We sat outside at church this morning with a Live Oak blocking our view of the preacher. I kept thinking of this poem I read from Plough’s recent collection of Easter Poems.

I See His Blood

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.

Joseph Plunkett

Benedict, Bombadill, Gandalf, and Beck—
Treebeard “supposes.” His option: “must do.”
Given no choice, with the threat to his neck,
he heralds his plan and follows it through.

This morning, I watched a few minutes of a Robert Wood lecture on Martin Heidegger. The lecture was given in a series titled, "Beauty in The Tradition." Serial lectures given at the conference of The Hildebrand Project.

Wood begins his lecture on Heidegger by first illustrating the priority of Renee Descartes's philosophy. He draws a tree on a whiteboard and names some branches.

As Wood draws, he tells the philosophical story that has shaped—how and what we think—us modern folk, and the world in which we find ourselves.

By using Descartes's own 'Tree of Knowledge' illustration, Wood explains Heidegger's priority for tilling the soil in which the tree is planted. Heidegger wants to know what the tree of knowledge is planted in. His answer?

Being in the world. This is the soil. Humanness by virtue of being is the terra firma of knowing. Being is the ground of knowing.

For the Christian, 'being' is of course foundational in the three-person-ness of, "I believe: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." God is being and he gifts us his being by virtue of his forming us in his image, in the act of creation and Incarnation.

Matthew B. Crawford's Book The World Beyond Your Head has helped me understand this very fundamental fact.