Canticle of Creatures

introduction

In today's world, our relationship to the elements of nature is often dimmed, relegated somewhere to the far background of our awareness. St. Francis of Assisi lived life close to the ground, enmeshed in the natural world where he found the glories of God revealed. His ascetic lifestyle, physically rough, sharpened his appreciation of sensual reality, sublimated by him into mystical experience.

I always think of the 'Canticle of Creatures' as Francis of Assisi's swan song, summing up his incredible relationship to the natural world, and coming, as it does, at the end of his life, highlighting the central importance of nature in his spirituality. Written when he was frail and blind, he recalled the glories of Nature and their lessons for him throughout his life, identifying them, in his inimitably religious style, as images of the divine.

I wrote this paper during the months leading up to my own father's death at age eighty-five. He was a man who lived his life out-of-doors, most of it on the sea. I felt close to the elements through him. Eloi LeClerc, in his book,Canticle of Creatures, Symbols of Union, highlighted the elemental nature of Francis' imagery. I divided my treatment of the Canticle, sometimes known as 'The Song of Brother Sun,' into four parts according to the Four Elements of antiquity.

A lifelong student of metaphysics, I was just now discovering the incredible Carl Jung and his philosophy, which shed so much light on religion, spirituality and psychology. At this time, I was a theology student at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley (member of the Graduate Theological Union) and immersed in all things Franciscan, discovering new languages to express spiritual truth, enamored of Simone Weil, and others; my husband and I were exploring the high deserts of California east of the Sierra Nevada range, and in Nevada and Colorado, finding petroglyphs, deciphering ancient geological scripts. Somehow I was able to bring all of this together in 'Nature Symbols - Healing and Wisdom: Desert Meditation, the Four Elements, and the Grieving Process, as seen through the lens of The Canticle of Creatures.'

jung: basics

PSYCHE and SYMBOL: HEALING and MEANING

In discussing the human mind, in all its layers and dimensions, aka 'psyche', it is helpful to be able to use the terminology and concepts of Jungian psychology.

The human psyche is a unity, that for convenience' sake is talked about as if it were divided into three seqments: the ego or conscious mind of ' I '-awareness the personal unconscious, which includes the diverse aspects known as the shadow. the anima-animus syzygy , and the Self; and the collective unconscious, which contains the archetypes. (25) In brief, the ego complex is the conscious perspective of the individual, the personal unconscious contains the unconscious and repressed contents of the individual, and the collective unconscious functions for the collective society in much the same way that the personal unconscious functions for the individual.

The collective unconscious is available to each individual psyche as well, and contains the "definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere,” (26) and which manifest themselves in imagery as 'motifs', called archetypes.

All three segments, taken together, were termed the 'objective psyche' by Jung in his later writings. (28) The objective psyche produces spontaneous images in dreams and fantasies, which when brought to consciousness in psychoanalysis are found to relate to instincts, emotions and drive impulses (29) , with which the patient has been out of touch, and unable to experience in daily life. (30) Jungian psychologist Edward C. Whitmont writes that the manifold expressions of the libido, or energy, of the objective psyche, as a whole, include all aspects of human life, •"including the urge toward a spiritual or religious search for meaningful existence" (31) - that is, the search for God, for transcendence, for ultimate meaning. This statement indicates that the goals of Jungian psychology are not incompatible with the goals of religion.

In brief, the structure and dynamics of the objective psyche are as follows;

panentheism

PANENTHEISM I begin this project by writing that 'images from nature can act as symbols in mediating grace to us.’ My theological perspective belongs to Panentheism, which allows God to be in creation, and creation to be in God in a special way. The New Catholic Encyclopedia defines Panentheism : "Panentheism views all things as being in God without exhausting the infinity of the divine nature. Panentheism stands as a kind of surrelativism holding for a real convertible relation of dependence between God and the world - not only is the world dependent upon God, but God is dependent upon the world. It regards the world as an actual fulfillment of God's creative possibility. Today it describes the views of those who introduce a polarity in the notion of God as both eternal and temporal and as including yet transcending the world. " (4)...

st. francis' canticle of creatures

PSYCHE, NATURE and PRAYER

Francis of Assisi’s “Song of Brother Sun”, as interpreted by Eloi LeClerc in The Canticle of Creatures, illustrates concretely the points I have tried to make above, and the kind of poetic prayer, imaged from nature, that is the thesis of this paper, as well.

