The Great Inscape (a commentary by an orthodox rebel)

"[There is] the notion that I have to be something; [the truth is that] I have not. I have to be absolutely abandoned to Jesus Christ, so one with Him that I never think of myself apart from Him. Love is never self-conscious." -Oswald Chambers (from Biblical Ethics, p. 97)

Ultimately, there are only two philosophical positions in the world: either everything is all about our self, or it is all about God. When it is about our self, we can never truly enjoy anything or anyone because we are never truly seeing them. We have warped their mirrors to reflect ourselves, and we have no light to illuminate either them or us. When it is all about God, however, then we can finally enjoy all things, for we finally see them for who and what they are in the light of His glory and grace.

Do not misunderstand. This is not about unconsciousness, nor is it about treating people and things as no better than tools. Rather, it is about making God (His presence, promises, and power as revealed in Christ and the Word) the absolute center of your life. Once that happens, everything and everyone else are not lost. On the contrary, they (like us) have finally found their place, and thus we are finally able to enjoy them (and they us) for all the unique ways that they alone glorify and enjoy God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

(Additional reading)

As Kingfishers Catch Fire (poetry from an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following is a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Though classified as a Victorian poet, many people see Hopkins as a proto-modernist poet, and he served as an inspiration for the likes of Yeats, Auden, and Eliot. The following poem shows not only his unique and beautiful use of rhyme and structure but also displays his notion of "inscape," a Psalm 19-esque philosophy that seeks to see and capture the glory of God that is inherent (and buried) within His creation.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--

Christ--for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.