Mtr Taylor Devine
Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity.
-Ecclesiastes 12:8
As for me, I am afflicted and in pain;
your help, O God, will lift me up on high.
-Psalm 69:31
Today the Church commemorates Evelyn Underhill, a British Mystic Anglican in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her writings have often drawn me in when questioning the pain and reality of human burdens, and today is no exception. She wrote prolifically and led retreats, after coming into the faith as an adult. In her book of reflections on the Creed, in the ninth chapter, she writes about the final words “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” She reflects:
“The Christian account of the nature of Reality ends with a declaration of absolute confidence. “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come”… It is as if the soul said, “I believe in and utterly trust one living Perfect God, and His creative purpose, His ceaseless action. And because of that-because I have glimpsed the sparkle of His mysterious radiance and heard the whisper of His inexorable demands-I trust and go on trusting, in spite of all disconcerting appearances, my best and deepest longings. I expect the fulfillment of that sacramental promise which is present in all beauty: the perfect life of the age, the world, that keeps on drawing near. I look past process and change, with all their difficulties and obscurities, to that Perfection which haunts me; because I know that God is perfect, and His supernatural purpose must prevail. So, since the Christian life of prayer looks through and beyond Time towards Eternity, finds its fulfillment in Eternity, and ever seeks to bring Eternity into Time, the note that we end on is and must be the note of inexhaustible possibility and hope. Because we believe in the Eternal God, whose very nature is creative Charity, we believe in and expect the fulfillment of His Plan, the hallowing of the whole Universe, seen and unseen.”
I’ve been wondering about this a lot lately, God’s plan, the overarching one. How small our daily tasks must seem in the broad timespan of what is, timeless. And yet, God incarnates God’s Self in the daily, monotonous-what to eat, who is in need of healing, how to live. Underhill has another quote, fleshing this out: “We have descended into the garden and caught three hundred slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. It makes it so lifelike.” Lifelike, indeed-full of heartbreak and soaring beauty, earthy and eternal.
Underhill beautifully portrays that in the midst of difficulty and a lack of Hope, it is as if the creation hopes for us, yearns for renewal, and that in our shared confession in the Creed we respond to this creative God. “The note that we end on is and must be the note of inexhaustible possibility and hope.”
(The School of Charity: Meditations on the Christian Creed, Chapter 9)