Last Word: Holiness Cannot Be Confined
“But ask the animals, and they will instruct you; ask the birds of the sky, and they will tell you. Or speak to the earth and it will instruct you; let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?”
– Job 12: 7-9
When I read this verse, I feel as though we are being told to let God’s creation do the talking, and have it teach us and show us all that God means and can do. And it felt fitting to read this verse in our chapel for First Word. I have always been so in awe of the chapel, so much so it was the inspiration for my senior thesis project. I find the architecture to be so thoughtful and intentional, in terms of how, instead of being a structure that demands your attention or tries to stand up it’s surroundings, the chapel takes a step back and puts on display God’s creation for us to look at, listen to, smell, touch, and taste (with the nearby blueberry bushes). There is no transition from outside to inside, and you can enter from any direction. And with no walls or real barriers, God’s creatures are welcomed in too. For example, two red squirrels had chased each other around the center of the chapel during a worship service, and we took a few minutes to watch and laugh before continuing. All the chapel is saying is “this is it, witness and be present in what God has made”. I could say so much more about this but I think Wendell Berry puts it best in his reading “Holiness Cannot Be Confined”:
I don’t think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a hypaethral book, such as Thoreau talked about – a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that had been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really had considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the fuming of water into wine – which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is fumed into grapes. What the Bible might mean, or how it could mean anything, in a closed, air-conditioned building, I do not know. I know that holiness cannot be confined. When you think you captured it, it has already escaped; only its poor, pale ashes are left. It is after this foolish capture and the inevitable escape that you get translations of the Bible that read like a newspaper. Holiness is everywhere in creation, it is as common as raindrops and leaves and blades of grass, but it does not read like a newspaper.
Holiness Cannot Be Confined – Wendell Berry
Blessing:
May the God of the misty dawn waken you;
May the God of the rising sun stir you up;
May the God of morning sky send you on your way;
May the God of noonday stillness renew your strength;
May the God of afternoon bring you home;
May the God of sunset delight your eye;
May the God of twilight calm your nerves;
And may the God of dusk bring you peace.
Written by Marissa Nelson, 2021 Media Coordinator