Merton goes on to quote St. Augustine, who says:
What greater or more wonderful spectacle is there, or where can human reason better enter into a dialogue with the nature of things, than when seeds have been planted, shoots laid out, shrubs transplanted, grafts inserted. It is as though one were questioning each root and seed, asking it what it can do and what it cannot do; whence it derives the power to do it, or why it cannot do it; what help it receives from its own interior power, and what from exterior help and diligence. And in this dialogue we come to understand how neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but God who giveth the increase. For that work which is applied exteriorly is fruitful only by the action of Him who created and ruled and ordered all from within.
Adam's first "work," after God had created all the beasts and birds of the air, was to observe them and to name them. Thomas Merton points out that Adam's naming was a kind of "second creation," for "whatever the man called each of them, that would be its name" (Gen. 2:19). Adam's function, according to Merton, was to observe creation, see it, recognize it and thus give it a new and spiritual existence within himself. He "repeats....the creative word by which God made each living thing."
In a way, this was the beginning of science. By his God-given intelligence, Adam was to discover the correspondence between the reality of things as they are in the mind of God (nature) and what man would call the thing. By his contemplation, Adam "sees" and understands; by his dialog/communion with God, he acquires the wisdom -- the name -- by which he can communicate his understanding to others. From Adam's "naming" comes the seed of creative intellectual activity which will flower into poetry, science, philosophy --- thought systems by which men can share their vision of reality, both seen and unseen.
When St. Teresa of Avila wanted to instruct her nuns in contemplation, she remarked that she did not require them to have lofty thoughts, but only to observe -- to "look." When we observe both inner and outer reality with the eyes of faith, that is, in communion with the Holy Spirit of Wisdom, we begin to "see" things hitherto hidden from our eyes. And we know things beyond what our senses can tell us. If we ask the Spirit of God to reveal to us what is going on, He will show us great and hidden things we do not know. And once we can truly "name" or identify spiritual realities, not only do we know what to do with them (Wisdom), but we can communicate what we see to others.
Our world today seems to conspire against the slowness and silence required for genuine observation. So we cannot always tell what is real and what is false. I once asked a class of 11th grade students if they had ever felt that God was "right there." The only positive response I got was from a young man who habitually hunted and fished -- that is, he was alone in the woods and on the sea.
Maybe, for those who love gardening as I do, that is the secret; our hobby draws us into communion with God by drawing us into communion with nature, that is, with reality, with the essence of things. We are drawn to observe and to name what we see, and in the naming we find the delight of recognition: I know you; I know what you are and what you like, what your nature needs to flourish and thrive. And I have the ability to provide what you need, to "tend the garden" according to my observation and communion with God.
What I say about gardening should also be said about raising children, about teaching, about conducting scientific inquiry, about medicine, about philosophy and the whole hosts of man's occupations on this earth. It all begins in humility and observation, asking the Holy Spirit to open our eyes that we might see and understand what we are called to do.
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