Imago Dei Whispers
BRYAN HOLMES
I recently bundled up against the chill and took to the winding paths of my second church, Forest Park Nature Center. Peace settled over me as my feet drew me steadily through a Maxfield Parrish landscape. Gratitude surfaces easily when I’m walking in the woods.
Burr oak and silver maple and shagbark hickory stretched up and up into the vaulted canopy. Silvery lichen and velvet moss adorned the path. Swirls of leaves became glorious stained glass windows, the patterns flowing and shifting in the golden light.
A liturgy of gratitude fell off my tongue. Thank you for this beauty. Thank you for these colors. Thank you for the soothing songs of wind in the trees. Thank you for the family of deer who paused for just a moment from their game of tag to stare at me. Thank you for making this astonishing cathedral out in the middle of nowhere.
And then I stopped. I looked around. I was thinking about these woods and everything in it as a cathedral, a gorgeous house of worship God crafted in the heavens and plopped down on earth, fully formed.
But that wasn’t what happened. God didn’t just create something beautiful. He allowed something beautiful to create itself. This was a place of seeds and sprouts and straining and growth. A place where hundreds of acorns and whirlybird pods found life, and thousands more decayed back into soil — doing their part to foster new growth. A place where each tree and bush and vine and flower found its own way.
God was present, of course. Echoing through the flora’s DNA, holy whispers guided and encouraged. Sink your roots as deep as you can. Soak in the nutrients you need. Move toward the light.
It struck me that I am not a cathedral.
Somewhere along the way, I swallowed the line that God was working on me from the outside. He did everything good and right, while I dutifully lay on the workbench and hoped for the best. At some point, God would declare me “done!” and then people would benefit from whatever God had made me.
I was just a pile of cathedral supplies, and let’s be honest, the leaders told me, I was not top-shelf. God was always throwing defective pieces away or sanding off rough patches or covering stains so no one would notice. My job was to faithfully submit to the chisel and hammer and brush and see what I would become. Eventually. Far in the future.
Standing in the woods, I realized that’s not who I am. I’m not a dead stone, carved into the face of a saint. I’m not cold glass, carefully arranged to tell a sacred story. I’m not cast-off wood, sanded and stained to add warmth and shine.
I’m a forest filled with seeds and sprouts and saplings. I have to do the work while listening to the whispers of God’s DNA, the Imago Dei that lives inside of me. I am constantly in the process of growing into something beautiful, a place where people can rest for a moment and feel God close by. That’s a gift. That’s the way God chooses to work in us, even though the workbench approach would be much tidier and more effective. God gives us the gift of co-creation, of choice, of partnership, of wildly diverse paths. We are not passive recipients. We are agents of change and the shapers of our own lives. What God does that?
I was filled with unexpected gratitude for the struggle and the joy. I had to sit down on a log.
Here’s the embarrassing part. Sometimes, I don’t want this gift. For all my bluster and blow, sometimes I don’t want to do the work. I don’t want to bear the responsibility and shame for choosing poorly and screwing everything up. Sometimes I want to be a passive lump of clay, waiting for whatever God will choose to do. Then it’s not my fault, right? God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do…
But those feelings are small and fearful. The Imago Dei whispers persist, and my heart picks up the gift of choice again. My roots crack the earth and my leaves grasp for the sun. I even remember to be grateful.
There are no guarantees. Sometimes your roots grow shallow and wide, and the howling storm wins the day. Sometimes your call to feed draws in nutrients that are unbalanced or tainted by toxins. Sometimes your relentless drive toward the light leaves you lopsided or abandons others in your shade.
You listen and strive and stretch, and there are long seasons when nothing seems good or right.
And still…
The Imago Dei whispers on. Sink deep roots. Drink in nutrients. Move toward the light.
Love. Love. Love.
And all the while, the space you make, your living cathedral in the heart of the woods, will be beautiful.
Bryan loves words, geeky enthusiasm, superheroes, inside jokes, early mornings, and all kinds of stories. He’s lucky enough to share his life with three incredible women: Laura who lives beautifully in every sense and gently points him back to the best version of himself, and Lily and Claire, who prove on a daily basis that the future will be smart, funny, and compassionate. He seeks God in poetry and podcasts and suspects he may have become Anglican when no one was looking. He combats the messiness of real-life problems by building Lego sets that might actually turn out right if he follows the directions. His favorite thing is sitting down with a cup of coffee and listening to people’s stories, and when God shows up in the telling, Bryan will probably cry.