Chestnuts, hazelnuts and brown theology.

Aesculus hippocastanum, the horse chestnut season is here again. I remember as a wee boy in Ayrshire going looking for chestnuts, with all the excitement and anticipation of a child looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or the half crown lying neglected on the pavement would do. I've always felt when, under autumn trees I've picked up a newly dropped chestnut, that I've found something absolutely worth having. Every year I pocket a few; but they don't keep well. Their real beauty is in their newness, and in their promise of renewal - after all a chestnut is a seed. The colour something between red and brown but with contours that make the surface look like a polished spherical ordinance survey map traced on the grain of burnished wood; the shell smooth, glowing warm though cold to the touch; and the play of light on the naturally varnished shell, like a brown gem not so much reflecting the sun as absorbing it, and bearing witness to promised life.

And yes, I know it was a hazelnut that did it for Julian of Norwich, but every year chestnuts do it for me. So with apologies to Lady Julian:

And in this he shewed a little thing, the size of a chestnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and it seemed to me round as a ball. I looked thereon with the eye of my understanding and thought, "What may this be?" And it was answered generally thus: "It is all that is made." I marvelled how it might last, for me thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth and ever shall, for God loveth it. And so all things have being by the love of God.

As soon as it's light I'm off for my slow trot around the park - to gather a few sacraments of created smallness which witness to the being all things hath by the love of God. As I hold them and gaze on them, I will be engaging in brown theology - seeing in their burnished glow, the prodigal promise of life instilled in a world that was only ever intended as gift to be enjoyed. 'All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made...'.

Such sacraments of created smallness rebuke the destructiveness and waste of our way of living by their sheer incongruence. Give it time and that 1 inch nut becomes the 70 foot tree; for so all things have their being by the love of God.

Comments

[Catriona]

I love conkers too. Your post evokes all the delightfully damp smells, prickliness of shells and cool wonder of hidden polished 'browness' of childhood.

The Julian prayer/meditation works better for me with horse chestnuts than hazelnuts, so thank you.