In The Canticle of Creatures, LeClerc presents a portrait of Francis of Assisi as poet, visionary and dreamer, man passionately in love with God and nature, who celebrated this love and these dreams in a “Song of Brother Sun” just shortly before he died. This song of God's praise is clothed in images of creatures: images drawn from nature.

Song of Brother Sun

Most high, all-powerful, all good, Lord! All praise is yours, all glory, all honour and all blessing.

To you alone, Most High, do they belong. No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce your name.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made. And first , my Lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.

How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendour. Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars; In the heavens you have made them, bright, and precious and fair.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water, so useful, lowly, precious and pure.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten up the night. How beautiful he is, how gay! Full of power and strength.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth, our mother, who feeds us in her sovereignty and produces various fruits and colored flowers and herbs.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through those who grant pardon for love of you; through those who endure Sickness and trial.

Happy those who endure in peace,
By you, Most High, they will be crowned.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death, from whose embrace no mortal can escape.

Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Happy those She finds doing your will! The second death can do no harm to them.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks, And serve him with great humility.”

desert meditation

CHAPTER 2

This chapter will begin with a prayer-Liturgy, entitled Desert Meditation, that I designed three years ago out of images arising spontaneously during prayer, and that spoke to me and brought me through a period of emergence from grief and reconciliation with change. In the remainder of the chapter we will look more closely, first, at the grieving process, and then at the images of the Desert Meditation from various perspectives (LeClerc-style): archetypal , personal and from the Christian tradition and organized under the headings of the Four Elements.

DESERT MEDITATION

Readings: Luke 9:57-8: “As they were going along the road, a man said to him. ‘I’ll follow You wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him; “Foxes have ho1es, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.’”

Luke 6: 20-21: “And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: ‘blessed are you poor, for yours is the kindgom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.’”

Luke 6: 36 38: “‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not and ‘you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven, give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.’”

(Speaker): “Hello, welcome (to all): I’d like to share with you this morning a kind of experience I’ve been waking up to in recent years. Maybe some of you have known this approach to life for years. But for me it’s still new. It has to do with openness, with giving and finding. It has to do with accepting our own poverty and letting that be transformed into a source of richness.

“Just now I’m not talking about poverty as it exists in the world as the fruit of injustice and oppression -but of our own experience of personal poverty: for example, in my own life my childlessness, the aging of my parents, my own aging, the way I see myself as lacking certain social skills, the changes in the way I understand my experience as a woman in our culture - we all have our own self-perceived poverties.

“I have a symbol of poverty here: it’s a bare branch. There are all kinds of poverty: they are united under one name because they all share something in common: viz., a lack of some kind. With the kinds of critical minds we humans have, we can always see what’s lacking: we can always see what might be, and then we’re disappointed with what is. That’s why this branch is a good symbol for poverty. It doesn’t have any leaves, yet I can easily imagine this branch joyfully bedecked with leaves. Instead, however, it’s quite bare; it’s lacking.

“The point I want to make about poverty is that it’s a rich ground for finding; it’s a rich mine of life; and out of this finding, we can give. But first we have to find. For example this branch has many subtly marked colors and details (name them); it’s got buds, and if it were put in water while still freshly cut, it might bloom. I’ll pass this branch around for you to examine its richness.

(Pass branch.)

“While the branch is going around perhaps we could share with each other some experiences of richness in poverty that have enabled us to give. Or perhaps we could share whatever reflections the bare branch associates for us.

