Today has been fitted wall to wall blue sky, bright but mellow autumn sunshine, and a pervasive sense of summer giving way, but reluctantly. A four mile walk along the coast confirms this, and reflecting on it now I'm aware that amongst other things, I have again been ambushed by beauty. How so?
For one thing, a four mile coastal walk is a good way of remembering that spirituality isn't merely about inner climate, emotional ecology and an environmentally friendly approach to our own needs and longings. Such a walk is an intentional refusal to allow inetriority to dictate our mood. Indeed a deliberate external focus is an act of faith in the capacity of the created world to reconfigure our feelings, and help us break out of those tightening circles of anxiety, self-criticism, introspection, and those occasional examinations of our own roots to see if we are growing.
When our attention is forced away from the limited horizons of our own thoughts, there is a chance to escape the inner busyness and preoccupations of a life lived too near to our own centre. Beauty does that, draws our attention, invites us to an encounter with that which is not of our own making. Walking along Cullen beach, on a day when the waves were in stealth mode, only tipping over when nearly ashore, there is a rhythm and regularity that slowly resets my own inner rhythms. That the sea is bluer than the sky; that the waves are playfully sneaky; that those cliffs have been there for millenia; and that I am walking alongside such incidental beauty; these are the gifts of a creation so taken for granted that in rediscovering their gratuitous loveliness, I rediscover an inner equilibrium of renewed hope and returned joy.
How many waves did it take to create the keyhole in this cliff? The imperceptible erosion over hundreds of years, the tireless energy of millions of waves, the patient persevering friction of water on rock; until the imperceptible is perceived, the waves succeed, the rock yields to water. I look at this eye in the cliff, where seabirds shelter and am moved by the slow and mysterious processes that give shape to our landscape. The physics of kinesis and friction are easily enough described, but how do the elements of wind and water create and sculpt so that the end result makes me want to stand and look, and enjoy. The three words are important and so is their sequence. Stand, look, enjoy.
Joy is one of the intimations that we are in the presence of beauty. In my earlier post I mentioned the transformative, inspirational power of beauty. When beauty arrests us it carries with it "hints of transcendence, correctives to cynicism, reminders of our "responsibility to awe", tonics for jaded hopefulness, sources of energy to convert carelessness back to care, currents of thermal uplift that give vision beyond limited horizons". These posts are about that kind of beauty having that kind of effect; and about the connections I sense between the encounter with a beautiful world, a camera, and contemplative gratitude that is its own kind of prayer.
Looking across to the cliffs, or looking through the keyhole in the rockface, and photographing them, are only possible if I stand, and look, and enjoy. All three are required if beauty is to be attended to, its invitation acknowledged, its gifts as gladly received as gratuitously given.
Here is the beacon which stands at the entrance to Findochty Harbour. It is known locally as The Bilken. Out of this and many other harbours along our coasts, for generations, fishing boats have gone and returned. Just in case there is a danger of sentimentalising the sea, and domesticating images as if the sea is always calm and kind, it's a reminder that there is fierceness in beauty, terrifying power in the waves, that currents which sculpt rocks can become hurricane built mountains, and that we trivialise such magnificence at our peril.
Beauty is one of the three transcendentals answering to what is deepest in our mind, utmost in our desire and most fulfilling in emotion. As such our spirituality will be shaped by our perceptions of beauty, sustained by attentiveness to the presence of beauty, tempered by reverence and patience when we encounter beauty. And then there is the theology of beauty, and how we are to understand creation as the expression in time and space of the eternal beauty of the Triune God of grace, love and communion. And how we are to understand ourselves as made in the image of God, our hearts restless till they rest in God, and that through Christ, in the creative power of the Holy Spirit.
Lovely to see you finding so much joy in an area which I also love and treasure. My "Bonus Mum", Muriel, walked across the beach most days when she lived in Cullen, and this was one of her places of worship and meditation.
Did you notice the inscription below the statue of the fisherman at Findochty harbour (made, if I remember correctly, by one of my Dad's pupils, but before my time) with the verse "They see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep"?
Posted by: Dave Summers | September 20, 2017 at 09:36 PM
Thanks for this Dave. I can see why Muriel would find this shoreline a "thin place" (George MacLeod of Iona). Yes I saw the verse, and it comes from a favourite Psalm, one I read when life comes clattering in on top of us and we are looking for a foothold, a promise, a safe harbour. Hope you're doing ok, and life is good just now.
Posted by: Jim Gordon | September 21, 2017 at 07:25 PM