And Elohim (i.e. God) looked upon all he had made, and see (i.e. take notice), it was very good (or beautiful).
*Genesis 1.31 (Hebrew Bible; Christian Scritpure)
My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.
*William Wordsworth (1770-1850); Poem, March 26, 1802
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One of the temptations common among those who aspire to be spiritual is to mistake holiness, spirituality, or enlightenment for something unnatural - detached from material reality, or form. This false transcendence is the polar opposite of materialism. One thinks the natural order is the problem, the hindrance to be overcome. One may not appreciate how Spirit manifests through nature.
Wordsworth, living with two Quakers, early disagreed with the sect in praising their god, with whom they claimed to be able to have a direct relationship with the Light. He changed his perspectives on religion, returning later in life to a traditional view. He earlier had been influenced by atheism.
"Natural piety" speaks of Wordsworth's affective relationship with nature, he being one of the romantic poets. Since childhood, he had felt wonder at the sight of natural phenomena. He trusted he would until the end of his life.
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I can write of what speaks to me in those words "natural piety," and possibly you, the reader, of what natural piety is. Before proceeding, we need to clarify piety. Piety includes the following connotations: religiousness, worshipfulness, wonder, reverence.
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Do we have to choose between direct and indirect, as Wordsworth did when in opposition to the Quakers? I think not. This he seems to recognize later with his return to the religion he had jilted earlier. This question is important because it is linked with another. We turn to that.
Do we have to choose between natural and supernatural? Another way of stating this duality is immanent and transcendent. In splitting reality into natural and supernatural, spiritual aspirates often try to transcend (i.e. reject) the body with its needs and appetites. This split can lead, as it does among religious and political conservatives, to see Earth as body, including all its non-human creatures, as of little value, if any intrisically, except as it serves the human species.
Does this rejection or devaluing of the natural order not set up a purity caste? This purity caste mentality opposed Jesus and was a leader in his execution - sadly, many, possibly the vast majority of, Christians fail to appreciate this and participate in the same genre of irreligious dogma.
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Natural is not a problem, even as an apple, sunshine, television, hang gliding, ice cream, a barbecued pork sandwich, genitals, or sex is. The misunderstanding of the natural is delusional. Many have been conditioned to see the natural as unnatural or less than fully natural while glorifying the unnatural (i.e., glorification of virginity, defamation and suppression of the feminine, contempt of the human and Earth bodies). Fear of the feminine is part of the root of this widespread fallacy, as most social norms, including religious, have been defined by masculine principles and prejudices.
What develops via this split between nature and supranatural, or supernatural, is false piety - a pretentious show of holiness, sanctification, enlightenment, spirituality - which is always attended by the stench of self-righteousness, including an us-against-them mentality and agenda to convert, ignore, deny, ridicule, imprison, or kill the them.
There is an unholy aggressiveness to this kind of agenda. The purity mentality is, also, the failed recognition to see human rights is not equivalent to morality - conservative, moderate, or liberal. Moral supremacy and domination are part of false piety. False piety - in political and religious forms - must have an enemy. Fascism, cultism, and religious fundamentalism are expressions of unnatural piety - which is a contradiction for unnatural piety is not piety at all.
This means natural piety is not equivalent to morality. One can be esteemed rather immoral in the eyes of many yet embody natural piety. One may be deeply religious and never walk inside a building of worship or belong to a religion. One may live in wonder and never speak of it. However, natural piety is linked to morality, but a certain kind - inclusiveness, respect, and the sacredness of all life. What many conservatives criticize as Woke is natural piety. If that is Woke, let us gladly accept the label - stick it on me!
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Wordsworth writes, "The Child is father of the Man (i.e. adult)." Why? My reading is he sees childlikeness - not being a child again, not childishness - as the way of natural piety rather than the unnatural piety we learn through social conditioning. This is innocence, not as guiltless, but free of being sullied, tainted. He speaks of piety as an unmediated meeting with life the way a small child can experience nature as it is, not as she or he will be later told it is.
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Natural piety leads us to awareness of nature as a shadow. When we connect with nature wholeheartedly, we come to recognize nature in itself cannot satisfy us. Rather, while we enjoy nature, it leaves us with a sense of unfulfillment. The natural order temporarily brings us pleasure or joy. Intimacy with nature leads us to recognize there is something else. It whets our appetite for more.
Nature mirrors to us that - the - something else, something more. Later, after discovering the more through nature, we return to see nature differently. Nature is no longer an end in itself; neither is it merely a means to something else. Nature, being a means to the sacred, shares in that same sacredness, even as we do, even as our very bodies and breath do. The mirror - nature - is not separate from the face - the sacred -, though it is not the face. Nature is not separate from the more, yet it is not the same as the more - possibly, it is best simply to experience nature and the more without theorizing - as I just did, for thought and language is incapable of communicating the experience.
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Nature seduces us to draw near the Beloved. This is like seeing the face of someone. The face says to us, "There's more." There is more looking through those eyes. Intimacy, as an aspect of natural piety, is communion with the more in the other without excluding the other.
In intimacy with any form, we love the formless and are, thereby, loved - for loving and being loved are one. All form becomes sacramental. Spirituality is to lead us, not away from the natural, but to a conversion progressively through it as it is.
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Last, it is customary for spiritual aspirates to go through a move away from nature. This leads us back to nature, as noted above. We are no longer in attachment to nature. We have an emotionally detached, but not oppositional, relationship with nature whereby sensations and feelings elicited by communion with nature arise. These embodied responses come and go; we remain in harmony with what does not come and go.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
