Tillich Park – “Man and nature belong together…”

Our hearts in the West are well-trained in possessing, controlling, and cajoling reality, bending it to suit our wants. The spiritual culture that accompanies “free market” economics is the drive to acquire and possess. Could our training in the culture of acquisition and possession be like the wall through which the flower breaks in Tennyson’s poem “Flower in the Crannied Wall”?

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

– Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1863

The flower lures him. Yet seeking to possess it, he destines its death. Having to possess it, analyze it “root and all”, he destroys the magnificent beauty that had drawn his eye.

Having and being are not the same. Only being is filled with wonder. Perhaps that is why Christmas Eve Candlelight services are packed with people who otherwise are not drawn there. There is a beauty to the story and the natural light which lifts yearning hearts from the wintry chill of an having into the warmth of wonder beyond our control or possession.