Chesterton said that, before the myriad gifts of nature, humility frees us from routines that both desensitize and cause us to fall into vulgar accommodation; of supposed “rights” (I am the owner of nature and will use it as I please) and ridiculous whims (I demand that there be six suns, or a blue one, or a green one...); it situates us realistically in our rightful place: in our darkness and our want, at the moment that the miracle first occurs, and we are opened to the astonishing beauty that surrounds and renews us.
“Humility is the thing which is forever renewing the earth and the stars. [...] If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it [...] ‘the light of common day.’ [...] We are [then] inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous” (Gilbert Keith Chesterton).
Here is a fragment of nature which is “humble” and not at all showy. Although not apparent to an awareness dulled by routine and distraction, it unfolds like a tapestry before the wondering eyes of the boy, a symbol of all one whose spirit is awake, who is able to see things as if for the first time, with “new” eyes: and so these small wildflowers shine in this same “tapestry” with threads of gold…
