The Transformation

It’s a moment of incredible beauty; the realization that Narnia is the real thing after all, and that what we call normality is merely a World Between the Worlds, a haze of indifference, apathy and dulled senses that keep us from seeing things As They Are; capitalized and burning with symbolism, evidence of things not seen.

Every tree is a prophecy, it’s leaves signal fires of things to come. Every blade of grass stands tall to praise it’s Creator, and every field is more than a field; it is unity, community; the Church. Every human being is a waltzing tabernacle, a stumbling monstrance, a monstrosity of creation that must either be knelt before or slain for blasphemy. Black coffee is human suffering, in it’s happy bitterness, and the mere sun tells the way of the Son, the Light of the World that weighs light upon the world. These things are not apparently true, but they are poetically true – that is to say – much more real than reality. In the first instance, I maintain that it is not we who liken the leaves to firebrands, but firebrands that pose as leaves. It is not we who make comparisons of ourselves to tabernacles; we were always made to be tabernacles with the odd habit of calling ourselves humans.

If we truly believe in omnipresence, if God is truly everywhere, then everywhere is innately and truly transformed. Since the infinite became matter, matter became glorified. The chair you and I sit on has both the dignity and possibility of being sat on by the Creator when He comes again, and is thus no longer a chair but a throne, shining and resplendent in its humility. The incarnation made the poetry of things much more important than their external reality. The trees they whisper “He walks among us”, the birds they sing “He has clothed us, blessed us”, the rocks, once mute, cry out, “We are Peter, we are the foundation, we are the cornerstones and the Mounts. We are much more than before.”

As if to prove once and for all this magic, that the poetry innate in matter is more real than the prose, that the substance of a thing is now greater than it’s accidence; we are given the Eucharist. Blessed are you, wheat of the field, for truly you shall inherit eternity. Blessed are you, fruit of the vine, for you shall become salvation. In the most shocking turn of events, the substance, the poetry, the meaning and existence of this material food became more important than it’s external reality. It is the primary example which the rest of the earth now follows. The morning comes, the light from on high breaks upon us, and all things undergo a transubstantiation, a sort so obvious that we often miss it.

And well we should. If we lived life under the constant awareness of the poetry and meaning, the metaphor and the reality of the world, we would surely die, having seen something so near to the face of God. But God reserves for us moments, the dawn the dusk, or whenever else he pleases, to impress upon us the reality that everything, every rock, every blade of grass, every child and every sinner point to Him. It is true that William Blake was questioned for his habit of seeing angels in his back garden, and dismissed as a crazy mystic on those ground. But I believe firmly that there will come a time when we are questioned, quite sternly, as to why we have not seen angels in our back garden, and grace in our chairs.