Coracle Trust E-Reflections

Beauty and the obscured image

Tuesday 15 June 2010

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and freshness of a dream.

Intimations of Immortality, William Wordsworth

Scripture:  Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

Beauty

The Celtic writer J.Philip Newell observes that in the innocence of a child we see most clearly the beauty of the image in which we have been made, in the countenance of a sleeping child and the twinkle of new discovery.

An obscured but not lost image

What happens to this image?  Is it lost?  Is the innocent child forced into ‘a dark jungle…of which [it] will never be seen again’? The Celtic church contended that the image is smeared over with choices we make within ourselves as well as grey impositions and dark tragedies that can materialise. Our deepest self is however untouched (‘good’) but obscured.

The spiritual task then becomes one of engaging with grace, love and forgiveness.  These are the agents of the Spirit to restore and re-integrate the God-given and God-reflecting image in each stage of our lives. Does the image feel lost?  And the Lord God saw and said ‘It is very good’.