THE HAZELNUT
EVERYTHING HAS BEING THROUGH THE LOVE OF GOD
“He is our clothing, for he is that love which wraps and enfolds us, embraces us and guides us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us. […] He showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and I perceived that it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought: What can this be? And I was given this general answer: It is everything which is made. […] It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.” (Showings, p.130)
That God has made everything, loves everything he has made, and preserves everything he loves, says so much in such a small form. Thus, the hazelnut, to me, is a fitting vision. Simone Weil harmonizes with this in a lovely way when she writes, “Creation is an act of love and it is perpetual. At each moment our existence is God’s love for us. But God can only love himself. His love for us is love for himself through us.” (Gravity and Grace, p. 35).
Everything has being through the love of God.
In a true sense, only God can love God. We simply return back to God (through our attention, wonder, and adoration) what is his own. And, we do this by rummaging through the small things of life. When I look out my window and see a dear companion, the red cardinal staring back on a Japanese Maple branch, I realize that in his bright feathers is everything which God has made. While it is likely that this bird will not live longer than three or four more years, he will last forever, as will I. God loves us both, we are both held in the love of God. The first law of thermodynamics is just another way of grappling/groping with Reality (God). Both I and the cardinal are conserved by Love.
This is the paradox.
God is infinitely distant from me. God is not far, God is closer than my in-breath. I am not God. Yet, “I have said, ‘You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High’ (Ps. 86:2).” I am absolutely nothing, and I am enfolded into Eternity, the one who became nothing (Phil. 2). All I am is possibility (creation) and being; God becoming what God loves (Rohr). What a wonder to live in the ripple of God’s hospitality and to be caught up in the tidal flows of God loving God. To see that in the hazelnut, the present small moment, is to contemplate reality, to breathe in eternal life. To be near this is prayer.
When we live here, we’re at home. We’re with our ancestors. We’re with God, and all of creation — the cosmos swooped up and held in Being.
ACTS 17:27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.”