, marriage, and Holy Communion to name a few.

They are an outward sign of an inward action by GOD.

Sacrament is a visible sign, e.g. Water at Baptism, symbolises the presence of God in that event.

Surely Creation is the greatest of all signs to us that God is present and active in life and everywhere.

The outward sign of an inward grace or gift which is freely given, we haven’t earn it and don’t deserve it but it is totally available to us all.