It’s good to get outside and walk at this time of year. When the sky is winter white, nests appear, invisible when the leaves of the trees are green. There a wasp’s nest, a gray paper globe hung high overhead; and over there, an enormous, messy squirrels’ home and a small wren’s twiggy tea cup, nestled snugly in a crook.
On these walks I notice the trees’ bare black branches against the white sky. Without the distraction of the leaves, I can see their bones; sometimes twisted, sometimes graceful and always the next one different from the last. In other seasons, I pay attention to the colors: bright yellow-green of spring, the full canopy of summer and blazing fires of autumn. Now there are only the branches, dark, stark lines. Still, it is not only those black lines that intrigue me. There are also all the spaces in between, which are far from nothingness.
An artist will call this negative space,; it takes note of the shape between the branches, outlining a piece of the sky, calling to mind what I learned from a professor years ago. She taught that some Rabbinic scholars referred to Hebrew scriptures as “black fire on white fire”. The black fire is the text. For some, this is enough. The words will tell about God. Sacred texts, whether Torah, Quran, or Gospel are so-called since we believe that by our study, understanding and interpretation of them we come to know God.
Yet there is also white fire. It is the white area on the page between, above and below the words. This is not empty space. For if we are able to perceive God in these holy books, then God must be not only in the words on the pages, but in all the spaces between; in the white fire. But because we are so accustomed to seeing only the words, we’re going to have to squint in order to see it. It will require us to change our angle of perception.
The beauty of this thought lies in the reality that we will all see those shapes somewhat differently from each other. Scripture is sacred not only for what it writes of God, but because there are spaces for each of us to look between, above and beneath to discover our own glimpses of God. There is always room for interpretation.
I invite you to go out on one of these bright winter days, look up at the trees and notice their lovely bones. Then narrow your eyes a bit in order to focus between the branches. You will see a piece of sky that has a shape all its own, that you may have never noticed before. That, too, is of God.
“God dwells”, my poet friend, Sarah Rossiter, wrote, when we were talking of this: “in sky glimpsed through dark winter trees,/ in breath-filled silence when we pray.”