(When bare branch returns and is replaced):

“Another one of my favorite symbol s for poverty is water because it lacks nearly everything that constitutes form, yet it gives life. It is invisible, yet it is solid. But its solidity only serves to enable us to see through something clearly. Creation is like this. Prayer and meditation are like this. In silence and the stilling of the mind, we become aware of God’s presence.

“For me the prophets are good symbols for poverty too: in their way they are poor. As theologian Rosemary Haughton says, prophets are in-between people, marginal people. They lack the perspective and formation of the dominant consciousness, of the majority. They often live or spend time in the desert, as Jesus also did. In their personal poverty they are open to God, they listen to God and thus they hear God. They see clearly; they have insights; they notice things others may not, like noticing the details and beauty of the bare branch.

“And they are motivated by God: God is like a fire within them, or like a driving power, making them say or do things that at times they might rather not. For example, here are some of the words of Jeremiah the prophet:

‘O Lord thou hast deceived me;
and I was deceived; thou art stronger than I,
and thou hast prevailed.
I have become a laughing-stock all the day; everyonc mocks me.
For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, ‘violence and destruction!’
For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long.
If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak anymore his name’,
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones,
and I am weary- with holding it in, and I cannot.”
(Jeremiah 20:7-9)

“We think of the prophets as living in the desert. I’d like to read now a guided meditation about the desert as a symbol for personal poverty, and about what we can find there that is freeing and life-giving. You can close your eyes if you like during this meditation.

(Read slowly, with pauses during the dotted spaces.)

“The desert is a simple landscape...at most a tall cactus, small low hills or a scrubby desert tree break the horizon. Most people think of the desert as being and, barren and sparse.. Yet when we look closely and attend with all our senses, we find that the desert is teemi ng with life...quietly... almost secretly...

“But there is something else about the desert...something that’s sometimes perceived as ominous, something heavy, quiet, present... it seems like a presence.. .but what is it?... is it the air-?... is it the desert heat?

“Yes, it is the air...the air so still, suddenly moves in a rush of power and impact Wind.. Sometimes gusting, at other times it gently flutters away over the desert brush...Large or small...powerful or gentle, Wind is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. . Wind is invisible; the perfect symbol for poverty because it possesses nothing; it lacks any form that we can discern... it lacks color, texture, interesting details... But it makes everything else come alive! The trees undulate and sway, the grasses bend and swirl round, leaves and bits of twigs and stones scatter and run across the earth. . . we only know the world is present by its effects.. and we know the wind is present because we can feel it

“Then there’s also a feeling of sleeping power in the desert.. And that’s the heat.. Heat gives life yet heat is also a destruct i ve force. The sun gives life. . . and it kills.. The sun is a burning passion.. .At the center of the earth too is a molten ball of fire.. a great passion burns in heaven. . - and in the earth -

‘I think that giving is motion like wind... it touches down here and over there... it doesn't tarry or stay, it deposits its gift and moves on. It can move quickly because it’s poor and unencumbered and transparent...

“Giving is also like heat; it springs from a fire of love the burning passion that is in the universe that was in Jesus and that is now in all his sisters and brothers, because - . . God is Love.

(Allow a time of Silence presumably everyone will eventually open their eyes when they are ready.)

“There’s only one thing we absolutely.- must have in the desert: and that’s water, wet, life-giving water. Let’s share the gift of water.

Instruct everyone to find a plast ic glass under their chairs. Wait until everyone has found their glass. Lift up a pitcher of water.

“Remember, in the desert we must be sparing with the water of life; a few sips must be enough.

(Pour for the first person saying: ‘I give you the gift of water - take it and drink. ‘Or personalize the gift, by inviting each person to offer the gift with a special designation, e.g. ‘living water from the well of Christ,’ ‘water of dreams’, or ‘from the fountain of the Holy Spirit’, etc. Wait until everyone has poured and drunk.

(Close by readiug together from the printed prayer, ‘The Invocation of the Holy Spirit.’ Invite all to join in.

“Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in us the fire of your divine love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.”

the grieving process

I wrote this liturgy several years ago when I was just beginning to emerge from a period of ‘prolonged grief’. Prolonged grief is a term that refers to an incompletely or unsuccessfully mourned loss or combination of losses or traumas. According to Judy Tatelbaum, author of "The Courage to Grieve", we are uneducated as to the processes of grief, and this ignorance contributes to the prolongation and incompleteness of our griefs.

There are four kinds of loss over which we grieve 1) the loss of a love object such as the death of a friend or relative, or the loss of a job, home or lifestyle, 2) cumulative loss, i.e., many small losses that eventually add up to a major depression, 3) symbolic loss, any event that causes a diminution of our self-esteem, and 4) anticipatory loss, in which we experience a sense of loss before the loss actually occurs, e.g , before a graduation, or before changing home locations.

Grieving is a part of our transition process from one stage of life to another. Grieving can even be an appropriate response to certain events in spiritual growth as well. ..

the four elements

THE FOUR ELEMENTS

The Four Elements, when taken together, represent a mandala of earthly wholeness and thus, of human wholeness. LeClerc writes that “the poetic evocation of the four basic elements - ‘water, fire, air and earth’, is typical of the psych(e’s) quest of its own unity.

Betsy Caprio, contemporary American catechist, introduces her use of the Four Elements in her book The Woman Sealed in the Tower:

“‘The ancient elements of earth, air, water and fire are among the most pervasive symbols in the history of the world. We meet them in Greek thought, that of Empedocles and then of Aristotle. To the Greeks they were the substance of which all creation was composed. In the Western world, there is little mention of the four elements during the early Christian days and the Dark Ages, although they flourished as carriers of meaning in the East. However, as Saints Albert and Thomas Aquinas looked backward to classical science in the Middle Ages, they revived interest in the elements. (But) as sophistication in science progressed, it became clear that earth, air, water and fire were not the building blocks of the human body. (Nevertheless) the images of the elements remained. They stayed around in astrology, for instance. Even today, this foursome speaks powerfully to people. In Los Angeles in l980, for instance, a beautiful exhibit to honor the bicentennial of the city of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, opened. As viewers walked into a dimly-lit, gauze-draped space, music of the spheres blanketed them and they gazed on twenty-eight- foot -high angels of earth, air, water and fire. There were also altars to each of the elements, topped with antique madonnas. No explanation of why these basic symbols were used was given - nor was one necessary. The thousands of visitors were being spoken to at a very primary level of their beings. They knew it and responded with awe.”

In The Discarded Image, An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, C.S. Lewis writes of medieval cosmo1ogy’s understanding of the Four Elements:

“The ultimately sympathetic and antipathetic properties in matter are the Four Contraries: hot, cold, moist and dry. They combine to form the four elements. The union of hot and dry becomes fire, that of hot and moist, air; of cold and moist water; of cold and dry, earth. Earth, the heaviest, has gathered itself together at the centre. On it lies the lighter water, above that, the still lighter air. Fire, the lightest of all, whenever it was free, has flown up to the circumference of Nature and forms a sphere just below the orbit of the Moon. (Therefore) the reason why flames alway’s move upward is that the fire in them is seeking its ‘kindly stede.’”

Stephen Arroyo, a contemporary astrologer, attempts to bring the Four Elements theory up to date, and also to point out further cross-cultural evidence of the pervasiveness of the Four Elements theory in the human collective unconscious:

“(For example), in Tibet, huge structures called ‘stupas’ were built as gigantic symbols of the structure of creation. The base of the stupa was a large cube (representing earth), upon which rested a sphere (water), and on top of the sphere was a spiral-like structure (fire). Then at the very top was a half-moon (air) in which rested a small sphere (‘ether’, the Tibetans’ word for the primary force from which the others flow). The stupa represented the foundation of Tibetan cosmology, and the elements were considered therefore to be the fundamental energies of the cosmos.

