The Numinous around Us

“The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.”  Song of Solomon 2:13 (KJV)

“No, a mystical experience would be wasted on me. Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me.” - Marilynne Robinson

Sometimes it seems we no longer live in an age of miracles: no water into wine, no burning yet unconsumed bushes, no Lazarus.  At other times we seem to be in an age of nothing but miracles: driverless cars, thought-driven prosthetic limbs, Amazon Prime.

We have tended to think of a miracle as something that defies rational explanation: an event that our understanding cannot explain.  As our scientific understanding has increased over the years, we have been able to explain more and more things.  In the middle ages, people found it miraculous that plants seemed to die in the winter and to be resurrected in the spring.  The fig tree that looked to be a goner puts forth new leaves and figs.  Today, any undergraduate botany major could explain the process to you.  It is a miracle no more.

Or is it?  Because we understand the scientific process, is it less a miracle?  In the above quote, Marilynne Robinson uses the word “numinous.”  You should remember this one and keep it in your pocket.  “Numinous” is an adjective describing something that radiates holiness; a thing or event or place that sends the needle on your God-meter off the charts.  The Celts might call it a “thin place” where the veil between this world and the other has been rubbed until it’s almost sheer. 

Robinson is saying that she needs no miracles beyond the ones we see every day.  The sunrise and the change of seasons; St. Paul’s cathedral; the heart transplant; “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”; the smile of the one you love.  Who needs a parlor trick like water into wine, when the real miracle is the fact that either water or wine exist at all? 

The everyday is numinous.  We forget that because it’s everyday.  By all rights we should be constantly staggering around in a state of wonder and awe.  The flowers and fruits are reborn to remind us that He is reborn and we are reborn with Him.  That is a miracle, maybe THE miracle, yet it happens every day.

Amen.  

Written by David Parker