nature and grace

Nature & Grace, and What We May Learn About Beauty
Found Beauty: a colorful palette in front of a local garden store

I continue to be grateful for things I have learned from my former teaching colleague, Ralph McMichael. Among the insights I have gained from him is one way to sum up some basic understandings that people have of the relationship between Nature and Grace. Whether by these names or not, we all seem to have a concept of this relationship. Nature, an all embracing category, is the common term widely used to refer to what Jews and Christians call Creation. Grace is a term that some use to refer to the presence of the supernatural realm, as it may touch upon or be found in Nature.

There are many ways of thinking about the relationship between these terms, and what they represent. Among them are four basic concepts or models of the interaction between them, which Ralph McMichael often presented in his teaching at the seminary. His articulation of these four ways can be summed up with four words: Compatible; Opposition; Identification; and Fusion. The most common understanding of the interaction between the supernatural realm and the natural world is represented by the first two terms. I will explain.

Many of us were raised in social environments where this interaction was seen as one in which the supernatural, or Grace, only episodically touches aspects of the natural world, or Nature. Based on the first model, some of us tend to see this interaction as involving the compatible yet occasional way that Grace touches Nature. It touches Nature here and there, unpredictably ‘gracing’ the natural realm in which we find ourselves. In this first model, Grace is a friendly presence to and upon those beings or things that it visits, making up for something of value that we seek or yearn for. 

In the second model of the relationship between Nature and Grace, the latter is once again seen as episodic, touching Nature just as unpredictably. But, in this case, Grace – although sometimes also friendly – can appear to be incompatible with some things it touches. In this view, while Grace may be friendly to Nature, aspects of Nature may be unfriendly to Grace, and opposed to it!

Found Beauty: Boat rudder in clear northern water

The third model for understanding the relationship between Nature and Grace might not be as familiar to many of us, and it may represent a reaction to the perceived inadequacy of the first two models. This third view has affinities with what is called pantheism, the view that Nature and Grace are so intertwined that they are indistinguishable. In this view, there is no separation between sacred and profane, or between God and the world, for – despite appearances and sometimes contrary experience – the two ideas or things are really one. Hence, according to this third mode of approaching the question, Nature is Grace.

McMichael referred to the fourth model as the Fusion model, one that he and many ‘catholic-minded’ thinkers commend. In this model, rather than seeing Nature and Grace identified as one entity, Nature is best seen as infused by Grace. With this understanding, we can see Nature and Grace as distinguishable but also as inseparable. Nature is graced. A theological extension of this idea is for us to say that ‘there is no place where God is not.’

In offering McMichael’s four models for understanding the relationship between Nature and Grace, I realize that I have presented a conceptually-dense set of ideas. Yet, I encourage you to consider them – and muse about them – for I believe you will come to recognize how you – like me – often assume one or more of them. Sometimes we think with these four models in overlapping ways, or at other times inconsistently when viewing one set of circumstances followed by another.

Found Beauty: A rainbow breaks through a late evening storm

These four models, because they so fundamentally shape our world-view, continue to play a role in my reflection upon Art, Beauty, and the theme of Transcendence. I invite you to join me in reflecting on how these models for understanding the relationship between Nature and Grace might inform our thinking about Beauty, its presence in the world around us, and how Beauty is a fundamental aspect of our experience of the natural realm in which we find ourselves every day.

Here is one way to apply McMichael’s four models to how we think about Beauty:

  • Beauty graces Nature episodically, in a compatible way.
  • Beauty appears in Nature episodically, and challenges that which is other than beautiful.
  • Nature is identified with Beauty.
  • Nature is infused with Beauty, and thoroughly permeated by it.

If we identify with the fourth view, as presented here, we of course need to do some thinking about those circumstances when we are confronted by an encounter with ugliness, as well as with evil. We must then try to explain our experiences of these latter real aspects of what we encounter. Here, both-and thinking will serve us in a way that either/or thinking will prove unsatisfactory. And, hence, we must be sure to distinguish the Identification model (which tends toward pantheism) from the Fusion model (which can be consistent with traditional theism).

Found Beauty: A quiet early morning at the same marina

Additional note: the photos included in this post were taken in Charlevoix, Michigan, in the summer of 2025

The Beauty of a Beach

An 1890’s photo of visitors on the northern Gulf coast

 

After almost 40 years as a member of the clergy, I have recently done something that might have worried me when first ordained: I gathered with members of my wider family for an Easter weekend at the beach. We had Easter family devotions, but I was not ‘in church.’ And yet…

For Anglicans, and others in the broader Catholic tradition, nature and the supernatural are not seen as being antithetical, poised to combat one another in an adversarial way. We see nature as ‘graced;’ a view significantly different from one that confuses nature with Grace and or with the divine. We acknowledge the reality and power of sin, and our consequential human separation from God. Therefore, we fully appreciate the Grace of the Holy Spirit in offering us the opportunity for redemption without price or penalty (except for the need to renounce our pride).

A frequently used opening sentence for Daily Morning Prayer is this versicle and response: “The earth is the Lord’s for he made it: Come, let us adore him.”

And much loved are the opening words of Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.”

Having grown up near the sea in Japan, and having crossed the Pacific Ocean five times by ship over those years (14 days each way), I have a strong sense of affinity with coasts, salt water, and ocean passages.

At the age of 21, I spent much of Lent camping and fasting as a solitary on the south shore of the Greek island of Crete. I traveled there by bus, from London to Athens, and then by ferry to Crete, the cheapest way I could find. It was between terms at Oxford, and I limited my reading to the New Testament and the recorded sayings of the Desert Fathers. The beach on the Mediterranean Sea was my place of rest, reflection, and refreshment. I am sure that many others find being on the beach the most alluring experience of the sea.

Why is finding peace on a beach such a common experience? Here are some briefly stated reasons why this might be:

⁃getting away from routine, stress, etc
⁃getting away to beautiful surroundings and relative quiet, accompanied by relaxed interchange with people outside of daily business interactions
⁃the seductive rhythm of the lapping waves, whether small or large
⁃often an onshore breeze, due to water and air temperature disparity
⁃the opportunity to just sit, doze, and or walk slowly on the sand

And yet, the paradox of our often-sought experience of being on a beautiful beach lies in its contrast with our biblical forebears’ pronounced ambivalence about the sea, and their sometimes downright fear and disparagement of it. For the Israelites, the sea was a context that evoked community memories of the flight from Egypt and the deliverance at the Red Sea, an experience relived symbolically in the later Jordan crossing into the promised land. Much Old Testament imagery, some of it memorably recorded in the Psalms and also in Jonah, shaped New Testament appreciation for Jesus’ ministry when he calmed waves and storms on the Sea of Galilea.

All this is not to provide justification for the idea that we can be just as close to God on the golf course or at the beach as we can be at church. Instead, we should treasure experiences of the beauty of the sea, and opportunities to encounter them. But we should even more treasure celebrating the Eucharist in church, not as a duty, but as a joyful re-experience of God’s unification of the natural with the supernatural.

For many people, times by the sea evoke a sense of wonder about purpose and meaning in life; they rekindle a sense of possibility in relationships; and provide opportunities to reimagine the future. Surely the Grace of the Holy Spirit is in all this.

 

I would like to credit my friend and former colleague, the Rev. Dr. Ralph McMichael, for his succinct and helpful delineation of ways of understanding the relation between nature and grace in his teaching and writing. In this regard, his essay in the book he edited, Creation and Liturgy: Studies in Honor of H. Boone Porter, is helpful. He is also the author of The Eucharistic Faith.