“Ancient Greek philosophy was also based on the doctrine of the elements, which were equated with man’s four faculties: moral (fire), intellectual (air), aesthetic and soul (water), and physical (earth). (And) in Japan we find a Zen Buddhist tract written in 1004 A.D., (in which) our traditional four elements are represented as the four qualities that make up creation: light, airiness, fluidity and solidity. (Also) the elements symbolize the four states of matter described in modern physics: earth is solid; water - liquid; air - gaseous; and fire is plasma or radiant ionized energy. They may also be said to represent the four primary needs of any advanced organism air, water, earth (or food) and fire (warmth).’”

It can clearly be seen that the four elements can be ‘discovered’ in correspondences everywhere across miles and years. Beginning with the lightest and moving through to the heaviest. I will now take a closer look at each of the Elements.

In the following sections I will look at each of the Four Elements - Fire, Air, Water, and Earth as symbols to which many meanings accrue. As such, my analysis can not hope to be exhaustive; my interest is to explore the images of my Desert Meditation with an eye to their meaning for those suffering grief, and from an archetypal perspective, noting instances of similarity with the Christian tradition (although not exhaustively), and hoping to show that the images from nature within our own psyches can teach and heal us through the grace of the presence of God in them. Therefore, in the following sections I will not be defining the meanings of these images of the Four Elements as symbols, but, like LeClerc, will be ‘dreaming’ some of their many meanings and connections.

fire

The image of Fire has many possible associat ions, among them: love, energy, spirit , creatvity, desire, anger, destruction, suffering and courage. LeClerc, speaking of Brother Fire writes,

“Fire is innate in the human psyche: in the ardor of (eros) desire to become attached, to love and hate; we feel this force as consoling but also consuming; in short, we experience it as a fire. Fire is thus one of the reat symtbols of the libido (energy), the god who speaks in the fire is a life-giving force that seeks union, communication, and self-propagation as does a flame. ‘The arrow of fire never flaggng, crosses the vast universe and leaves nothing at rest (Heraclitus). This living fire, ‘this power that seeks to fuse all things into oneness was named Eros by the ancient Greeks; it is the power to love, that great active energy of the soul. (But) life-giving fire is also imagined as a devouring fire, for it can destroy as well as give life.’”

Fire can exist under many aspects: wildfires, hearth-fires, camp fires, candle-flames, infernos; each form means something very different , ...

air

Air is the medium of relationship. Air is the medium of sound-waves and thus of language and communication. In our world, air is the universal, connecting link. This ancient observation has been made anew by contemporary poet and song-writer Yoko Ono in this short piece:

“AIR TALK

it’s sad to think the air is the only thing we share.
No matter how close we get to each other, there is alwavs air between us.

It’s also nice that we share the air. No matter how far apart we are, the air links us.”

In symbolic systems, such as astrology, the element air symbolizes our social and intellectual functions: our relationships, ideas, communication, our ability to make connections. Air is also thought to be the most mobile of the elements as well - water notwithstanding. It is possible to channel and confine water, while air has been until only recently impossible to contain. The movements of air their origins and dynamics, are more mysterious than those of water and while the oceans seem deep, vast and mysterious, they cover only a percentage of the world’s surface while the air envelopes the whole globe.

Traditionally, connections have been made between the element air and intelligence, wisdom, ideas, motion and the power to move, relatedness - especially social relatedness, and the deeper structural strata of reality. Stephen Arroyo writes that,

“The air realm is the world of archetypal ideas behind the veil of the physical world, the cosmic energy actualized into specific patterns of thought. It is associated with the energy which shapes the patterns of things to come.”

water

Before a person can move into the outwardly-directed, remobilized ‘Air’ stage of recovery from grief, there is still a great deal of ‘water-work, i.e., grief-work, to be done.

Images of oceanic water are most apt for describing the actual grieving process. When first emerging from shock (Phase l) and passing into grieving, (Phase 2: Suffering and Disorganization in Tatelbaum’s schema), the emotions and memories of the griever rapidly succeed one another in rising to the surface of the mind and then in plunging back down again, sometimes taking the griever with them in a flood of tears or a return of shock and disconnectedness. It is crucially important that this process be allowed to happen. Judy Tatelbaum writes,...