opaque “clouds” that cover the holiness of Scripture when it is viewed only
literally, and opens our eyes to the life and beauty and humanity within. The
doctrine of conjugial love reveals the holiness in marriage.
Again, the doctrines of use and correspondence show ordinary mundane
objects to be expressions of love acting through wisdom, and thus reveal
the Divine and human and spiritual realities embodied in natural forms –
transforming a flower or a Nautilus shell, for instance, into objects of art and
revelation.
(WEO)
‘the roots of art’
This is the title of one of my favorite books, a book of photographs of natural
objects with brief comments by the photographer. His pictures focus on the
incredible aesthetic sensibility and engineering genius displayed by seashells,
seed pods, bones, bird feathers, frost on a windowpane and other such natural
forms.
Again and again throughout the book he notes the intelligence visible in
such things, and how they are the prototypes for human art and engineering.
The burrs by which some plants spread their seeds, for example, inspired the
inventor of Velcro; the cutouts that lighten steel girders without diminishing
their strength mimic the structure of bones in birds; Greek columns resemble
spinal columns.
How, the author wonders, does the brainless little blob of slime that lives
in a seashell manage to construct such a brilliant, elegant, artistic masterpiece
of a house for itself?
Incredibly, the very person who compiled this book of evidence for the
Divine intelligence behind nature’s beautiful and mysterious forms, dismisses,
in the introduction, what he himself sees as the obvious implication of them –
namely, their Divine creation. He gives no reason. He marvels at the mystery,
assumes there must be a natural explanation, but confesses that he has no idea
what it is.
As for me,